You can’t really talk about video games nowadays without Team Fortress 2 somehow worming its way into the conversation.
Team Fortress 2 is a 2007 class-based FPS game created by the video game TITAN corporation known as Valve. Despite pushing 16 years of age, the game’s fanbase is still extremely dedicated AND still growing… despite the veritable void of attention from its developers and the ongoing plague of cheating bots.
The game’s predecessor, Team Fortress (now with “Classic” appended to its name) is a similarly class based shooter, but its aesthetic draws much more heavily from the militaristic style of Valve’s OTHER IP giant Half-Life. The whole story behind how that came to be is a very long one that traces its roots all the way back to (you guessed it) DOOM. As all roads lead to Rome, all games lead to DOOM, I suppose.
History lesson over, let’s actually talk about TF2. In its infancy, TF2 was a far cry from what it is now. Several classes lacked abilities that they’d gain later on, such as Pyro’s airblast or Engie being able to move his buildings AT ALL. Some classes were… a little stronger back then, too… Most players can’t even begin to imagine playing without such quality of life improvements, but fortunately for said players, I have a solution.
Go play the console releases.
The console releases of TF2 are an interesting case to say the least. Released alongside the PC version, the console version was likely intended to help make the game more accessible since PC gaming wasn’t exactly as widespread as it is today. With this, the console version probably would have received some improvements like basic parity and maybe even crossplay as the years went on, but in true Valve fashion, they left the game to rot after something like three updates and it hasn’t seen the light of day since. As such, it’s stuck in a near release state, so go check out those lack of QoL changes!
I used to not be able to imagine such a bleak world as that, but fortunately I played those console releases. I actually started playing this game when I was 15 (ESRB be damned!) all the way back in 2015 when the world was still transitioning from early internet lolcat humor to whatever the hell we’ve got going on now (affectionately). TF2 then is relatively similar to what we have now, save for a few notable exceptions (and no cheating bots, but those have been around almost as long). I downloaded the game due to my friend’s pleading, and I played it with him for a couple of hours. I remember the first map we played on was CTF_Sawmill (fun fact, they removed this from the map pool for about 5 years) and I had selected Pyro. He seemed like the easiest one to play at the time. I didn’t do all that well, and any enjoyment I did have was marred by the fear that my parents would enter my room and see little impressionable high school sophomore me playing a first-person shooter on the computer, so I didn’t come out of that experience feeling all that great about the game. I didn’t play it again for a while, but when I did… uh… I might have put a lot of time into it…
A lot of time which has been spent trying to get better at it. The game’s skill floor and skill ceiling are WORLDS apart. The sheer amount of movement tech to learn is staggering on its own and the more diehard fans of the game have spent years cataloguing the “theory” of TF2’s mechanics. I recently popped into this side of TF2, entering myself into the competitive scene (yes it has one, a very dedicated one at that) through RGL.gg‘s 6s league. My team got wiped this first season, but that’s to be expected. Honestly, TF2 has massive potential as an esport, it just has zero official backing and gets lost beneath flashier and trendier (arguably less interesting games) such as Overwatch, Dota 2 (support your OTHER games too, Valve!), or League of Legends (despite the fact that every League player I’ve ever spoken to saying that it has actively made their lives worse). Without any real official backing, TF2’s competitive scene doesn’t exactly have much in the way of money to be won…
That’s not to say that there isn’t some sort of cash to be made in the game, though.
TF2 is a unique case, having a whole online marketplace dedicated to buying and selling different in-game items. This trading scene has existed for almost the entire game’s lifespan, and some of the top traders have total item values well within the six figure range. Of course, it’s not really realistic to get into trading expecting to rise to that level nowadays. I did some trading back in 2016 for about a year, and it honestly taught me more about economics than any class I ever took (yet I still find myself being terrible with money… curious). The fun of all of this though is the types of interactions you get to have. You take this wacky, violent shooter game and play it in an entirely different way with a whole different group of players. It goes from guns and guts to hats and fashion. People line up to see who has the best fits and talk about their favorite cosmetics. Now, no mention of TF2’s trading scene would be complete without mentioning the rare and illustrious “unusual“.
An unusual is a type of item quality where a hat or weapon will have a flashy particle effect tied to its model (some examples of which you can see here). They’re exclusively found from unboxing (did you know that TF2 pioneered the lootbox? truly awful!) but are mostly gotten through trading (as in they come into existence from being unboxed and are subsequently traded about). They vary vastly in appearance, desirability, effect, price, etc. TF2’s economy even once helped “save” the economy of Greece (debatable). Speaking of external influence, TF2 has had quite the stranglehold on the internet for one thing…
Memes.
TF2’s place in internet pop-culture is one that cemented itself almost immediately, its characters becoming a staple of 3D animated comedy in 2008 onward. There are hundreds of memes that I’d quote on the daily as a young 9-year old John that I had no idea even came from TF2. I’d grow older, see the thing in the game being referenced and say: “THAT’S where that was from!?” As time has marched onward, TF2’s place in the mainstream has grown stronger if anything. The game has had more players than ever recently (despite current events in-game) and pretty much everyone still knows what you’re talking about when you mention Team Fortress 2.
For that reason, I don’t see this game dying out any time soon.