The impact of a single Quake

Most people who have played a video game in their life have experience some sort of competitive element whether it was beating a previous high score in Tetris, reaching the finish line first in Grand Turismo or fragging your neighbor in GoldenEye. Two years after Rare's blockbuster N64 hit, id Software, the company behind Doom, released arguably the most well known, popular and influential First Person Shooter ever, Quake III Arena. [1] Id Software's third installment of the Quake series would not only be a successful game in its own right, but also change the way we viewed competitive gaming forever.

Quake 3 obviously wasn't the first big FPS to hit the market, but what made it so successful was technology and design of the game. The first major component of the game was its engine, technically termed id Tech 3, however, since Quake 3's success it has gone on to be known simply as the Quake 3 Engine. Id Tech 3 was not only a significant technological improvement over it's competitor, the Unreal Engine (used in the Unreal Tournament games) [2], it was also more customizable. The game allowed players' to modify or create 'mods' for the game, thus permitting players to personalize their game experience.

Id eventually began licensing the id tech 3 engine to other game developers for a hefty $10,000 starting price tag. From this licensing games such as Lucas Arts' Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Infinity Ward's critically acclaimed 2003 game of the year Call of Duty, and much more. [3] [4] In 2005, John Carmack, co-founder of id and lead programmer of the Quake series, made the shocking announcement that id would be releasing id tech 3's source code under the General Public License, allowing anyone to download the engine, create a game, and profit from their creation. [5] From this release, id tech 3 has become almost the universal standard of game engines and an invaluable tool for students looking to enter the game development market. (See Beginning Direct3D Game Programming byWolfgang F. Engel, Amir Geva, and Andre LaMothe)

Quake 3's actual gameplay was was fairly simplistic, featuring your standard single player story mode and four distinct game modes, deathmatch (FFA or DM), team deathmatch (TDM), tournament (1v1), and capture the flag (CTF). In deathmatch or free for all mode, the player's objective was simple, shoot everything that moves and try not to die. In team deathmatch, the player could team up with other players or AI, known as bots, to take on other players or bots on an opposing team. Tournament mode, featured a single player against another or a player against a bot. Whichever player or bot had the most points by the end of the time period won. The classic capture the flag mode pitted two teams against each other in an effort to steal the opposing team's flag from their base and return it to their own base without getting fragged.

Another major component of the game's success was the fact id designed it specifically for it's multiplayer experience, most notably online. Players were able to connect over the Internet and play against each other in real time over what we know today as a standard client-server architecture. A client-server architecture allows the players the choose which server they want to play in by name, ping (location), game mode or even modification This focus on multiplayer gave life to large online community of gamers and moders to share their thoughts, showcase skill or simply get to know the guy they were fragging in the server. [6] [7]

From these simple online communities came the birth of perhaps Quake 3's greatest achievement, the professional gaming or electronic sports (eSports) scene. In 1997 Angel Munoz founded the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) in the hopes of offering prizes to the best gamers that attended his events. For two years the there was no standard game of competition nor any kind of recurring championship to test skills year after year. With the support id, the CPL transformed the competitive gaming landscape around Quake 3, making it the standard game of competition and setting the benchmark for gamers who wanted to compete in their events.

Due to the design of the game, Quake 3's mods allowed a single unified ruleset or game settings to be used in competition and its online communities soon became hubs where players could organize practice games against one another and eventually begin to rank which player was the best. The true title of the best, however, was earned live in person at the CPL's events which connected a plethora of computers on a LAN network and organized a tournament structure with all those attending in hopes of crowing a champion. [8]

In 2000, Counter-Strike, a mod of Valve's Half Life, became the official game of choice for team based competitions while Quake 3 remained the traditional 1v1 platform. With two options for gamers, the eSports market exploded exponentially. Other companies besides the CPL emerged to offer large prize video gaming tournaments across the world including the World Cyber Games (WCG) [9], Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC) [10], World e-Sports Games (WEG), Major League Gaming (MLG) [11], World Series of Video Games (WSVG), and the most recent Championship Gaming Series (CGS) [12].

Backed by investors and sponsors each event pitched itself to gamers as the ultimate competitive gaming experience and the true test of champions. Sponsors of these events mainly included computer or technology corporations such as WCG's main backer Samsung and ESWC's title partner nVidia. As the scene grew the community online did as well as the CPL soon launched the Cyberathlete Amateur League (CAL) [13], a strictly online competitive league. Again, other corporations followed this pursuit with other online leagues such as the Electronic Sports League (ESL) [14], ClanBase (CB) [15], CyberEvolution (CEVO) [16], and the Total Gaming League (TGL) [17]. Each league offered its own distinct competition from free to a play to play structure and even prizes awarded to winners at the end of the season.

With the competitions on the rise, the small forum based communities were getting crowded and thus gave way for the eSports media scene. Online companies such as GotFrag [18], Amped eSports, Gameriot [19], ESReality [20], Cadred [21], Team Sportscast Network, Gamefire [22], QuadV [23], Pwnage TV [24], and more, dedicated themselves to bringing gamers the latest news, features, interviews and more with the best gamers in the world competing in these events. As the scene grew so did the media and eventually professional gamer's weren't the only ones making money as media personnel also began cashing in on the market.

Today, the eSports market is larger than ever and despite Quake 3's release almost 10 years ago it still remains the most popular competitive 1v1 professional gaming platform used in tournaments to date. Since its release there has yet to be a more influential game in not only the eSports market (with maybe the exception of Counter-Strike) but also arguably the entire FPS genre. [25]

**Authors Note**
I have spent the past 5 years working in the eSports media scene for various companies as well as filling various other roles within the market including writer, editor, senior editor, tournament organizer and internet broadcaster. The companies were listed above to merely show the economic growth of the eSports market which Quake 3 attributed to and I can easily explain in depth each companies' growth and development across the years. Those companies not linked have gone out of business.