By Stephen "Vitrolic" White

This column is the sole opinion of the author and does not represent the opinion of Bravado Gaming or the opinion of any affiliates.






As most of you will have begun to realise, it's getting to be that "rAge time of year". The Mecca of South African gaming (both casual and competitive) is just over 2 months away and will hopefully be even better than last year in a competitive sense. After months of cu@lan taunts it will finally become clear which teams can back up online performances with equal or stronger LAN performances when the pressure is on. And while the folks over at Do Gaming haven't announced anything in concrete yet, they have made several references to the upcoming 'Telkom Do Gaming Championships', which most likely means that they will be hosting the competitive gaming tournaments at rAge 2010, just like they did in 2009.

For most of the competitive gamers in this country, this means a final realisation of all the time they have put in online over the year in the Do Gaming online league. I say this because quite frankly rAge is the only LAN that most online teams seem willing to make the effort to attend. The best example of this is Call of Duty 4, which last year saw no monthly LAN with more than about 15 participants at best and then more than doubled this number to have 36 competitive teams at rAge 2009.

I would go as far as to say that the rAge/Telkom Do Gaming Championship is the only major competitive LAN event in our calendar - and it is for that reason that it's crucial that organisers get things as right as possible. Before I go any further I'd just like to remind you that I am not trying to say that I know what's best, merely highlighting what I think would be best. I'm also going to do my best to properly motivate what I'm suggesting. On top of that, I also fully understand that there may be extenuating circumstances not allowing the organisers to cater for some of the things I am going to mention.

Format

The competitive format is surprisingly an issue which nearly everyone (in the CoD community at least) seems to agree on. In 2008 the tournament used groups followed by a best-of-one, single-elimination format. Afterwards there were some complaints by teams who were knocked out early and the organisers ended up changing the format in the following year. In 2009 the organisers set up a group system followed by a double-elimination, best-of-one format. This is what the majority of players wanted and I think it's fair to say that that tournament ran without any complaints or problems.

This year, I'd like to see group stages followed by a single-elimination, best-of-three (se-bo3) format.

The first and most obvious reason is that this format has become the steady international standard for the majority of CoD4 LAN's in Europe, with Europe having the most active scene in the World at the moment. Before you tell me "local is lekker" and "we can do things our own way", the European scene is extensibly larger and more experienced than ours - it really just makes sense to just follow their lead.

The second reason is that the se-bo3 format allows for better finals when compared to double-elimination because double-elimination nearly always stacks the final. This happens because the team who wins the winner's bracket match sits in the Grand Final only having to win one map, while the team coming up from the Loser's bracket has to win twice. This obviously means that the team coming up from the winner's bracket has a massive advantage and will most likely go on to win the tournament. The problem with this is that you are likely going to end up having a relatively boring final, unless the team coming up from the loser's bracket does the unlikely and wins the first map. My mind draws specifically to the rAge 2009 final, where we (Brazen) had a big advantage over BFB in the first map because we knew we had a map in hand.

The great thing about se-bo3 is that it guarantees an exciting final. Here's an illustrated example of how it would work:

Team A chooses their map (mp_strike, let's say they win)
Team B chooses their map (mp_crash, let's say they win)
Knife round, winning team chooses to eliminate first (out of mp_citystreets, mp_backlot, mp_crossfire) and pick sides or to eliminate last. After each team's elimination the remaining map is the decider.

The third reason is that single-elimination is probably a lot kinder on the schedule and hence the organisers than double-elimination. And yes, this is incredibly important, especially to rAge. Last year the admins openly said that time was a problem and it was a real mission to try fit in double-elimination (they had to be very strict on round times). I've also run my own tournaments and assisted with many others and I know for a fact that double-elimination hemorrhages time due to the loser's bracket taking forever to play out. The team who wins the WB final is also stuck for like 5 hours without any game, which could be an advantage/disadvantage depending on how you look at it.

So in conclusion, I really think that group stages followed by a single-elimination, best-of-three maps playoff stage is the best possible format for the Telkom Do Gaming Call of Duty 4 LAN Championships. It gives all teams a "second bite at the apple" (they can come back from a map loss) while still giving an interesting final where both contestants are on an equal footing.

I'd like to see whether you agree/disagree with me so please post a comment if you have an opinion.