In a nutshell: it’s a website that provides live broadcasts of competitive matches and community-related events. Our streams are top-tier, professional grade, the commentary is also spot-on and occasionally comical, and we have a commitment to interact with our community.

The founders of Brink TV have a lot of experience with these professional “shoutcasts” (another word for broadcasting live games with commentary). We come from Enemy Territory TV, which is a site that provided that exact same service for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars in 2008.

The original founders of ETTV Steve “GreasedScotsman” Huff and Matt “Mattc0m” Richards are working hard on the development of Brink TV right now, with long-term members Ben “FishStix” Goldhaber, Slava “Uncle Joe” Markeyev, and Alex “Jehar” Popa all having a hand in the project as well. These guys have worked on Quake Live TV, Games Cast TV, and even the original Enemy Territory TV. They share a love for e-sports and live broadcasting especially.

We’re excited to bring entertaining, live events and matches to the Brink community. And we’re just as excited to play Brink ourselves. Look for an event on May 10th that will allow everyone to participate. We’re interested to hear what you think and how you’d like to get involved, feel free to toss us an e-mail at contact@thebrink.tv.

Join us around the web!

• Forums
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Steam
• #brinktv on GameSurge or QuakeNet IRC

View below the break for the history of this project.

Fun Facts about Enemy Territory TV (ETTV):

• Originally founded by Mattc0m (that’s me ), he had a lonely audio-only shoutcast that was used in tandem with “ETQW TV” servers. You watched the game from your own POV while listening to the audio shoutcasts.
• GreasedScotsman was soon to join, quickly becoming the Lead Shoutcaster. We were not able to provide live video, however, GreasedScotsman uploaded high quality VODs to the site, which became a huge success around the ETQW community.
• The staff grew exponentially, having around 16 staff members by the time we ended our operations and moved to QLTV.
• Was heavily involved with Splash Damage and the competitive ETQW community, ETTV shoutcasts became one of the most entertaining aspects of ETQW competition near the end of its lifespan.
• We attended QuakeCon 2008 as the Official ETQW Broadcasters. This was our first QuakeCon event as a team, and has gone every year since then as QLTV.

The old ETTV is online and all VODs are online! Check it out at: http://enemyterritory.sectornetwork.com/

Post-ETTV Projects

• Quake Live TV was launched on May 13, 2009. Nearly identical to ETTV, it was a shoutcasting organization focused on Quake Live. It quickly became the #1 shoutcasting crew in North America, and our brand is recognized throughout the Quake community. We’ve attended QuakeCon 2009 and 2010 as QLTV.
• Games Cast TV is currently in beta. While not a traditional “shoutcasting” company, it is instead a nexus of all e-sports broadcasters. From StarCraft 2 to Quake Live to Heroes of Newerth, there are competitive communities spread around the ‘net who have their own, professional-grade shoutcasters. And this brings them all together, with over 40 partners on the site, you instantly can see what sort of e-sports broadcasts are going on at any time of the day.

As some of you know, I’m the founder, webmaster, graphic designer, and guest shoutcaster over at QuakeLive.tv. Quake Live TV runs very much like a business, but we’re all volunteers and our costs are paid for by donations (thanks to an awesome, supportive community).

So what is Quake Live TV? Well, it’s an organization that broadcasts live, competitive video game matches with some of the top professionals. While a lot of our coverage is of community-run events, a lot of our coverage is of the professionals competing in high-level tournaments. We’ve covered over 1,000 competitive matches in our one and half years of operation, with some of our more popular live broadcasts reaching thousands and thousands of live spectators simultaneously. In the past year, we’ve had over 400,000 visitors on our website.

To sum it up: we’re the #1 broadcasting organization in North America Quake Live coverage, and we’re slowly becoming one of the more reputable names in eSports.

While some people scoff at the idea of playing video games professionally, some do pretty well. For example, Anton “Cooller” Singov (who is coming to QuakeCon) has made more than $130,000 in his career. Sure, he’s not going to be able to retire on winnings from professional gaming, but it’s still a good chuck of cash. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Singov

For those of you that are curious as to what competitive gaming is all about, I wrote a four-page magazine article that details the ins-and-outs of the scene.

Page 1: http://mattc0m.com/College/Spring%202009/Magazine%20Writing/page-1.jpg
Page 2: http://mattc0m.com/College/Spring%202009/Magazine%20Writing/page-2.jpg
Page 3: http://mattc0m.com/College/Spring%202009/Magazine%20Writing/page-3.jpg
Page 4: http://mattc0m.com/College/Spring%202009/Magazine%20Writing/page-4.jpg

Back to the big news:
Quake Live TV is going to be the exclusive broadcaster of QuakeCon 2010.

So, what is QuakeCon? What does this mean?

Here’s a snippet of the Press Release:

Quake Live TV, a community-run broadcasting organization, is set to provide exclusive video coverage of QuakeCon 2010. QuakeCon, the largest LAN party in North America, is hosted annually in Dallas, TX and is home to the Intel® QUAKE LIVE® Masters Championship. Known as one of the most prestigious gaming tournaments worldwide, this year boasts a prize pool of over $50,000. After three years of main-stage action QUAKE LIVE® remains a top choice for competitive gamers.

Check out the rest of the press release on GamesIndustry.biz. I actually wrote the majority of the press release.

Essentially, QuakeCon is a big deal. Biggest LAN in North America, biggest free LAN in the world, and it hosts thousands of gamers at the event with tens of thousands tuning into the coverage from around the world.

My company is going to be that coverage.

I’m really happy to go there and be working alongside my fellow founders Steve “GreasedScotsman” Huff and Ben “FishStix” Goldhaber. These guys are legit. Also along with our promotion to the official coverage team means we get comped rooms, VIP passes, interviews with Bethesda and id Software execs, and a lot more really cool things.

In fact, if anyone has any questions for id Software, Bethesda Game Studios, Splash Damage, Respawn Entertainment (the founders of Infinity Ward, the guys who made call of Duty), Arkane Studios, or any of the pro gamers… let me know!

Anyway, I’m super excited about this and just wanted to share it. Hopefully you guys tune and I have your support!

Matt “Mattc0m” Richards
www.quakelive.tv

Check out this slick video. I think you’ll enjoy it — it’s just over a minute long!

Oh, and a shit ton of design work.

As you may or may not know, I’m a fairly accomplished professional designer. I’ve been designing fairly steadily for about five years now, and have created dozens of websites. I’m nearing the one hundred mark. I’m not great by any means, but I’m getting better and better, and my work is really beginning to shine.

Anyway, enough about me! Let’s talk design.

My first big project is Games Cast TV.

The idea of this project is to unify and expand e-sports by providing a single site for all your video needs. With the homepage being a dynamic, functional page with AJAX notifications, Javascript-based IRC chat, and Flash-based live streaming, you can watch continuing e-sports coverage without ever leaving the frontpage. The second big feature is having the largest searchable index of e-sports videos. It’s gonna be pretty intense.

So the idea behind the design is having a very clear, specific focus. There’s an air of general simplicity and minimalism in the design. The focus is truly on the content – the rest of the site being devoid of many colors. Each inclusion of color has a very specific purpose, and is meant to draw your attention. I drew a lot of inspiration from Hulu, Last.fm, Image Spark, and Maxvoltar for this project. Usability and clean aesthetics are my two goals, with maybe just a little “Web 2.0″ spice.

My first version
Really big on the minimalism, but really boring too. It was at a concept stage

Second version
Again, really plain, but I tried adding visual flair through icons and some gradients, as well as bringing focus to the middle.

Third version
This is the first version where concepts were less important, and the visual appeal took a bit more precende. It’s shaping up, and has an inspired header from both Hulu and Last.fm. Contrasting colors gives the site a lot more focus.

Final Version (alpha v0.2)
This design is still very early in it’s Alpha stage. It is roughly 50% complete (design wise). It is completely coded with HTML / CSS. Optimization and IE support has not been addressed yet. I’m still working on some visual upgrades, jQuery additions, and other coding tidbits as well.

However, you clearly can see the design is starting to take shape. A strong footer off-balances a somewhat boring header. It lacks a lot of fluff and visual flair, but is still a strong design. The use of color is very specific, drawing your eyes to certain portions. The middle of the page will be taken over by an actual streaming footage when the site moves online.

The design is meant to be very interactive, with an abundance of overlays, rollovers, and other effects letting you know how and where to interact with the design. This not being a functional website, mind you, means none of these features actually work yet. This is just the design part!

My biggest accomplishment is the CSS structure. I load a variety of CSS files, with many of them being dynamically loaded dependent on the user’s browser, resolution, or preferences set within the site. First, it loads a master.css, which loads the reset.css, text.css, 960.css (grid system, currently unused), and style.css (includes mainly header and footer markup). Then, a page-specific CSS is loaded (in this case, frontpage.css). Then, a color css is loaded. In this case, default.css (though black, red, and other colors will be available). Finally, a layout css is loaded, in this case default.css. However, widescreen.css will be available for widescreen monitors. Sweet!

This structure is very different from how I normally write my CSS, so doing it in this way is a bit daunting. Hopefully IE optimization won’t be too much of a bitch. But it makes customization the site down the line, as well as adding other themes for color and layout, to be extraordinarily easy.

Personally, I am very happy with how this design turned out. Sure, it may seem simple and a bit boring. But I’ve worked a ton on the little details, and I think it’s got a very good approach.

Other projects:

• Unto the World
• Shepherd University Intramurals
• Adopt a Pet (Final for my Advertising class)
• Shepherd University Program Board (I designed it awhile ago, but I continue to improve and update it)

FPS Gaming Community launched earlier this month, and I’m very proud of how it’s turned out. It runs off a WordPress installation, but it’s very non-blog-like in functionality. It’s got a nice Web 2.0 feel to it, while having this great dark, blue glowing vibrancy to it.

I got the theme from Elegant Themes (I’m now a huge fan), and edited it quite extensively. I’m very happy with how it turned out, design-wise.

So what is FPS Gaming Community, anyway? Well, to put it plainly, it’s a community for gamers. Like the name didn’t give that part away! But what sort of things does said community do?

• Maintains a collection of fast, updated game servers with friendly admins and consistent rules.
  We’re sponsored kindly by the folks at FPS Gaming Solutions.
• Has a Ventrilo voice chat that anyone from the community may use to stay coordinated.
  We’re sponsored kindly by the folks at MainVoice.
• Events and activities that all members can get involved with! From “Late Night” sessions to pub events to tournaments and more, we plan on making gaming more fun and social.
• Clubs that any member can start up that focuses in on their particular interest – whether it’s a specific game, collection of games, a certain niche, or even a competitive team!
• A website and forums that offer even more cool content as well as a place to come together as a community and mobilize (hopefully for world domination, if everything goes to plan).

So, basically, check it out. The domain is www.fpsgamingcommunity.com. I’m very proud of how it’s turning out, and can’t wait to see it expand even further.

I’m really proud of what our team was able to accomplish and pull together, and despite a hectic schedule and a lot of last minute pulling together, we had some great content.

I wish I was there so badly! QuakeCon is such an amazing event, and QLTV did its best to capture it’s amazing atmosphere.

So without further ado, head over to QLTV’s QuakeCon website!

Also, check out the snazzy blue logo (a redesign by me!)

It’s really hard to explain the entire site in one blog post – so please take the time to explore it a little yourself! Head over to www.quakelive.tv today!

Just how well received has the site been received?

• 1,000+ registered users
• 13,000+ unique visitors
• 300,000+ page views
• Support from Quake Live itself, Ustream.tv’s president, djWheat, Slasher, NGL, & the entire Quake Live community
• Links & articles on GotFrag, ESReality, SK Gaming, QuakeLive.com, Quake Unity, Quake Life, and many more

Be sure to check out the media player, browse our match history, or visit the forums!

As always, be sure to let me know what you think!

• Quake-Live.TV (coming soon page)
• Logos
• Web Design

The majority of the work has been completed by GreasedScotsman, who has done around 90% of the work so far on the website. It’s really looking great – it has got a ton of functionality built into the website.

We’re still working on the completion of the site as well as working on getting the best quality video streaming for the site. Since Quake Live does not offer spectator functionality, we’re building a streaming solution through Ustream.

Finals were a hellish, busy week for me. But things are about to get more hectic before they get relaxing! I may have come home, but I have a lot of stuff to do:

• Rework & Finish SectorNetwork.com (which will essentially be my new “projects” page from this site).
• Create a new FPSPhoto.com
• Create DavidCalder.ca
• Finish TruColorsInc.com
• Create TheFragStore.com
• Create TheHighTimes.com
• Update EnemyTerritory.tv

I also want to write a few blogs, do a few game reviews, and enjoy my Christmas break! Woah!

Lucky I’m still motivated to get all this done. So here we go!

I’ve just launched a brand new website, Fable 2 Sector. It will feature forums, game guides, hints, help, media, and many other features. Check it out!