If we were to be honest from the start, rAge is filled with a bunch of pre-pubescent mongoloids who decide to rock up in their parents cars and spend an entire weekend playing DotA of Left 4 Dead.

For those who like to take their gaming more seriously, we are encountered with the veterans who travel from all over South Africa to compete in the Do Gaming championships that are being held there.

Whether you are the former or the latter, you will undoubtedly realise that the Do Gaming championships at rAge have been cancelled due to some serious numbskullery. Do Gaming says that they were denied because it seemed to be too much admin for the NAG guys to organise the seating and the NAG guys say that Telkom contacted them like a week ago asking for space.

Be that as it may, both parties are behaving like complete children. Its going to take a couple of meetings with Computicket? Shame. There is a lot of red tape concerning Telkom because they are a corporate company? Shame. Nobody cares whose fault it actually is and nobody cares that what anyone has to say about it, all we know as the gamers is that rAge is going to be a huge disappointment this year.

Do Gaming subsequently offered a huge cash purse of which the likes we have never really seen in this country to host online championships and nobody does anything but piss and moan about the most retarded details. Sure, I can understand from a Counter-Strike Source and Call of Duty 4 point of view that they will be super worried about guys who are cheating. Maybe that wouldnt be such an issue if the games being played werent like 5 years old. Although I digress on the matter, the actuality of the situation is that there is a huge prize purse being offered this time and from the looks of things (if you look on the right hand side of the Do Gaming article) it could also involve Bad Company 2, StarCraft 2 and Heroes of Newerth.

Having said that, it looks like if we were to have the championships at rAge on LAN, there would probably be no Bad Company 2 or Heroes of Newerth largely because both games require quite a decent internet connection in order for the game to actually be played.

Hence we are left with a huge conundrum here. Do we try to organise the LAN competition before or after rAge as stated in another on of Do Gamings incessant polls or do keep things rolling in the online scene for a much larger prize purse. Given that if Do Gaming do have to organise their own event, a large chunk of that purse will disappear because it needs to be spent on venue, LAN organisation, tables, chairs and so on and so forth.

Obviously the CSS and COD4 guys will say keep it on LAN so that we can minimise the amount of cheating that could possibly go on during an online championship. The BC2, HoN and possibly even SC2 will say we should play it online so that they could have a whack at the prize purse as well. I say, lets give the online championships a try. If anything it will grow South African gaming to the likes of which we have never seen before. Five games will be competing for a huge prize purse of which the bulk will probably head towards the COD4 guys anyways because the game is by far the most popular in the country at the moment. There is also quite a large possibility that the top 5 teams in each game will be put into the money which means that even if the Bravados and Pantheons of the country are concerned that people might be hacking, there is a good chance that they will get the same, if not more money from the competition because of the larger prize purse.

Another possibility is moving the LAN to another venue which would cost significantly less to rent and then have the competition. While this is quite a decent idea it will be totally disregarding over 50% of the gaming community. Don’t call me names just yet, Im quite sure Im correct. Each BC2 has 8 players in it while each HoN team has 5 players in it. Say we have 32 BC2 teams and 16 HoN teams as well as around 30 individuals for SC2, it outweighs both COD4 and CSS. Sad but true. I think the way forward for the community is to try the online thing once. If it fails, then lets behave like true South African gamers and point fingers and blame everyone else. If it is somewhat of a success then we will have a lot of good teams walking away with a decent amount of money for their craft which can do nothing except promote South African gaming in this country.

Of course all of this is just speculation and I could be completely wrong, but that very seldom happens and while many of you may be wondering, who the fuck is this guy, well he has been in the gaming scene for well over a decade and has been, quite luckily, able to observe things from an outside point of view. So before anyone starts to rAge at me for putting forth these outside-the-box views, take a minute to think about gaming as whole instead of your specific game. That is what all these MGOs, Do Gaming and Colin Webster (lol) are all about in the end apparently.