Throughout the past ten years of eSports, the UK has been represented in almost every major competition on the planet. Sadly in recent times the lack of iconic competitors, major international success and downturn in enthusiasm for the ‘pro-scene’ has seen the community fragment. Now, piloted by a relatively new breed of dueling talent, the eSports spotlight may once again flicker upon a country as apt in its production of business figures as it is in its underperformance at events.

From the 14th – 16th January Sujoy Roy, through ESReality, hosted a 16-player UK-only Quake 4 invite tournament. It was a tournament which received little publicity here, partly due to its exclusivity and lack of ‘star’ players. Whilst perhaps not capturing international interest, the tournament commemorated the revival of the UK back to the forefront of the eSports scene.

The top eight at this Winter’s CPL Quake 4 tournament revealed two surprises, (three if you include fooki), the appearance of two UK names in 7th and 8th spots, TooGoood and Deus. This is not a mere anomaly or some freak draw that allowed these two to slip through the cracks. This is the outcome of a new rise in the UK gaming scene that began six months ago with the release of Quake 4. Yet why is the UK gaming scene now starting to frag back with a vengeance and why was it so silent for so long in the first place?

The Rise and Fall

In an eSports context the United Kingdom is a dichotomy of two key attributes. The first being the UK’s success in acquiring top level sponsorships for tournaments, teams and competitors and the second being the country’s total inability to convert that financing into international tournament success.

Looking back over the past decade too few UK names come to mind when remembering major tournament finals. That is not to say that the country has never featured in major international events, there have been phases when the future looked quite bright. It was less than seven years ago when things looked promising for the nation. In 1999 Hakeem piped the likes of Fatal1ty, Wombat and Xenon to take first at the CPL’s FRAG 3, a few months later Sujoy placed 3rd at CPL’s Ground Zero (the only Euro player to finish in the top 16). Since then it has been dismal. TillerMan achieved some success in Starcraft and Warcraft; Shaggy took a beating at the hands of GitzZz in the Unreal Tournament finals at the 2002 World Cyber Games. Four-Kings peaked with a 2nd placing a year ago at the World eSports Games.

So what became of these names? Usually retirement. The top names finish their education then find themselves unable to avoid joining the worldly rat race. Four-Kings are still around and probably always will be. As one of the oldest CS teams in existence its unlikely they will do anything else besides traveling the world on Intel’s tab, changing players, water balloon competitors rooms and occasionally, play CS until there are no more CS tournaments. Even then there is the distinct the possibility of CS 2 or its non-source equivalent. What about the first two media capitalizing pro-players of 1999, Hakeem and Sujoy? Hakeem now dedicates his time towards the GGL and Sujoy (despite recently coming out of retirement for Quake 4) runs his own internet café/website along with other internet/gaming related activities.

For a while the UK had an admirable, if not feared, dueling scene. In Quake and Unreal Tournament the likes of Stevo, Sujoy, Hakeem, Blokey, Timber, Dreg, Sid and Luke achieved considerable success and tournament placing despite a lack of any major international glory.