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!

The film was created by a team of people (everyone is acting), and every person in the film I had to cast and direct. I acted as the director, sound designer, film editor, and essentially put the entire production together. Sadly, the ending nor beginning was every fully finished. Watch it now:

Tell me what you think!

YouTube Description:
This is a remastered version of a Battlefield 2 action movie I created in 2006 and published in 2007.

Note that this movie contains scenes 3-6. Scenes 1, 2, and 7 were never completed, and thus there’s not a real solid beginning nor end to it. The ending, especially, is very abrupt.

The video was originally created in Windows Movie Maker, with the first remastering using Vegas 7.0. The current version was edited in Vegas 8.0. Music is from the Blackhawk Down Soundtrack.

Some of the footage was recorded with low resolution, so some of the visual are a bit pixelated. This is not my fault as I cannot re-render the original footage, so just bare with it.

To download the crisper (but less visually exciting) original video, use the following link: http://www.fileden.com/files/2/mashtu…

If you enjoyed this film, remember to subscribe!

Thanks,
Mattc0m
www.mattc0m.com

I designed a set of cards for a maternity company called Haute Momas. It offers two coupons on the back of a card, with a pretty standard stock photo for the front. Still, it turned out pretty darn good – I am a bit fan of the color scheme I selected. Has a very professional, yet light “smoothness” to it.

View Full Album

This next set is from a flyer for a theme week for Program Board (an student-run organization that organizes and programs all the events on campus). I was experimenting with a lot of new colors, and it turned out pretty damn slick.

Getting correct colors for the printing was pretty challenging, but it turned out very eye catching and I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from it.

Tell me what you think of both projects!

An intense frag video that features fast paced, ultra action packed footage of Team Deathmatch gameplay in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Features a fast paced, in your face soundtrack.

Programs Used:
* Sony Vegas
* FRAPS

Songs Used:
* What You Want (version 2) http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/
* Omen by The Prodigy

Play with Mattc0m and a shitton of other really cool gamers at FPS Gaming Community.

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)

This quirky adventure mixes the irony of psychic warfare in the US army, a tale of self discovery, political commentary, a mix of great actors, and a premise that is guaranteed to be off-the-wall. While this may seem like a sure winner, it stumbles rather than taking flight and becoming a true classic.

Interested in what I’ve got to say? View my review posted at MovieSector. It’s got the full text, screen captures, a trailer, and my final score (you can also add your own score).