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        <h1><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b><i><a href="../../index.html">loonygames</a><br>
          <font size="1">a <a href="http://www.bluesnews.com">blue's news</a> 
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<p><a href="../2.2/mailbag/index.html">&lt;&lt; Back to Normal View</a></p>
<p>URL: <a href="../2.2/mailbag/index.html">http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.2/mailbag/</a><br>
</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>Vol. 
                2, Issue 2<br>
                November 19, 1999<br>
                </b><br>
              <br>
              
                <b><i>The 
                  MailBag </i></b></p>
                <b><i> 

                  Issue 2.2</i></b></p>
                Comments 
                  by Stephanie &quot;Bobbi&quot; 
                  Bergman</p>
              
              <p>
                

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              <p>
              <p>
              <b><i>Sometimes 
                people just confuse me...</i></b></p>
              
                 
                   
                    <b>Subject: 
                      </b>Your back</p>
                    Thank 
                      God........your back, Wish I could take that long of a vacation! 
                      But you've earned it. When the hell is Stead, god of low 
                      ploy modeling, coming back with some new rants and tutorials? 
                      I know He is busy with Q3 but come on...give me something 
                      new! Excellent job Loony boys, no more vaca's alright!<br>
                      <br>
                      Sincerely, StinkyGreedBud</p>
                    <i>Paul 
                      Steed and his column will return as soon as <b>Quake III: 
                      Arena</b> ships. Hopefully that will be sooner, rather than 
                      later. And hey..we&#146;re not all loony BOY&#146;s, ya 
                      know. </i></p>
                    
                
              
              <br>
              
                 
                   
                    <b>From:</b> 
                      MKulikov<br>
                      <b>Subject:</b> deerhunter2 </p>
                    Read 
                      your comments on deerhunter. I would agree with your comment 
                      on how the game tends to run slowly on even the biggest 
                      P.C. out there. The trick to the game is that you really 
                      have to think like a deer hunter. For the first few days, 
                      I too seemed to wonder about for hours without seeing anything.Then 
                      you start learning the &quot;accessories&quot; (tools of 
                      the hunt) and start baggin the bucks. I do have a question 
                      for you. We are searching for a game that is somewhat of 
                      a kickoff of the deerhunter. In this game, the deer shoot 
                      back. Have you heard of this game and it's title. If so, 
                      please drop me a quick line. Thanks.</p>
                    <i>I 
                      think the game you&#146;re talking about is called &#147;Natural 
                      Fawn Killers&#148; and the demo came out a couple of months 
                      ago. All joking aside, it actually is kind of fun, if you&#146;re 
                      not easily offended and you like tasteless humor. In this, 
                      you play the deer, and shoot the hunters. Check it out at 
                      http://www.fiendishgames.com/new/nfk_home.htm 
                      . <b>Deer Hunter</b> itself is rather boring. At least this 
                      one has a fun twist to it.</i></p>
                    <br>
                      </p>
                    
                
              
              <b><i>Online gaming (two letters 
                from the same guy!)</i></b></p>
              
                 
                   
                    <b>From:</b> 
                      Red Barchetta<br>
                      <b>Subject: </b>About 
                      your pro gaming article </p>
                     Dear 
                      Bobbi, </p>
                    <p>One big thing 
                      I noticed you might not be aware of is The CLQ, (Champions 
                      League for Quake).</p>
                    <p>http://www.theclq.com</p>
                    <p>No more logging 
                      into a server and not worrying about being ranked. If the 
                      server you're playing on is sending a heartbeat, then chances 
                      are you are being logged, recorded, and sent to CLQ HQ to 
                      be added their simply gigantic database. Just take a look 
                      around and you will see how the days of anon gaming are 
                      over 8( Here are some links to your records. Remember these 
                      are for anyone using the same name you might use so the 
                      records might be flawed.</p>
                    <p>Bobbi <br>
                      http://www.theclq.com/asp/find.asp?pid=137707</p>
                    <p>PMS-Bobbi<br>
                      http://www.theclq.com/asp/find.asp?name=PMS-Bobbi</p>
                    <p>Clan PMS team 
                      stats<br>
                      http://www.theclq.com/asp/clan.asp?id=1625</p>
                    <p>Enjoy! 8)<br>
                      Red 
                      Barchetta </p>
                    <p>a.k.a. Redd B.{C-M}</p>
                    <p><i>I know the 
                      CLQ well, and left it out of the article for a pretty good 
                      reason...I believe using the CLQ as an accurate depiction 
                      of ranking players is a huge mistake. Just take my record 
                      as an example (which you so kindly provided links for). 
                      Now, as &#147;Bobbi&#148; it lists me playing TFC and <b>Quake 
                      III</b>, which I do, but also Lithium, Jailbreak, and Action 
                      <b>Quake II</b>, which I have never played. So there&#146;s 
                      another Bobbi out there, so that&#146;s not accurate. Then 
                      look at PMS-Bobbi. According to that, the last time I played<b> 
                      Quake III</b> was in July. I play <b>Quake III</b>, if not 
                      nightly, then pretty damn near it. The reason I&#146;m not 
                      showing up on the CLQ&#146;s rankings is because I probably 
                      don&#146;t play on servers they track. </i></p>
                    <p></p>
                    <p><i>In other words...the 
                      only people with really good rankings in the CLQ are those 
                      who make sure they always play on CLQ servers. While the 
                      CLQ is a great idea, in practice, it just doesn&#146;t work, 
                      there are just too many servers out there for it to track 
                      them all.</i></p>
                  
                
              
              <br>
              
                 
                   
                    <b>From:</b> 
                      scoll<br>
                      <b>Subject:</b> printing articles </p>
                    Dear 
                      Bobbi, </p>
                    <p>After pasting 
                      the URL for your article about &quot;Pro Gamers&quot; to 
                      some buddies in IRC last night, we got into a huge discussion/arguement 
                      about just what exactly in our gnere of Quake FPS type games 
                      defines a &quot;Pro Gamer&quot;. After playing just about 
                      every Quake type game and mod that has come out since Doom, 
                      I have come to the realization that one particular type 
                      of mod is the culmination of skill, Rocket Arena. I've been 
                      playing RA and RA2 for about 3 years now, and the very best 
                      aimers Ive found by far play it. Now here is where the arguement 
                      started, everyone started spamming &quot;Thresh this, Thresh 
                      that&quot;, and it turned pretty ugly at that point. But 
                      after I explained why I thought DM was losing supprt, people 
                      started listening, and I had to give my RA speech, heh.</p>
                    <p>Rocket Arena 
                      takes more than camping the armor or weapons to win. No 
                      more getting to respawn after dying to find a RL and try 
                      to make a comeback. Ir RA if you die it's all over until 
                      next round. And this very statement is what has brought 
                      me back time and again, RA is kinda like Mad Max. 2 people 
                      enter, 1 leaves. So the only thing seperating you from death 
                      is how quickly you can take down your opponent, and not 
                      die in the process without worrying about being stuck with 
                      a crappy pea-shooter and no armor while the other guy is 
                      fully loaded. 8)</p>
                    <p>Now I know this 
                      kinda makes me crt's &quot;Fan Boy&quot;, but I think its 
                      alot more than that, his vision of what brings out the best 
                      in a Quaker is something I hope is around for a long time.</p>
                    <p>My question to 
                      you is this. I know your clan, PMS, is active in the RA 
                      scene, and would like to know what you think of the idea 
                      of having tournaments for $$$ in the future that will use 
                      it as the official game/mod. I talked to Angel Munoz about 
                      this at the Frag3, and he kinda hinted that they will be 
                      doing something about a RA3 tourney in the future, but he 
                      could not say anything until they have everything finalized. 
                      Deathmatch games just seem to be so old and outdated, maybe 
                      sometime soon we will think of aim and moving/dodging skills 
                      as a true indication of who is truly a great player, instead 
                      of denying someone a decent weapon for 15 minutes. Who knows? 
                      One day we might find the RA concept the norm, instead of 
                      the obscure.</p>
                    <p>Redd B.{C-M} 
                      </p>
                    <p>Clan Marauders</p>
                    <p><i>Aah, Rocket 
                      Arena. So many of my clanmates are so heavily addicted to 
                      RA2, I think they need a support group. :) But you bring 
                      up a good point, and one I&#146;m not sure about. On one 
                      hand, RA is very much about raw skill. Can you kill the 
                      other guy before they kill you. But there are strategic 
                      elements to a full 20 minute DM match on a full level that 
                      RA doesn&#146;t offer, such as audio clues on where your 
                      opponent is, pacing yourself, timing weapons/item respawns, 
                      etc. They both test different types of skill. Which one 
                      is &#147;Professional&#148; is the big question, I suppose. 
                       </i> </p>
                  
                
              
              <b><i>Remember the community 
                summit? </i></b></p>
              
                 
                   
                    <b>From:</b> 
                      Josh Forman<br>
                      <b>Subject: </b>Roundtable</p>
                     Hey, 
                      looni (or whoever's reading this). I read that long-ass 
                      roundtable article and thought I'd throw a few of my thoughts 
                      about it at you. First of all, there definitely is elitism 
                      in the gaming community. But I think the key point hinges 
                      on whether joost is right or not. Joost kept saying that 
                      big sites just can't post crap, and they _ought_ to focus 
                      more on the guys who have proven through time and experience 
                      that they can output content.</p>
                     
                      So the question isn't whether the community is elitist, 
                      it is. The question is whether that elitism is appropriate. 
                      But there's definitely a line that needs to be drawn between 
                      extremes. If a webmaster chooses to focus ONLY on the big 
                      sites, then theoretically it's nearly impossible for a new 
                      site to get out there (the exception being BitchX). But 
                      BitchX provided original content. What about the sites that 
                      produce content that's similar to the big news pages (the 
                      50 bazillion out there as there are)? I have a case-in-point 
                      here: </p>
                    I 
                      started working for Gamer's Alliance waaaaay long ago (Im 
                      out of the whole field now), and I watched the site grow 
                      from jack shit to a moderate sized page/hoster. This is 
                      a perfect example, though, of how a similar-content type 
                      of site actually did work it's way up the asshole of the 
                      industry and was able to get a small audience on its own. 
                      Now, the site has gown downhill since then (mostly because 
                      we employees who held up the site never saw a dime...a true 
                      shame, I love being involved), but the reasons for that 
                      I think are totally self-inflicted. </p>
                    So 
                      that proves right there that we haven't reached the "critical 
                      mass" as joost put it of the online gaming industry. There's 
                      definitely still room for growth, since the online gaming 
                      industry is growing at a tremendous pace (actually, I have 
                      a prediction that it's going to explode in the somewhat 
                      near future), so there's still room for new pages. The reason 
                      not too many new pages haven't surfaced has more to do with 
                      the fact that most suck than anything else, in my honest 
                      opinion.</p>
                     
                      And then there's the opposite extreme of a site posting 
                      anything from anybody based solely on merit. There are logistic 
                      problems with this, though, since webmasters simply do not 
                      have the time to follow every link in their mailbag, especially 
                      with the few extremely large sites. But I do have counter-examples 
                      to the one above. I remember going to the QuakeCon-turned-CPL-event 
                      thing where Carmack spoke. Now, I was there with Gamer's 
                      Alliance, and I worked my ass off so hard-core that Tim 
                      Schuh at one point was like "dude, you need to like sleep 
                      or eat or something, you're shaking." We didn't even produce 
                      that much content from the weekend, but it was a fair bit 
                      for just one guy. </p>
                    What 
                      I remember from that weekend though was that when I listened 
                      to Carmack's speech I took down very copious notes and put 
                      out a really really detailed account of what he said. Way 
                      longer than any other site's account that I found (cept 
                      for Avault that had it in .mp3 format). Now, Blue linked 
                      to me, but small sites didn't, they all linked to Blue. 
                      This is an effect I'm not sure that people talked about 
                      in the roundtable, that elitism isn't so much forced onto 
                      the community by the large sites, but emulated by small 
                      sites who want to think they're cool, they want to look 
                      like they hang with the big boys so they post stuff "from 
                      the man."</p>
                     
                      But whatever, this gave me an opportunity to bitch, which 
                      is why I wrote. It's been a while since I did anything related 
                      to gaming (went from GA to Avault, but they were hard as 
                      fuck over there, so that only lasted two months). I miss 
                      the whole thing a ton, but I have a little bit of an inside/outside 
                      perspective after all of this. First of all, it's nearly 
                      impossible to do shit unless you have a LOT of time, money, 
                      and patience. </p>
                    Second, 
                      I think elitism is perpetuated just as much, if not more, 
                      by the little guys as the big guys. Third...I dunno. There's 
                      a lot of bullshit out there (like this letter, for instance) 
                      that wants to get published (well, I dont give a shit about 
                      that any more). I personally think the big sites do a fine 
                      job of covering it. Except for Red, which is why I stopped 
                      reading him ages ago, but whatever, maybe he changed. </p>
                    And 
                      going to a news site regularly is a lot to ask of a person, 
                      if you think about the average laziness of an American. 
                      Whatever, that's my monthly bullshit, you had the luck of 
                      it coming to your mailbox.</p>
                     
                      Thanks :-)<br>
                      Josh Forman 
                      </p>
                    <i>Thanks 
                      Josh, you bring up some good points. I should say as well 
                      that we will be doing another Community Summit this year, 
                      I’m just struggling a little with the format. See, I want 
                      to keep it irc-style as I did last year, but the most common 
                      criticism I got about the summit was that nobody who didn’t 
                      have a website was invited, no ‘Joe Schmoe’ gamers. So I 
                      want Joe Schmoe there this year. But how do I figure out 
                      which Joe to invite, and how many, etc. Any ideas, e-mail 
                      me. </i> 
                    </p>
                    
                
              
              <i>- 
                Stephanie &quot;Bobbi&quot; Bergman needs to come up with better 
                taglines.</i></p>
              <br><p>&nbsp;</p> 
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Print CGI is 
  &copy; 2000 <a href="http://www.square8.com">Square Eight</a>. Used with permission. 
  Article is &copy; 2000 its original author. All other content is &copy; 2000 
  loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. You got that??</font></i></p>
 