A new scandal has hit the online gaming community, gamer discrimination. A report posted on GamesIndustry.biz claims recruiters have been briefed not to put forward candidates that play the online fantasy roleplaying game World of Warcraft. Employers believe gamers to be second rate candidates not fully focussed on their work and usually sleep deprived. It's been known for some time that prospective employers often check a candidates FaceBook page, though this is the first such case of gamer screening.

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"Employers speciffically intstruct him not to send them World of Warcraft players," said the poster. "He said there is belief that WoW players cannot give 100 per cent because their focus is elsewhere, their sleeping patterns are often not great, et cetera."

A whopping 86% of Crossfire users claim to have a poor, or irregular sleeping pattern. How long until employers target further online games? Is keeping your online gaming hobby secret now a necessity?

Related:

Gamesindustry.biz

So says Keith Bakker, the founder and owner of the only gaming addiction clinic in Europe. In a recent interview with the BBC Mr Bakker states that just 10% of ‘addicts’ attending his clinic can be treated through traditional techniques for addiction such as abstinence, even though they're displaying classic dependence symptoms. The remaining 90%, he states, require psychological treatment and counselling, helping them improve their communication skills and self confidence in order to rebuild their lives.

Unsurprisingly, Mr Bakker ascertains that 80% of treated ‘addicts’ have suffered bullying and isolation at school, and so find an outlet in the virtual world. Often gamers angry with their personal lives vent their frustrations through their online persona.

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Using traditional abstinence-based treatment models the clinic has had very high success rates treating people who also show other addictive behaviours such as drug taking and excessive drinking.

But Mr Bakker believes that this kind of cross-addiction affects only 10% of gamers. For the other 90% who may spend four hours a day or more playing games such as World of Warcraft, he no longer thinks addiction counselling is the way to treat these people.

"These kids come in showing some kind of symptoms that are similar to other addictions and chemical dependencies," he says. "But the more we work with these kids the less I believe we can call this addiction. What many of these kids need is their parents and their school teachers - this is a social problem."

Following media reports on the growing menace of gaming addiction a question was put to the Crossfire userbase, and a massive 76% believed gaming to be addictive.

You can catch the full inteview on the BBC.

Crossfire owner and Crossfire Challenge organiser Stuart “TosspoT” Saw today joined Heaven Media, the parent company of the popular Cadred.org site. TosspoT will take on the newly created role as Director of Esports [sic] overseeing all aspects of Heaven Media’s existing Esports ventures and working to develop a few of his own.

Heaven Media are a company based out of Cambridgshire, England with interests including Gaming Heaven, Drive Heaven, cadred.org, Heaven League and Supplier Heaven.

What does this appointment mean for Crossfire and the future of the Challenge events?

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Yes, some of the new projects are already existing ones, others are old entities. Obviously with myself I bring Crossfire and QuadV into the fold, the full depth as to how far in those will go is yet to be announced and there will be some cool announcements over the coming weeks regarding those. Beyond that, as I mentioned to you in my last interview on Cadred we talked about a project called Easybash, which was going to be a league and live event we were going to build on the back of the Crossfire live events.

...

Now with Heaven onboard we’re able to realize a lot of the potential that we have in those events. The limitation I had over delivering that event [Easybash] was that we didn’t have the infrastructure in place that we thought we were going to get from certain sponsors. Now Heaven are in place to make sure we get that infrastructure in place and can build a very new and exciting esports competitive project.

Read the full interview on Cadred.org for the lowdown on what this means for Cadred, Heaven Media, Crossfire and the future of esports in general.

Related:

- Heaven Media
- Cadred

Forget Finland, erase Estonia, swipe aside Sweden - tonight, Poland are Enemy Territory's top dogs. Monday night sees the return of EuroCup as these two great entities compete to become the first Polish team to reach a EuroCup Winners Bracket Final.

Replay Devilry vs Fear Factory

Competition: Winners Bracket Semi Final, ClanBase EC XVIII
Date: Monday, 3rd November
Time: 22:30 CET
Maps: tba / tba
ETTV: http://www.gamestv.org/event/7475-re-play-devilry-vs-fear-factory-x-fi/

Lineups

Replay Devilry

buzka
rio
S4rna
kot
Robol
r1co
Fear Factory

Wrobel
Xanah
wiesiek
wiaderko
Templar
Frag Stealer

The winner will progress on to the Winners Bracket Final, just two matches shy of EC fame. Whilst the loser drops down to the losers bracket to face the eventual victor of ovr vs mamut.

Polish superstar kot was available to comment on Mondays match following his Round 1 Playoff victory over SNB.

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We would've lost if we hadn't won. (Ed: quite)

No [we won't win vs FF], we'll get raged. We haven't pracced properly in weeks; no one is unbeatable and that's nice, but FF is out of reach for us in our current shape.

Signups for the Fall Season of the ClanBase Enemy Territory EuroCup and OpenCup are now closed. A total 259 clans have signed up to compete - somewhat down on previous years highs, though still one of ClanBase's top games.

This past month has seen a number of big names return to the game in order to compete in EC and CC5. Notable names for this seasons EC include mamut, TLR, Vicious and Evil, HighBot, Overload, Authentic and Fear Factory.

Schedule

• Creating groups & EC invitations/qualifiers - 8th until the 13th of September
  
• Qualifier Week For Eurocup - 14th untill the 24th of September
  
• OpenCup groups And Eurocup Groups Online - 25th of September
  
• First matchweek Starts - 26th of September
  
• Season ending - 21st of December

Game-Violations have today responded to community pressure and released an updated version of their streaming scripts. The new scripts have reduced the size of the PBSS in an attempt to reduce lag. The Game-Violations scripts takes one PBSS between a time period of every five and twenty minutes, on average one screenshot every thirteen minutes. This is considered the equilibrium in an attempt to keep a watchful eye on players, whilst minimising any potential lag.

Quote by Game-Violations

Following feedback from the community we have amended the PBSS settings in the Enemy Territory scripts. We hope this will help to cut down on the amount of lag.

We will continue to work closely with ClanBase and the community to improve our systems and settings so please do not hesitate to voice your opinions either to us on the ET Forum or to your CB game crew.

ClanBase claim this will offer 4 times less lag than their rival Punkbusted.

Servers must run this script in order to compete in ClanBase competitions. Any matches not using the script will be canceled.

• Download
  
• Game-Violations Post
  
• Example PB Screenies
  
  
  
• Game-Violations Newbies Guide

In other ClanBase related news. Signups for this years EuroCup and OpenCup Fall season close tonight at 23:59 CET.

Welcome to a Crossfire Nations Cup tripple header this sunny Sunday. We've an awesome schedule of Enemy Territory lined up. This, the first three matches of the Quarter Final stages - 6 of the best nations go head to head, aiming to secure their place in the Semi Finals - just three matches from glory. Finland, Japan, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Chile, Hungary & Poland remain - who'll make it to the Semi Final stage?

[center FINLAND vs CZECH REPUBLIC ]
After a fantastic result against the United Kingdom the Czechs are thinking the impossible. They've a well rehearsed squad full of familiar faces. And then there's Finland... if I need to explain their qualities and history - you're in the wrong game.

Date and Time: Sunday 24th August 2008, 21:00 CET

decem
stuka
squall
chmpp
lettu
twidi teente
cpu
butch
Flash
etnic
denton
smudla


Prediction: the Czech's have done well to progress to the quarters - but the Suomi's are a bridge too far. 4:0 Finland.[/center]
[center JAPAN vs BELGIUM ]
Date and Time: Sunday 24th August 2008, 21:00 CET

tba
tba
tba
tba
tba
tba lio
acid
vila
Kevin
mAus
jetro


Prediction: Japan secured an easy victory against Russia in the last round, and have already taken a map from tournament favourites Finland in the group stages. So assuming all pings are equal - we've another nail biter. The Belgians take it, narrowly 4:2.
*Whine warning*
[/center]
[center CHILE vs GERMANY ]
Team Chile have already embarrassed el pedro by making it this far - can they halt Germany's blitzkrieg to the final?

Date and Time: Sunday 24th August 2008, 22:00 CET

M@x
nozzzyyy
Korriban
Merce
Rizzla
Ram kuraigu
sNoOp
butchji
haZer
wEAK
phate
fireBall
duKe


Prediction: Who would call this match? By right the Germans should walk this. But Chile, with a disregard for reputation have already upset the Aussies enroute to the quarters - and pings could play a big part. Chile have the potential to sneak a map. 4:2 Germany.
[/center]

Could the impossible happen and two non-EU teams meet in the semis - ensuring a spot in the finals for one of our ping happy continental friends? Tune in tonight to find out...

We've a late night cross-continental treat for all you Crossfire insomniacs tonight. Forget the Olympics, those boys across the pond are putting on a far greater spectacle. The nations of North America have combined to take on this years NC surprise package team Chile. With the Yanks aiming to prove that they're not complete trash, and the luck of the draw was the reason Chile progressed on to the Quarter Finals.

In competing in the Crossfire Nations Cup both Aza and teKoa agreed to abide by the competition rules, and in turn the anti3 T&C. In doing this, they agreed to not leak and / or share their anti3 client with anyone. It has come to light that both teKoa and Aza leaked their clients, spreading it around irc and GamesTV.org.

At best this was inherently childish and disrespectful to the anti3 dev team, at worst it was a malicious attempt to sabotage a new ET anti-cheat.

And as such teKoa has been disqualified from competing in this seasons Nations Cup and banned from Crossfire for 3 months, and all subsequent Crossfire hosted and affiliated tournaments during this period. As he is currently perm banned from Crossfire, Aza should never have competed for team Netherlands in this tournament - and we apologise for this mistake on our side. He continues to be banned.

It's sad to see that the '3v3 World Cup' successfully adhered to the anti3 'no leak' policy, whilst it's more prominent 6v6 counterpart obviously couldn't.

Crossfire accepts that the Netherlands team as a whole and their captain perfo did what they could to avoid this, and as such Crossfire chose not to punish the Netherlands team. However, as both Aza and teKoa where disqualified from playing, the Dutch team where unable to find adequate substitutes to field a team. Meaning that team Hungary will progress to the next round following a default win.

Crossfire will remind all players competing that only they and their clan leader should ever have access to the client download link. And only the player should download it. anti3 and Crossfire both monitor who has accessed the client. Any player caught leaking their client will also receive a 3 months ban from Crossfire and all hosted and / or affiliated competitions.

Anti3 have also stated they will not be allowing teKoa or Aza to use any further private anti3 client.

The Summer season usually signifies a cool down in competitive play, a time for holidays and experiments within the map pool and configs. But tonight sees the return of the big guns, as preparations intensify for next months CDC 3.

Since their lackluster performance at the CPC 2 back in April, dignitas have had a torrid time, plagued by roster changes and an inability to consistently perform they've yet to find their grove. Out goes the final few remnants of the legendary u96d team [Night, r3vers & sol] - in comes long time standin kot & former Parodia favourite Jauhis, taking their potision in the starting 6. It will be interesting to see how JaKaZc copes playing the role as primary rifle engie.

Could the excellent acquisition of Jauhis bring about the return of dignitas dominance?


Next up in Group A CDC destined finest take on the groups frag bait tacky. A must win match for both teams if they've any aspiration of making it out of the group stages.


And saving the best till last, GamesTV bring you their rather self-indulgent [newbs] Nationscup. Tonight sees ze Germans take on Belgium.