What You Want, What You Need

This will be the last PTC-related post I make. I'm not very happy about how GCW was treated recently, and I'm a bit bitter. But no matter how hard I try, I can't hate PTC. It was my home for a very long time, and I still have a lot of friends there.

I continue to lurk around the forums, mostly because I need to know what's going on with my members. But I'm encouraged to see that people are starting to get more interested in sparking new activity in the community. The trouble is, a lot of the ideas are a bit too idealistic. I think it's great that people are starting to work for something new (finally!), but the key to success is separating what you want from what you actually need. I've seen far too many projects fall apart in this game because people have tried too much too early, skipped the basic steps, and faltered for lack of foundation.

There's talk of a new PWA-style academy, there's talk of other ways to make PTC a bigger hub of interfed activity. Those are all good ideas, but people are still forgetting about the initial steps you have to take to make such things possible. Perhaps some day soon some of these things can be implemented, but if you really want PTC to work, you've got to start at the beginning. That starts with realizing that none of this is going to work if the feds continue to know nothing about one another. Fix that first.

Since most of PTC seems to have vilified me without even knowing why, I doubt many people will read this or be interested in my opinion. But for those of you who realize all I've ever done is try to help this community, I'll submit for your consideration my blueprint for fixing PTC.

1. Build a Website!
-This is the crucial first step. It's not sexy, it's not exciting, it's not new. But how can an interfed function without a website? As of now, the only place you can get fed news is through a poorly spotlighted sub-forum via RSS feeds. The news should be featured, should be one of the most important parts of PTC. And that goes hand in hand with the feds posting more of it.

The first step is getting everyone familiar with one another. You don't need an encyclopedic knowledge of each fed's angles and history, but you need to know who their wrestlers are and what they're all about.

Back when PTC was at its best, it was great because it had so many recognizable brand names and characters. OSW, FSW, PCW, PWC, NTICW, RUSH, PURE, and on and on and on. Those were top-tier feds filled with recognizable names. Boda, Meanstreak, Ivan Stanislav, the White Mexican, Kid Wonder, High Flyer, Scott Taylor, Angelo Deville, Ming, Timo Bolamba, The End, Clyde, El Diablo, Alan Kriegman, Xavier Kannon, those are all just names I can come up with off the top of my head without even thinking about it. And it's not just names I remember, it's gimmicks. I never even worked with most of those guys, but I knew them because you couldn't help but know them. If you spent time in PTC, you knew those guys.

But that's because the feds promoted them. They were identifiable as gimmicks and as members of specific feds. Nowadays people know the PTC feds just fine, but there are times when a good portion of the community doesn't even know who's running them. And sure, I could name most of the important characters in the community, but I couldn't give you a good read on the gimmicks or what they've accomplished in their feds. I just don't know. And if I wanted to know, I'd have to go to the fed's website and dig. The information just isn't out there.

Building a website is a big step, but all that does is give you a place to hype the characters and feds of PTC. The website should be a place where anyone can post news and opinion, but its success will hinge on step two:

2. Promote, Promote, Promote
-There's so much energy being dedicated to PTC right now, but it's not carrying the community very far because it's not focused in the right direction. Rather than trying to help PTC, help your own fed first. I wrote an entire post about this a few weeks ago; what PTC needs more than tournaments, more than titles, more than interfed matches, is strong member feds. I know people love PTC and love the interfed competition, but the community will benefit greatly in the long run from people directing their energies to their homes. PTC has become such a popular entity that it inspires just as much loyalty as its constituent feds. That's not a bad thing, but it does detract from the bottom line.

Rather than trying to throw together interfed matches and promoting the hell out of them, promote the hell out of your home fed! I didn't do a very good job of this myself during my time in PTC, so I'm certainly guilty of it as well. But recent events have made it clear that the thing PTC needs most is a sense of itself. How can you have really great interfed matches when you don't really know anything about the characters involved? It's become more about the matchup of handlers than the matchup of characters. That's actually a perk of the evolution of the game, but at the same time, it's easier to know a character than to know a handler's writing. I bet most of PTC hadn't actually read my work, but damnit, people knew Kimbusa. So whe Kimbusa was booked against Ivan Stanislav in OSW, people came rushing in to check it out. Not just because of the writing battle, but because it was a great story.

Promote your characters. Work hard in your home feds to create badass storylines and incredible matches. The more people know about the characters, the more interested they become in them. Jonathan Rhine vs. Clinton Sage should have been bigger than it was in PTC, but people were only vaguely aware of it. I know a lot of the characters in PRIME, but I couldn't even tell you what they're doing right now. People just go about their business in their home feds and their PTC activity seems to be separate. Combine the two, make PTC an extension of your work in your home fed rather than a side project.

Use the website to let people know what's going on every week. Get someone to recap your fed's show each week. Spotlight your character and let people know why they should be watching. Then, when we see Andy Murray vs. Devin Shakur, it'll mean even more. Promote, promote, promote.

3. Draw Clear Borders and Protect Them
-I think wrestlers appearing in other feds is taken too lightly. It can and should be done, but it should be a major occurrance when it happens. One of my biggest reservations about the Elite Title was having to host the matches. I can't promote the Elite Title above my home fed's belt, so if an Elite Title match were to happen in GCW, it couldn't be promoted as well as it should be. And what's more, it's clear that at least one of the competitors would be from another fed. If I can't promote that very well, then the fact that an SCCW or PRIME wreslter was in GCW wouldn't have its optimum effect.

Remember the WCW-WWF wars? That's when wrestling was at its best, and there was zero cooperation there. The feds wanted to destroy one another. Now, I'm not advocating open warfare among the feds, because the cooperation is awesome. But there's too much of it!

An interfed isn't just about handlers vs. handlers. It's about feds against feds. Hell, the fed versus fed battle is the foundation of the interfed. When two handlers go at it now it's just about the one on one battle. But add in a huge SCCW vs. PRIME rivalry and suddenly such a match takes on an extra dimension. GTT3 wasn't just the biggest tournament of all time because of the quantity of wrestlers, but because everyone wanted to represent their home fed. It's about bragging rights, it's about pride, but most of all, it's about pushing one another to do better.

Right now, when the feds all cooperate and collaborate on everything, everyone ends up settling in at more or less the same level. Everyone's working to fairly promote the Elite Title, which is good, but that necessitates an obsessive level of commitment to the concept of fairness. There need to be some aspects to the interfed where it's not about being fair, it's about getting ahead. Competition is a good thing. Trying to be the best is a good thing. The PTC fedheads apparently are communicating very well, so use that. Don't tell each other everything. Push one another to be the best. Stop sharing talent and focus on pushing your own product.

Draw your borders and protect them. Do whatever you can to make your fed tops in PTC. Just keep it clean.

4. Let Things Happen Organically
-The fourth step in PTC's evolution would be... nothing. Just sit back and let things happen. There's an understandable inclination to want to manufacture things to spark new activity in the community, but that's the wrong way to do it. This takes patience and foresight, and I know people want things to happen right now. But you need to slow down, implement the previous steps, and then let it do what it's meant to do without trying to mess with its natural progression.

Give the feds time to get to know one another, give the rivalries time to blossom, and let them simmer. Great rivalries can't be flash-fried, they have to stew. You can't simply stand up and say "Right, SCCW, PRIME and EPW all want to be tops, so they hate each other." It doesn't work that way. You actually have to let the rivalry breed on its own.

Don't force anything. Don't try to make it happen artificially. If you put the PTC feds in one place (the website) and let them promote themselves, and establish them as unique brands rather than as one big conglomerate of PTC feds, the interfed activity will spark to life on its own.

5. Now Take Action
-Once things have developed on their own, say three or four months, you can start taking action. Now your Elite Title really starts to mean something, because it's more than just a writing prize for individual handlers. It's about massive bragging rights. Now you can have your tournaments and interfed shows. But use PTC for all of this; maintain your borders.

Now that the feds know one another and are pushing one another, you can harness that energy. If you've developed the right kind of interfed, you can then take some of those more advanced steps. Here are some options:

5a. PWA
-The Primetime Wrestling Academy worked great back in the day, but there were tons of handlers wanting to get better and break into the big feds. Such a thing simply won't work today, so don't even try it.

But if PTC wanted it, it could create something that would work. Now, while I've advocated hard competition between the feds, the cooperation for the greater good can be used here. When you get an application that isn't good enough but might show promise, you could suggest that that person join the PTC Developmental fed. This fed would need its own fedhead, would be its own fed. It would have shows, RPs, segments, matches, all the same things the PTC feds have. But it would be a place to learn. It would require some help from the community to give feedback to help people grow.

Every member of this fed would be a free agent, free to sign anywhere. I know the concept of a draft is both exciting and awesome, but it won't work. Because it assumes the ultimate authority of the feds to dictate where these people handle, and that's not fair. Assume someone has spent four months working hard to improve because they really want to get into SCCW, but they get drafted by PRIME. They won't be happy, and they won't work hard for PRIME because it's not where they want to be. So you can't have a draft.

But everyone would be a free agent, free to sign with whatever fed they like whenever they like (perhaps mandate that they spend at least two months there or something). It's been suggested, then, that a problem might arise if a fed needed a lot of members and attempted to restock by hiring a ton of people out of the developmental fed. Well, that's a potential problem, but again, this is where competition comes into play. If a fed needed members that badly, odds are there are better feds in PTC. So it would be on the handler to decide if they wanted to go to a "major" fed right away, or hold out for a better offer. So make your fed a place people want to be, and you won't have to worry about a massive exodus of developmental people to some other fed.

5b. Tournaments
-Tournaments are fun. But they're far better when they have the added context of interfed rivalries. Yeah, it's a great opportunity to try out a new character, but it helps the community so much more when the tournament is populated with the wrestlers of the member feds. It's all about squeezing the hype out of these things. Archibald MacGreggor was a great storyline, but when it was over, what did it help? Ryan's the only one that benefitted, because Archie Mac never appeared in a fed. I'm not knocking Ryan, because I loved the whole thing, but at the end of the day it's wasted heat.

Granted, the heat from that situation was mostly sparked by the fact that he wasn't in a fed, but what if he'd popped up in FUSE the next week? How much would that piss off the other feds? That's the kind of thing PTC needs. Andrew did some great stuff with Iblis, but that only helped him, as Iblis never had a real run anywhere. PTC has become too handler-oriented. I'm not saying individuals shouldn't get credit for their accomplishments; there are some amazing writers in PTC and they deserve the spotlight. But the handlers need to represent something bigger than themselves in order to make PTC what you want it to be. As long as it's handler-specific, PTC will be its own fed and not an interfed.

This is what I envisioned for the Caldera Invitational Tournament. Keep it linked to the feds. Make it about fed-pride and bragging rights. Keep it kayfabe.

5c. Titles
-See above.

6. Don't Stop Being Elitist
-Some have said it's tough to break into PTC because it's a bit elitist, and it's set in its ways. That's not necessarily a bad thing. PTC is different from EWZine and F-Wrestling, and it needs to stay that way. If you try to be more like someone else, you lose your identity.

But PTC does need to be more accommodating to people who want to get involved. It's intimidating, because there are so many great writers in PTC and the community tends to put them on a very high pedestal. With the developmental fed, you'd have a place where anyone could join with hopes of getting noticed by their PTC fed of choice. How many applications do PTC feds routinely shoot down and never hear from again? Each one of those is a potential new member of the community, even if it means they join another fed.

Plus, with the promoting tools in place, it will be easier to get to know the community and get involved with it. As it is, it's pretty much impossible to know who everyone is on the forums. It's impossible to know anything about the feds unless you've been there for a while. That doesn't make newcomers very comfortable. Put the information out there, tie the website to the forums so it's easy to know who is who, and you might see a few new people start creeping in because the door will be open and a light will be on inside.

So that's my blueprint. You've got to be patient, PTC. Don't skip the first little steps. They're tough to do, because you don't see results right away and there's nothing tangible about it. But believe me, this is how it needs to be done.

And I still think PTC needs a leader to drive these things. Someone who knows how PTC worked back in its heyday and can steer it in that direction. Ross can do that for you, if he's willing. If not, someone else needs to be given the car keys. Ross doesn't think PTC needs a dictatorial leader like Ron, and he's probably right. All I'm saying is that everyone's in the same car, but nobody's driving. PTC just needs a driver who knows the right roads to take.

But I'll caution the community about this: keep your minds open. Don't rush into something just because it promises immediate results. GCW just got cast out, one of PTC's cornerstones, and nobody really seemed to notice or care. But the more you sacrifice your foundation in a search for the quick satisfaction of your immediate desires, the more you dig PTC into a hole. Ask questions, don't assume something's right just because it looks right. Think about what I've said, and hopefully you'll start to see that PTC needs to go back a few steps in order to move forward.

The Elite Championship

http://community.primetimecentral.net/showthread.php?t=40525

Craig, former head of the PTC Unified Title division, has announced the start of a new title in the community. The Elite Championship will effectively replace the Unified Title, a title that died under some unpleasant circumstances that I certainly had a role in.

For the record, I never thought Craig did a poor job with the Unified Title. I did, however, take exception with how certain aspects of the division were permitted to appear. Appearances count for a lot in this game, especially in an era where we lack truly neutral leadership. Fortunately, judging from Craig's introductory post, he's taken some of my advice to heart, and he's clearly taken input from a number of sources to create a new and improved title division. Everything I wanted to see from the division before appears to be accounted for now, so props to Craig for learning from the last division and applying that to the new one.

I've got a few gripes, though... neither about Craig's introduction, but about a few elements surrounding it.

First is... this title division doesn't seem to be all that different in spirit from the Unified Title. So why is the Unified Title dead? I guess the answer to that is that the Elite Title is not an official PTC belt, it simply exists between the feds. Well, fine, that makes sense. But with PTC still being the meeting ground of choice, will things really be all that different? My criticism here is of Ross's decision to kill the Unified Title. Again, I'm not trying to be confrontational here with regards to Ross; I'm just trying to make an honest analysis of the situation.

If I have a criticism of the PTC community, it would be the community's unflinching support of Ross. I'm certainly not trying to start some sort of revolution here; rather, I'm suggesting that any leader needs people who will challenge him to make sure his ideas are the best. Ross has earned the respect he has, and deserves it. When he makes a decision, it's good that the community falls in line and doesn't fight. But at the same time, it's completely acceptible (and downright necessary) to question your leader when you don't understand what's going on. And in this instance, I don't understand. Unfortunately, many of the responses to the death of the Unified Title thread were in support of Ross's decision. Why? Because he's Ross, and people don't question him. That's a criticism of the community, not of Ross. Ross can't help that people love him, they just do.

I did have a point... And that point is that the Elite Title feels like a bit of a rehash to me. I'm not suggesting there's anything Craig could have done differently to change things, because it was out of his hands. But the Elite Title will forever be compared to the Unified Title, as they're effectively the same thing. I just don't understand why the entire division had to reset just so that it would no longer be an "official" PTC title. There doesn't seem to be much "official" about PTC any more at all.

My other gripe comes from this notion that the Elite Championship, or any interfed title, should be considered "bigger" than the "regional" championships.

Ryan, you know I love you, but in this instance, I want to strangle you.

I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, HATE this idea, I always have and I always will. And I think this idea is symbolic of the fundamental philosophical problem with PTC right now. There's this inherent desire to make interfed competition more important, more heavily weighted, than what happens in the feds. People support the idea because, logically, winning a title that spans all the feds should naturally mean more than a title of only one fed.

But why should that be? I work extremely hard to raise the importance of the GCW World Title. It's an extremely difficult title to obtain, and we've had some great champions lately. Why should this new title, which has zero history whatsoever, mean more than the GCW World Title? Frankly, I think an interfed title is a hell of a lot easier to obtain than the GCW Title (or any other fed's title, I assume), and therefore I will always consider an interfed title to be an entirely different type of belt.

To win a fed's title you actually have to dedicate yourself to a place, you have to invest a lot of time and work with other people. These are, to me, among the biggest parts of being a successful e-fedder. When you win an interfed title, you bypass all the teamwork, all the storylines, and you win with a one-off writing contest. Sure, you usually end up with some stellar writing talent, but does that make it more prestigious? I think not. If given the choice between a Shakespeare-calbier writer that has no clue how to write a segment and a solid writer that writers killer segments every week, I'll take the latter ten times out of ten, because that's how you run a successful e-fed.

Personally, I think this sort of thing should be organic. Why do people have this desire to put labels on titles, to issue some edict as to where everything lies? Again, I think it has to do with the state of the game today. The community has had this instinct in the past few years to put a great deal of emphasis on interfed competition as a way of getting glory. Fair enough; I was happy to be Global Champion a while back, it was a great experience. But when everyone from every fed gets together to compete for individual glory, you no longer have an interfed; you have a fed. PTC, to me, has begun to look and operate more and more like its own fed over the years, and that's not the proper direction for it to be heading in.

To suggest that the Elite Title, or any other PTC title, is inherently more important than the GCW Title doesn't fly with me, and I'd never support such a move. And that's not sour grapes, it's because if you're not dedicated to your home fed and trying to make it the most important thing in the community, what the hell are you doing? Again, this is my biggest criticism. Home-fed loyalty is on the decline as people spend more and more effort trying to build up PTC. But the entire purpose of an interfed is to take a handful of stellar feds full of enthusiastic handlers and pit them against each other in fed vs. fed competition. Because competition drives us to do better. If your motivation isn't to represent your fed and make your home base look better, you're not helping the community.

Now, I'm not trying to point fingers here (Ryan). And I'm not trying to guilt-trip anyone for wanting to accomplish things for themselves. That's all good, you should want to do that. But the most important place to compete is in your home fed. If people chased their home fed titles the way they did PTC titles, think of how much stronger that would make the feds. Well, that's what I try to do with the GCW Title, and that's why I think it's ludicrous to declare that any interfed title is superior to the rest. An interfed title is no more than a place to test your writing chops against others; but at the end of the day, an interfed should be about feds pushing one another to be the best, not individuals.

The Elite Title could be good, and I hope it is. I'll support it however I can. But if anyone tries to suggest that it's bigger or better than the GCW Title, I'll feel a whole lot differently. I'm glad it's getting a good response so far, but I firmly believe that the entire community needs to shift directions, otherwise the entire game will suffer.

Anyway, another long-winded post, I apologize. But I haven't been on the radio in months, I needed an outlet. Feel free to respond.

Why I Left

I'm not entirely sure if anyone will see this; I can only assume that this blog will still appear in the PTC RSS feed, though Ross is well within his rights to block it. But I'm sitting here in need of a break from coding the new GCW website, and I felt now might be a good time to elaborate on why I departed from PTC a few weeks ago.

For anyone hoping to read some big flame-fest or angry tirade, you're going to be disappointed. I was never really angry, and my departure was not due to any real strife. It was simply a personal matter. And because it's a personal matter, and because I still have a great deal of respect for the people involved, I'll be judicious in what I reveal and what I do not. I'll leave it to you to read between the lines to gather any information I don't offer you here. But there was some confusion with regards to my departure, and so I guess this is not only my way of offering my side of the story, but also of alleviating any fears anyone might have that there's something insidious going on at PTC.

To put it mildly, I've always been a pretty ambitious person. This is compounded by the fact that I consider myself to be a natural leader; I simply feel more comfortable at the front of the crowd leading the way. That's why I'm a fedhead, that's why I haven't handled in an actual fed since OSF in 2002. I like working with people, I like hearing their ideas and I like being the one people come to for guidance. So when it comes to my role in the community known as PTC, ever since I first came to the interfed back in 2001 or so, I've always wanted to be part of the leadership.

Anyone that read this blog while it was still active knows that I was pushing to rekindle the spark of interfed spirit in PTC, and I put a lot of energy into that campaign. I did a couple PTC Radio shows that I thought were great successes, and had plans to run a tournament this summer. Perhaps some of that was too ambitious, but that's simply the way I am. I can't do something halfway; if I'm going to spearhead an effort, I'm going to do what I can to make it the best and biggest it can possibly be. That's how I run my fed, and that's how I wanted to run PTC.

Now comes for the delicate part, and the reason for my leaving the community. I had been part of PTC for many years, and had even been co-President of the community for a time back in the Ron days. It's a little-remembered part of PTC history, back when WO started and tried to steal PTC's thunder (and largely succeeded), but the fact remains that I've done pretty much everything in this game. Hell, during the PTC-Fedwars blowup (back when Fedwars was moderately relevant), I was a moderator on both forums, and even moderated a few direct meetings between Ron and... whoever it was that ran Fedwars. I like to think that I've carved out a reputation as someone who is fair, honest and trustworthy. I can completely understand how some people would have reservations about my impartiality given the zeal with which I promote GCW. But when it comes down to it, I'm concerned for the health of this game; if I can help the game, that will help GCW in the end.

In the last year especially, PTC has experienced the loss of some of its key leadership figures. First RJ lost his job as an admin (a decision I'm certainly not condemning, but the fact remains that he's gone). Then Pete left. And it wasn't just PTC admins; the feds began losing their fedheads. Sebs is gone. It's become a fairly common trend among PTC feds to change leadership fairly often, and the job moves from handler to handler. Now, I"m certainly not trying to slight some of the handlers who have made sacrifices in both stature and time to help out their feds, because I think that's an incredibly honorable thing to do. I've certainly had moments where GCW's become too much for me and I've had to pass the responsibility off. But the fact remains that, in terms of real leadership experience in this game, there isn't much left. The only admin left is Ross, and the only long-tenured fedhead left is me.


Unfortunately, my estimation of my role in the community was not shared by Ross. Now, I'm certainly not pinning all of this on him; I think this is mostly the result of a series of differences of opinion. Ross has certain ideas for how PTC should operate, and mine did not always align with his vision. I completely respect Ross's right to run his community the way he sees fit, and he continues to do a great job with it. The level of respect he commands is the most valuable currency any leader could hope to have, and it's what makes him an effective leader even at a time when his own involvement in the game is waning.

The primary obstacle that arose, I believe, came out of my desire to take on a greater role as community leader. I believed that PTC needed someone that was directly involved in the game in order to create new interfed activity. Ross might have agreed with this, but he insisted that this leader, whoever he or she may have been, be unaffiliated with any of the PTC feds. My position as GCW fedhead, he (fairly) reasoned, would make it a challenge for me to run interfed events.

There's much more to the story, but it's largely irrelevant. It will suffice to say that we both held firm in our convictions, and it led to a bit of an impasse. It came to the point that I no longer agreed with the direction PTC was heading, primarily because I was not going to be part of the leadership. In a sense, I felt that my years of service to the community and the game gave me a skill set that is unique to the community today, and that those skills were best spent helping to lead a new era in PTC. Due to my all-or-nothing nature, I simply didn't feel I could sit around and watch.

Again, I'm not trying to condemn Ross here. I still think he's a great guy and a great leader, and PTC will continue to do just fine under his leadership. He and I are still communicating regularly and working together on the new GCW website, so it's not like there's some angry rift forming. But, to be completely honest, I felt like my experience was being discounted, and therefore I decided that my time was best dedicated towards my fed, which I could direct as I saw fit. Now, there is much, much more to the story, including the demise of the Unified Title division (which my actions no doubt played a role in), that led to the impasse I referred to earlier. I completely understand why Ross made the decision he did. I do not agree with it, but it was his decision to make. Unfortunately, I felt at that point that I should have been the one making the decision, and without the ability to affect positive change on the community, I no longer felt like I had a place in PTC. If I cannot be of service to the community, I have no purpose there. So I retired to GCW, where my purpose is clear.

This is, to me, a completely acceptable compromise. I am having the best run I've ever had with GCW at the moment; things have never been better. I'm trilled to be putting all my effort into it, and to be able to focus on my home completely. I've spent some time looking back at GCW history rather than forward at PTC's future, and it's been very rewarding. But I thought now, with some spare time, I might muse about PTC for a moment.

The lack of leadership is no doubt a problem. Probably PTC's biggest problem. But effective leadership is only half of the equation; a leader can set the world on fire with great ideas, but if the population doesn't rise up to impliment the ideas, they're worthless. And, while the energy in the individual feds seems to be relatively high, the interfed activity simply isn't keeping pace. People still talk with dreamy nostalgia about the good old days and how they should come back, but nothing much has come of it. I have a few theories as to why this is, and what can be done to fix it. If you're not really interested in my ideas and were just here for my explanation, you may stop reading at this point.

In essence, I think the spin on the leadership problem has been all wrong. Ross has made repeated calls for people to step up and take charge, and there have been numerous instances of people answering that call. But the fact is, the community doesn't need all that many leaders. After all, there aren't that many people to be led any more. You only need a couple strong, experiences people at the top to steer the ship. And that's the problem; you've got dozens of people standing up and saying "I'll run a tournament" or "I'll run this division" or "I'll help out with anything," and yet so few people standing up and simply saying "I'll provide the content." What the community needs to be successful is not people to run tournaments, but people to participate in them. Not division heads, but competitors. Not people willing to do whatever odd-job is offered to them, but instead to simply show up when an event is on.

The correlation here is my theory that there are too many feds. I've backed off that notion a bit lately as it seems the newer feds springing up are in good health and have sizeable rosters. But I still think there are too many people pondering new fed concepts rather than new character concepts. I know it's tempting to want to run your own fed, but given the state of the game, we should be consolidating, not spreading out. If you're an idea person that wants to run a fed, join a fed and take that energy to the roster instead. The game will benefit much more from the benefit you give to the fed than from any new entity you could create.

I'm certainly not trying to stomp on anyone else's ambitions, especially after explaining how high my own always have been. But during the last month or so, when my only e-fedding interest has been GCW, I've looked at the incredible strides we've made and determined that this is where the revoution should begin. The "big three" PTC feds of the past year (GCW, PRIME and SCCW) are all solid feds, but at no time have all three been stable at the same time. For a while in 2005 GCW was the toast of the town; then PRIME rose again. Then FUSE showed up and stole all the thunder. Then PRIME again. Then PRIME began switching fedheads often, and GCW began to rise again.

Look back to those good old days and you'll find that PTC was most successful when it was rooted in successful feds. The community was such a roaring success because it had PCW, OSW, FSW, PURE, PWC, RUSH, NTICW and a myriad of other feds (like GCW) backing them up--all of which were not just stable, but flourishing. At no time in PTC's recent history has it had more than two feds in a simultaneous upswing. We've tried to spark interfed activity during this time, but nothing has taken hold, probably because the foundation for such activity simply wasn't there.

So, even though I'm not participating in PTC any more, I'm still doing what I can to help out by giving it a great, high-caliber fed as one of its cornerstones. I'd encourage everyone over at PTC to start thinking about the community in these terms as well. I'm not suggesting anyone else abandon the forums like I have, but simply to ponder your priorities. I know there's a lot to love about interfed activity, and I hope it can come back some day, too. But until GCW, PRIME, SCCW, and now some of the other feds that are popping up, are all riding high, it'll be virtually impossible to achieve some of those goals. I still think that, with the right leadership, PTC as presently constituted could offer a fun array of activities and competitions to keep people interested. But the good old days aren't coming back until the feds are blossoming, and at the moment that isn't happening.

So my message? Don't ask what you can to to help PTC. Ask what you can to do help a fed, because in doing so you'll help PTC. Don't open a new fed, there are enough of those. Don't try to come up with the next great interfed gimmick. Take that energy, that creativity and those ideas, to one of the feds. It's a smaller stage, yes, and you'll get less glory for it. But, while the game needs leaders, it needs contributors as well. GCW's filled with people who lead on a daily basis; people who step up and put forth that same energy every day into their fed, and the fed has benefitted immensely from it.

For an interfed event to really succeed, it needs to be populated with great, established stars representing great, competitive feds. The basis for this is in place; this remains an incredibly talented community with great history. But I think the call for leadership, the call for bright new ideas, needs to come from within the feds, not from PTC.

It takes something really special to lead a place like PTC; that's why Ross has done it so long, and why nobody else has been able to take his place. And that's why I feel Ross's expectation that someone do his job like he does is unfair. Nobody can do it like him, so it's a standard that will never be met. Me? I can't do it like Ross does, but I felt I could do it my way, which would be pretty damn close. But there aren't many that can do that job. For the moment, though, there are a ton of people wanting to help. I'd urge those people to find themselves a home and put more energy into it. There's a lot of people who handle in multiple feds, and that's fine, but I'd encourage people to do more with less. Focus on one or two goals and really make them great. We're never going to make this game work through quantity any more. If this game is going to flourish again, it will come through the quality of our work. So if I have any parting advice for you, PTC, it's this: just be. Don't worry about answering the call to lead, because that's not what the community needs. It needs handlers. It needs people dedicated to their craft and dedicated to their fed.

The better you make your fed, and the more loyal to it you become, the more interesting the conflict between those feds will be. And that's how you make a great interfed.

I miss you all. If you need me, you know where to find me.

We're Going Hi-Tech

This blog isn't seeing much action lately, but with good reason. I've gone audio!

Anyone interested in hearing me rant and rave, opinionize and sensationalize may catch me every week on GCW Radio. Just head over to the GCW Forums for updates on showtimes and links to the broadcasts. Hope you'll tune in.

New Year's Resolution

I've got a new New Year's Resolution, only 24 days late.

As it has become quite clear that the game is winding down (in scope if not relative activity), I think it's important to try to archive what we've accomplished in our time in this game for posterity. I, for one, can't forsee myself heading up GCW for another seven years, but seven years from now I fully intend to have gcwonline.net up and operational. I want to make sure to get everything we've ever done archived and online so that anyone, at any point in the future, can come back and see what they've done.

But why stop there?

Obviously, getting GCW in order will be step one. But after that, I think it would be really great to create some sort of general archive where absolutely anyone can enter their information and their writings to be saved for good. PTCpedia is a step in that direction, but I'd like something that goes even deeper.

Of course, I have no clue how to make such a thing practical, so I'm open to suggestions. But with people beginning to transition towards other goals and interests, I think it would be nice to have a place for everyone to stash their writing online so that, when we each leave the game, we'll have left a little bit of ourselves behind.

Just a random thought here at 2:51 AM.