You don't even need a hotel. You can camp outside far cheaper. Lots of people are doing it. I am going to be camping with my team when i go to i49 :)

just camp. apparently that's what most euros do according to etf2l, and you're going to europe.. get the full experience.

make a gamer guy manifesto for tf2

Oh, and what do you plan on doing with the money if you don't raise enough to send 6 people to Europe? I'm not trying to shit on your thread, but these are important questions that need to be answered before most people will donate.

If you're wondering where all these are coming from I used to work as a major gift fundraiser a few years ago (anything over 150K)

At least one team is guaranteed to do. If the fundraiser doesn't achieve a $10k mark, whatever funds are collected will simply defray the cost of flying.

If there are not tons of videos, vlogs, etc. I'll be pretty upset. Especially if soup goes.

While I admire the effort and loyalty of the TF2 community, I gotta ask.. is this the best use of funds? Between the ESEA LAN and i46 there is almost $35K being asked to send the same 24ish players across the country and world to play TF2. Is this the best use of funds? What if this money were put to a huge community based North American TF2 Tournament? Maybe European teams would consider sending THEIR teams to NA to compete because thats some serious prize money. I don't mean to put down the efforts of eXtv and the community because it is quite admirable, but I question the sustainability and overall impact this will have on helping TF2 comp grow/expand.

infinite- wrote:

While I admire the effort and loyalty of the TF2 community, I gotta ask.. is this the best use of funds? Between the ESEA LAN and i46 there is almost $35K being asked to send the same 24ish players across the country and world to play TF2. Is this the best use of funds? What if this money were put to a huge community based North American TF2 Tournament? Maybe European teams would consider sending THEIR teams to NA to compete because thats some serious prize money. I don't mean to put down the efforts of eXtv and the community because it is quite admirable, but I question the sustainability and overall impact this will have on helping TF2 comp grow/expand.

Where the hell did you get $35k from? By my best guess, If 20k is indeed raised for i46, the total donated will be around $25k.

ESEA LAN is essential to competitive TF2's success, it is when all of the streams get the most viewers. Those funds cannot be put elsewhere.

And it is not like just because people donate for one thing, they will donate for another. I will donate to get NA teams to i46, but I would not donate if my funds were simply going to be put into a prize pool.

even if there were a major tournament, the money would go to the top 24 players anyways

Freakin wrote:

infinite- wrote:

While I admire the effort and loyalty of the TF2 community, I gotta ask.. is this the best use of funds? Between the ESEA LAN and i46 there is almost $35K being asked to send the same 24ish players across the country and world to play TF2. Is this the best use of funds? What if this money were put to a huge community based North American TF2 Tournament? Maybe European teams would consider sending THEIR teams to NA to compete because thats some serious prize money. I don't mean to put down the efforts of eXtv and the community because it is quite admirable, but I question the sustainability and overall impact this will have on helping TF2 comp grow/expand.

Where the hell did you get $35k from? By my best guess, If 20k is indeed raised for i46, the total donated will be around $25k.

ESEA LAN is essential to competitive TF2's success, it is when all of the streams get the most viewers. Those funds cannot be put elsewhere.

And it is not like just because people donate for one thing, they will donate for another. I will donate to get NA teams to i46, but I would not donate if my funds were simply going to be put into a prize pool.

You can't really say that the reason it gets the most stream viewers is because it's a LAN, you could just as easily guess that it gets the most views because it's invite playoffs. There is no way to prove either, so it's not a very good argument.

I got 35K from 20K for i46 and around 10-15K for ESEA Lan. All I am saying is it's a lot of dough that might have a better impact on growing the community as prize money than plane tickets for 12-24 people. I truly wish this event the best success possible but I think it is important to question the overall impact and sustainability of this endeavor when individual community members are being asked to help foot the bill.

infinite- wrote:

I got 35K from 20K for i46 and around 10-15K for ESEA Lan. All I am saying is it's a lot of dough that might have a better impact on growing the community as prize money than plane tickets for 12-24 people.

Fzero wrote:

Freakin wrote:

infinite- wrote:

While I admire the effort and loyalty of the TF2 community, I gotta ask.. is this the best use of funds? Between the ESEA LAN and i46 there is almost $35K being asked to send the same 24ish players across the country and world to play TF2. Is this the best use of funds? What if this money were put to a huge community based North American TF2 Tournament? Maybe European teams would consider sending THEIR teams to NA to compete because thats some serious prize money. I don't mean to put down the efforts of eXtv and the community because it is quite admirable, but I question the sustainability and overall impact this will have on helping TF2 comp grow/expand.

Where the hell did you get $35k from? By my best guess, If 20k is indeed raised for i46, the total donated will be around $25k.

ESEA LAN is essential to competitive TF2's success, it is when all of the streams get the most viewers. Those funds cannot be put elsewhere.

And it is not like just because people donate for one thing, they will donate for another. I will donate to get NA teams to i46, but I would not donate if my funds were simply going to be put into a prize pool.

You can't really say that the reason it gets the most stream viewers is because it's a LAN, you could just as easily guess that it gets the most views because it's invite playoffs. There is no way to prove either, so it's not a very good argument.

That wasn;t really my argument.

Scratch that line, then. I donated to see the top teams compete at LAN. I would've kept my money if it was just going to some prize pool.

You can't just say well if x money is donated for this, then x money would necessarily be donated for something different. It doesn't work like that.

Not to mention it wouldn't be easy to organize an american LAN with a greater TF2 attendance than i46. Travel expenses on average would be higher, meaning it's likely that less people would show up.

"where the hell do you keep getting the idea that people have donated 10-15k for esea lan?"

So how much is it? From what I can tell there are 3-4 teams actively seeking contributions. That's 24 plane tickets and expenses.

infinite- wrote:

"where the hell do you keep getting the idea that people have donated 10-15k for esea lan?"

So how much is it? From what I can tell there are 3-4 teams actively seeking contributions. That's 24 plane tickets and expenses.

When I add up all the chip in's and the counter on commft, I get $4924.94. Much less than 15k.

infinite- wrote:

"where the hell do you keep getting the idea that people have donated 10-15k for esea lan?"

So how much is it? From what I can tell there are 3-4 teams actively seeking contributions. That's 24 plane tickets and expenses.

Its our money kid. If we wanna fly people across the planet to play TF2 we'll fucking do it.

infinite- wrote:

I read that there were 4 teams looking for contributions and the chip in for srly bro was 2,500$. So, I figured the same for the other 3 teams brings you to 10K. 7,10,15K it really doesnt matter. The point of my post wasnt the exact dollar amount it was that thousands of dollars are being spent to fly people around to play TF2 and maybe that money would go further in another form.

infinite- wrote:

"Its our money kid. If we wanna fly people across the planet to play TF2 we'll fucking do it."

Yep, and that's cool beans. How long you think thats going to last tho?

This isn't intended to "last." In fact, i46 is a pretty big inflection point for competitive TF2. This one-time community effort to send 2 teams will either be a huge publicity success with lots of new people tuning in to see just what all the fuss is about, or it'll just end up being another tournament with nothing to show. If it's the latter, you can bet this kind of fundraiser won't happen again.

So eXtv will be promoting the tournament and the players as much as possible, and the players will be expected to put a lot of face time on camera. We're going to need all of your help as well when the tournament comes around to send the viewership numbers sky-high. Finding ways to answer new viewers' questions about competitive TF2 in a positive, encouraging format would be huge if you can do it during the streams and on the VODs.

My view? If the viewer numbers are high enough for this LAN, we can do it again next summer with SPONSOR money. We want to show sponsors with i46, "Look. Here is how many people tuned in to see competitive TF2. Here's how many people you could have your name, website, whatever promoted to if you sponsor a team to go. Not just live viewership, but the documentary and supporting materials too." So, for all the trepidation I'm seeing in this thread, let's make sure that when the time comes everyone pulls together to help make this a huge success.

Thanks for the post Sal. I appreciate your view and do hope that TF2 starts to receive some overdue sponsorship. Maybe I am wrong and this will be a catalyst for growth. Regardless of my views on sustainability/impact, I will do everything I can to help promote the event to UGC players. Make sure you send me a link to content when it's available.

I can spend $50 going bowling on saturday and drinking some beers at the bar with my friends. Or I can spend $50 doing my part sending someone like Platinum to LAN. Then watching the casts/stvs and drinking beers at home chatting with my steam friends. Either way I have fun. It's not often I can watch the LAN scenario play out but I can go drinking and bowling whenever. So I'll chip in and enjoy LAN. Hopefully it will be a big success, either way I admire eXtv for the effort they are putting in, damn shame valve can't step up and assist.

Yes, that is what this is all about. Competitive TF2 can't survive forever on community money alone. Right now is a critical point in it's lifespan. Last LAN was epic. This LAN has the potential to be even better. If a hugely successful ESEA LAN is followed up by a massive event like i46 with the best teams from Europe and NA competing on LAN, competitive TF2 may finally get some much needed attention. If not, we can know we tried our best and then look at what can be done to make competitive TF2 last as long as possible.

I'm going to try and get some money to donate.

Logic wrote:

I'm going to try and get some money to donate.

If you can't afford a couple bucks just share the link with your friends. Even with people who don't know about TF2. Show them a frag video or two and maybe a top 10 or something. If you show this to 10 people and 1 of them donates but 5 of them start playing and get interested in the game you've done more than you can imagine.

Anyone want to put together a little package of

pfffdchchchh "little package"

anyway a package of MoG's / top 10s or whatever to show people along with the donation link like Duder suggested?

I know Luke still has the raws from the last 2 or 3 Top 10's... I'm pretty sure he has a bunch of MoG's and GoM's laying around too... if we poke him hard enough we could get him to put together a "why TF2 is awesome" type video... minute long, epic kills... sweet music... and then just drop a video of Jeff or you explaining why it's so important to the thousands of comp TF2 players to get the word out about the game and raise the money to bring in the sponsors and keep the game going.

eXtine and I did film a couple of vids about just that while I was up in Portland, so hopefully those are produced and ready soon.

duder wrote:

Logic wrote:

I'm going to try and get some money to donate.

If you can't afford a couple bucks just share the link with your friends. Even with people who don't know about TF2. Show them a frag video or two and maybe a top 10 or something. If you show this to 10 people and 1 of them donates but 5 of them start playing and get interested in the game you've done more than you can imagine.