"Gaming in South Africa" could just aswell be "Cricket in Japan" to the rest of the world, being an African nation
and sitting at the bottom of the world. Just the plain fact that we somehow happened to do competitive gaming
is already a mystery not only to the world, but to me too. Not that I'm complaining! Competitive gaming has been
my biggest hobby to this day and I still love it very much. Never being the king of a spesific hill, I would classify myself
more as a jack of all trades than a pro, having competed competitively in Warcraft, Counter Strike, Quake 3 and
Starcraft.

One thing that all these games have in common is that none of them are being played on a competitive level in South Africa
and they also happen to be the top 4 games being played worldwide at the moment. Since this topic has been milked to the
bone, I'm not going to complain that those games died, nor blame anyone for causing their obsoletion but rather look at what caused
the steady departure of these games.

The two most important factor causing this death is without a doubt the generation gap and the lack of competitive players in South Africa.
Serious and dedicated players such as Shase, Ph4ntom, Reaver and the dominance of teams such as Damage Control divided the community of each
respective game into an inevitable desertion. There was simply not a ladder of equally lengthed steps to climb to get to the top in any of the games.

In fact, in Counter Strike it was as if Damage Control got to the roof and kicked the ladder to the ground with the only potential competition like Bravado and Virtue's
possible success being overshadowed by constant roster changes, not even mentioning the lower skilled teams ever appearing on the map. Where there was a lot of clans that
just played for the love of the game, most of them lost players to Source due to a promising prize purse in most competitions with no 1.6 tournaments
around(The last being MobileG which actually turned out to be quite the event with Zero Effect overcoming Damage Control in the final to be probably the only team
to beat Damage Control as far as memory can recall). Counter Strike Source became the norm with a lot of new players entering the scene and more clans forming.

A positive for South African gaming, not necessarily in the right direction but healthy nonetheless. Tournaments saw a lot of clans compete again and the online servers
were full with new talent and clanmatches happened each night in abundance. Ironically, either Damage Control or Bravado would win the Source tournaments they competed in.

Warcraft got an unusual but not entirely unexpected knock when dota became popular. A common human trait to rather rely on a team of 4 other players to ride on or steal from,
leaving a very popular 1v1 Real Time Strategy game for an incredibly luck based and somewhat flawed team game with random powerup spawns and almost no spectator value
whatsoever. Crippled by quitters, pullers and no matchup system resulting in most games either being stacked or tediously one sided.

The other side also sees a dominance by players like Shase and Reaver, leaving the rest of the community so far behind that there was just no more motivation behind playing
with players like ZiLk, H4T3, forced and Sage simply not posing a threat at ESWC. Newcomers were forced to type GG withint 4 minutes, scaring them off only to try a game of DotA
which they eventually end up playing.

As the complaints were building up on arena77.co.za and in arguments all over IRC, I suddenly realised that all that complaining and finger pointing was for nothing. South Africa
did not compete in any of the disciplines that ESWC offered, we had no WC3, 1.6, FIFA, Trackmania, GT, Quake 3 or Starcraft communities. If there happened to be an ESWC/Carousel
event, what would we be doing there?

Competitive gaming dare I say died with the last ESWC. Dont get me wrong, I dont say that we have to play that line-up of games to be competitive or to have any meaning, I want to use
those games as evidence that games in this country die long before their best before date. They do not die because they get bad or boring neither because change is needed, but because there just aren't any players out there that wants to compete competitively or win, they just want to play casually.

It's sad to see an incredible sport like this dying, I dont think im the only player who watches a Warcraft 3 or Counter Strike demo and gets this nostalgic flashback of the feeling when beating a player you could never beat thanks to hard work and practice or being down 3 to 1 and killing the 3 players, defusing the bomb with your teammates chanting and your heart beating fast! Esports at its best!

There are many other things that makes competitive gaming so much more rewarding and exhilarating than the depth lacking casual experience and I am sure there are many players who are not competitive because they have not experienced these feelings yet.

I suggest we promote competitive gaming as much as possible and encourge smaller teams and upcoming players to compete on a higher level rather than demoralizing them and insulting them everytime they mess up or lose. Perhaps then will we see the rise of competitive gaming in South Africa to such a scale that we are adequate to face the rest of the world!

In the meantime, we all stand by bravado when facing SK.swe in a bo3 on the 7th of December, who knows, we might just leave a scar!

Alwyn "zdrAg" Kotze