"The NA Problem" - an APAC community perspective
Full text version of my Twitter thread(external).
Since the Trackmania Asia/OCE(external) community 2-3 years ago was kind of in the same position as the NA community is right now, I want to share this story from the perspective of the Asia-Pacific (APAC) community and how we managed to bring the competitive drive to life, against all odds.
Back in the day, the Asia-Pacific community was a lonely place in Trackmania. Everyone just seemed to be doing its own thing, which I realised when I started streaming the game back in the day.
There were some competitions, but they're mostly catered to the EU community.
However, if it weren't for SRK(external) convincing me to start up the Trackmania Asia/OCE community and start doing small events here and there, we wouldn't be at this point.
He told me that if there weren't any demand for events in this region, then we should create our own.
So with SRK's help, we started small. I teamed up with the late Gamingboy2508(external), another player he discovered who had the same competitive drive, to start up the Trackmania Asia/OCE(external) community.
A few people also later joined in to help, like rizimist(external) and Lvyathan(external), among others.
We started in my own community's Discord, then we branched out to create our own dedicated server.
The players started slowly trickle in as we start advertising this server around. We really see the potential of Trackmania becoming popular in Asia and Oceania.
We had a shaky start. We were trying to reach out to all these potential players from Asia and Oceania, but we had the main hurdle: some of these players who claimed to be from Asia, aren't even from Asia at all.
Remember fake-flagging? Yeah, I started that.
After the pushback we received from just trying to get recognised, we tried a different approach.
If the rest of the community won't take us seriously, we might as well mind our own business. Set up our own regional competition, gather the player base, and let ourselves cook.
So that's how AOTC came to be. Well, it had a few revisions back in the day.
With SRK's help once again we started with AOTS, a regional competition run on campaign maps. A small event to showcase the upcoming players in the Asia-Pacific community.
It eventually grew to the AOTC, with custom maps made by the great community of mappers this game has, a decent prize pool, and a whole new player base that was previously unheard of.
The AOTC became a staple event which everyone in the APAC community always look forward to.
It was seen as a fresh start in the Trackmania esports scene. A lot of people started taking notice. Players like min2002(external) were starting to attract the attention from the rest of the community.
Even Nadeo themselves contributed to the prize pool for one season.
The AOTC grew a lot over the years, to the point where it became sustainable enough to run the event for ourselves.
As SRK's efforts are needed in events like the Trackmania World Tour(external) or the Baltic community events, he gave us the keys to run the event on our own.
But of course, some of us wanted more.
We wanted to see how we compare to the rest of the Trackmania community. Which means, official competitions.
It was never possible with the old TMGL format, where the schedule was always catered towards the European community.
After a long period of lobbying, and demanding for an improvement to the competitive format which caters to everyone around the world, including the previously underrepresented regions, our prayers were answered(external).
I couldn't explain how much of a welcome addition the TMWT Regional tournaments were for all of us.
After over three years, we finally have a chance to take on the best players from the rest of the world. Finally, we have a proper ladder to the top level of TM esports.
When I say that the TMWT and Regional tournaments were the best thing to have happened to Trackmania esports, I really mean it.
Sure, there are a lot of things to improve, but the basis is there to make Trackmania really be an esports experience for everyone.
With the perfect formula and time, a lot of the orgs from the Asia-Pacific region started to take notice.
Orgs like Trident Esports(external), Antic Esports(external), and DXA Esports(external) were starting to pick up talented players with that competitive drive, and for over a year, we started cooking.
After several false starts, we started to fight our way through. The APAC regionals saw some of these players work their way up to the competitive ladder.
And at the end, one of these orgs made it to the World Championship Middle Stage.
Congratulations Trident 💙
That doesn't mean our work ends here, though.
The TMWT and AOTC still exist side-by-side, since we still feel that there's a market for solo events in the region. So we still keep all the things we started running, but now with more efficiency.
So now, here's where we're at.
TMWT for the competitively hungry, AOTC as a biannual celebration of the APAC Trackmania scene, and a bunch other "fun night" events for community bonding.
All while our player base is still growing.
So what do we learn from this?
Well, sometimes when the demand isn't there, you just have to create it.
The rest of the Trackmania Asia/OCE staff team have been doing a very great job, and their passion is what keeps this community, and all of our events, going.
The AOTC wouldn't happen if it weren't for the help of everyone that's been involved in the background with the dedication to elevate the APAC community even further.
And a lot of us are volunteers in our spare time.
While we've been working tirelessly on our own, we really want to expand out a little more, continue to find the right connections to keep this running sustainably, whilst still finding ways to elevate this community.
We'll still continue to cook.