Name: Chance Lacina
Alias: chance
Age: 23
Location: ????????????, Iowa
Current Organization: Team EG

How did you start out with competitive gaming?

I played Nintendo, Atari and Sega Genesis. I never owned a SNES but I rented one just to play Zelda on it. Which I still think may be the best Zelda to date. I saw how fun competition could be when Twisted Metal came out, and I followed that series until I got 28.8k internet with Quake 2. Then I started playing mods until I got sick of the seemingly flat gameplay in them, and switched to duel. Then when Quake 3 came out, I couldn't run it on my pc for the first year and a half it was out. But once I got one that could, I played on dialup until mid-late Quake 3 and through all these years I've never really lost interest. Due to these harsh circumstances, I think I have lost more games than anyone in the history of Quake. It's just too exciting to me to see an emerging "sport" grow. I want to see its potential met.

Do you think the game has gotten better with the patches and updates?

Quake 4 has definitely made a 180 since its release. It came out looking like a turd and SyncError, ID and everyone involved in the patching turned it into a golden trophy for dueling. It still has a long ways to go to be an amazing multiplayer FPS game, but the duel aspect is top notch. Probably the best duel game ever made =]

In your opinion, what needs to be improved in the game from here on out?

I think all of the more troublesome bugs have been fixed, and there's not much that could be improved on gameplay-wise. However, there are a ton of features that could be added.

I just read an interview with Marty Stratton it appears they're already planning on adding most of these features in Quake Zero. It's about time someone realized the importance of match-making, spectator, and broadcast features! I only hope they have full on stats systems that track EVERYTHING (kills, damage, weapon accuracies, armor pickup, health pickup) from the moment you launch the game and hit your first rail to the last mg pellet before the buzzer sounds. Not only that, but having a fully functional Q4MAX or CPMA-style system out of the box will make people stick around and keep coming back for more. Ease of patching and a bug free auto download will be something that'll keep players up to date also. Some sort of web based stats system would be awesome too.

Yeah, I'm sure they'll do a great job connecting with our eSports community in the future. In the past, I think they weren't ready to believe that its what the gamers wanted more than anything. But look at Halo, despite being a garbage game (competitively) its so easy to hop in and start competing that its bound to be fun, and as a result the games popularity has boomed across the world. The sooner you get players IN the game and defending their egos back and forth, the more addicted they're going to be. I hope game makers are starting to realize that its not the gameplay's complexity or speed or diversity that turns off new players. Starcraft for example, is hardcore as hell and look how well its pro scene is still doing and I believe its primarily to do with Battle.net and its ease of use. ID seems to be heading in the same direction as Blizzard and embracing their competitive community more and more. I'm glad this announcement has finally come because it means the improvements that need to be made will get made and the future for true FPS competitive gaming is looking a little bit brighter.

The potential here is much greater than anyone seems to remember. When Quake 3 came out, it was enormous. Unfortunately, the scene had to rely on itself to keep it going but it still lasted a looong time and is still played online and in tournaments (woot Quad Damage).