What's in the cooking pot?

Natural Selection 2 is exceptional in many ways: the asymmetrical gameplay for example or the mix of first person shooter and real time strategy. It has its quirks as well, of course. It is complex and asks much of new players. Another specialty of NS2 is its community. They present themselves as friendly, creative, and productive. Without the community's support the game would not be there it is today. And that community is plotting something, yet again.

We hit the highest 24-hour peak since February 2015

But first let us look back into the last week: the Polaris Civil War featured NS2 (we covered it here). Popular streamers were thrown into a few rounds of Natural Selection. Besides fun to watch it was also informative: we were able to see, how new players - although veteran gamers - experienced Natural Selection 2 for the first time.​

​ That is some valuable information for the CDT and UWE for sure. More interesting for us players, though, was the attention NS2 got since last week: a quick count on YouTube gives over ​​273.000 views. This number will still increase​​ over the next days. But one cannot derive 273.000 unique viewers from this and only a small fraction of them might actually check out the game. So, what is the impact? According to Steam-Charts we hit on Sunday evening the highest 24-hour peak (616), since February 2015 (734). A notable effect, yet nothing to freak out about. Keep in mind, though, that the Polaris Civil War presented NS2 only as one of many games.

What if instead of having a variety of games, the whole show revolves around Natural Selection entirely? Two of the community's members stumbled over that question - even way before NS2 got a mention in the Polaris Civil War. One of them - Kash - describes it: "After watching a few twitch streamer tournaments succeed (Heroes of the Storm, H1Z1 etc.) and listening to how the streamers talked about their experience, I had the idea of making a twitch tournament for NS2. After discussing something very similar with Mephilles it seemed we both wanted to see the same thing". That "same thing" quickly got baptised: Twitch Invitational Tournament (you do the abbreviation yourself).

What Kash has in mind is like comparing a teaser to the blockbuster

The Polaris Civil War featured NS2 in a drive-by: three rounds with twelve people, most of them without a clue about the game (no offense). What Kash has in mind is like comparing a teaser to the blockbuster: "The Twitch Invitational Tournament will be a knockout/elimination style tournament between 4 or more teams made up of streamers and their friends". He does not even stop at that point. The streamers are invited to join trainings - and stream these as well of course - and there shall be a full coverage of the played games. Rumors make the round that well-known shoutcasters of the past have a return for this as well.

Popular twitch-streamers gather large crowds at their channels (we are talking hundreds of thousands). If Kash's idea takes off, Natural Selection 2 might receive attention never seen since its release.

It is certainly way beyond a one-man's-show and it needs the game's creators

In size and effort one can settle the Twitch Invitational somewhere between the Newcomer Tournaments of Winter and Summer and the NS2 World Championships 2014. It certainly is more than a one-man's-show and it needs the game's creators - Unknown Worlds - involved. Kash knew that right from the beginning: "Currently I have tudy, Mephilles, Vindaloo, Hefty, Kmacg and a few more that are helping out where they can. But to be honest a lot of this falls on UWE and WasabiOne's shoulders as they are the official means of contact for the streamers etc... so a lot of this is handing them the work and waiting for feedback, which can be a little frustrating at times. But that is just the way things are."

"The invitation letter itself has been made and passed on to UWE

to send out to 60 twitch streamers via the official means"

Following discussions in the NSL-Forums or reddit one notices that the idea's release is now 3 weeks old. The latest update stems from October 22nd: "The invitation letter itself has been made and passed on to UWE to send out to 60 twitch streamers via the official means". So, it is fair to ask: what happened in the meantime? It seems the invitations are stuck somewhere in a waiting loop, two and a half weeks later Kash says: "I am just waiting for confirmation that the invites have been sent out. Once that is done the actual planning stage can begin". Invitation, quo vadis?

UWE seems quite busy in the last days. Be it with their game Subnautica or other activities. We hope that above mentioned mail leaves their inbox-folder quite soon in the direction of the sent-messages.

The biggest thing people could do to support this is during the event and afterwards:

get on pub servers, be friendly, be helpful, and stimulate the community"

One thing is for sure: the community can do more than wait to be served. About the question how each of us can help Kash says: "Spread the word. Talk about it in streamers' chats. Suggest streamers you want to see in the event on the forum page. If you have the time, you could help with training/teaching the streamers, ref matches, or potentially even command teams in the tournament. The biggest thing people could do to support this is during the event and afterwards: get on pub servers, talk to the new guys, be friendly, be helpful, and do everything you can to stimulate the community".