SteamGamers has gone IRC

By Spiked and GarfieldH

IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, has arrived on our site. Many of you have noticed that we have added a direct link to our IRC channel on our website. IRC is best described as a chatroom. It was developed in the late 80's and used to give reports in wartorn areas when the war has issued a media blackout. Most effectivly used durring the '91 Soviet Coup and most recently used in the Invasion of Iraq in 2003.

This tool is compared to our ventrillo server but is geared towards those who do not have a mic. We invite all who want to spend the time with us to join us.

To join us, you can click the link on our website to a widget that is built right into our website. You also can join using mIRC or Trillian. The last option is connecting directly through our host Game Surge at, http://www.gamesurge.net/chat/SteamGamers. For those using mIRC or Trillian our server is: /server irc.gamesurge.net and we are in the channel: /join #Steamgamers. We hope to see you soon!

New Board of Director

By SG Presidents

We are proud to announce SpikedRocker as the communities newest Board of Director. In order to keep up with server demands, we have collectively decided to promote SpikedRocker for his continued efforts in providing a positive environment for our community members and guests. He has brought in features such as the newsletter and is always willing to set up and coordinate game tournaments. His decision making isn't one that has to be questioned, so we are looking forward to seeing our new BD in action.

In addition to this promotion, we will be changing the way the Board of Directors Operate. The BD's now have full authority to make any change necessary to keep the community running smooth as long as all members of the "Board" agree. The Presidents will remain the highest authority but will only need to be consulted when the Board needs a "tie breaker vote". The board will also be 100% responsible for managing the AO staff and will have full say over promotions/punishments within those ranks.

Congrats Spiked and good luck!

Left 4 Dead Review

By LVG

Many people were waiting for the release of Left 4 Dead, but cause of it's short campaign many were disappointed. The matchmaking is a let down although it is better than expected it still needs to be tweaked or just gone completely.

Some Good things about the game are:

• Rumor of Valve making a new chapter every 3 months.
• Fun online play when with friends.
• The AI Director works very well in this game.
• Allows custom content. E.G Being able to play De_dust2
• Endless hours of fun versus.
• Constant Friendly fire giving it a more realistic felling.
• Great team work game.
• People making custom chapters for the game.

Some areas that could use some work:

• Matchmaking and not enough weapons.
• Lots of hassle for Counter Strike Source maps.
• Bug: Versus mode doesn't allow one person to spawn as infected.

In Conclusion Left 4 Dead is a good game just needs more "accessories" and a longer campaign. The whole feel to the game while playing gives a great experience like seeing a witch in the corner and everyone goes silent trying to stay quiet as if your actually there, but of course you get the one guy who runs up and Melee attacks her "Hey guys who's this" Next minute Dead.

If you haven't already bought it, buy Left 4 Dead

SteamGamers at I36

By Cranks

I36 is the UKs largest LAN party with over 2000+ gamers turning up every year for 72 hours of non stop gaming. So obviously your thinking why would I want to pay to play when I can sit at home? Well the answer to that is there is MORE at I36 to do than just gaming. The M festival takes place every year at the I series. They invite some of the big names in the gaming industry to come down and show off what there working on. Now I guess you don’t want to be indoors all the time? Well outdoor activates take place this includes Paintball, Air Soft, Quad Biking many other things as well. It would be great to see some of you guys come down meet and greet have a laugh think of it as a mini community meet up.

For more information on I36 or to book got to http://i36.multplay.co.uk/ the early bird offer has just ended but you can still get a ticket for 80 giving you access to the M festival (there is also a spectator option that gives you access to everything except being able to bring your pc down and play) and all the deals up to the event. Choices of accommodation range from hostel or hotel and are on site no car needed. So that’s as much information as I myself can give you to persuade you to attend.

View Last Months Newsletter

Company of Heroes

By Haggard

COH is a must have! If you do not have this game get off your ass and buy it. I am not big on RTS games but have found this one to be worth the price. Many members of the community play COH and we invite you to join us.

Company of Heroes is a real time strategy game based during World War II. If you buy COH Gold you will get your choice of four different armies (American, British, German, and Panzer Elite) that each have their own strengths and weaknesses. It takes a little while to learn all the features of each army but either way you must work quickly because you can be assured your opponent is coming. The only advice I have for you is to build a good defense and stock pile your offense.

If enough players within the community own the game I plan to host a few tournaments. If you manage to win the tournament you will earn something for your efforts.

New Admins

By Beth

Please welcome our newest admins to their posts: Chaos, Eversmen, Wolflovervr6, StykerSwat, Bubbles, Clod14, Caution209, and Epic-Bread-Man. We'd also like to congradulate Zargotelc on making the forum rank of Honorable Gamer. Huzzah's all around.

Garfield's Corner

By GarfieldH

What a brilliant month, we are certainly getting our name out to the big wide world, we are just doing fantastic, we're opening up to other games and are user base is growing, we'd like to thank every for putting so much hard work in to inviting friends to games, or just mentioning us, every little helps!

We will still have weekly/monthly competitions, and we now have the player of the month, where you can win prizes.

Much more to come next month, we also have the IRC up and running again, which will open another portal for you to contact us!

GunGame Extravaganza

By daZe

I'm glad to announce that our first GunGame Extravaganza month has successfully finished, Congratulations to BulletWound winning November's prize, which was a copy of L4D.

Entering into December we hope to provide the same top quality gaming tournaments and events as last month, we cannot do this without you, the players that play week in and week out. Thank you for your support.

We run sessions every Thursday, four a month and the scores from each session add up to see who the final winner is for that month. Anyone can play, no matter if you missed a week or two, you might get lucky.

Sessions are from 8PM GMT / 3PM ET for the European session and 8PM ET / 1AM GMT For the American session, we also hold a third session, subject to demand and if the first session of the night is busy at 10PM GMT / 5PM ET. You don't have to be from Europe to play in the Europe session and vica-versa with the American session, they are only named as such because it better fits players within those time zones. [SG] daZe will be running the European session and [SG] Beth will be heading the American session, if you have any question or queries then please don't hesitate to contact either by PM, SteamChat, Ventrilo or any other method available for communication.

Maps are preselected each week and are the same for all sessions on the day, we welcome any maps for suggestion, whether they are on our rotation or not, everyone's opinion matters.

Every week a new announcement is created to remind people of the event, what maps are going to be played and also in-game scores are posted in the GunGame section of the forums to keep players updated with scores to see how they're doing in the tournament.

Community Mapping Project

By Svendy

The SteamGamers community has a lot of mappers and has a FPSBanana studio, which has not seen much activity lately. After talking with SpikedRocker, we decided to bring the studio back to life and combine the skills of all the mappers, in a community project. The main goal is to make enough maps, to create a SG studio maps server for ZM and ZM. As it looks on the members page of the studio there is at least 8 mappers, as of now everything is being planed out, with a temporary deadline of at least 10 maps in 2 months. Some advantages of working as a group is: other mappers can help out with custom models/textures/sound reviews and tips. You could also work together and upload the .vmf for others to download and work on. Many mappers working on one or two maps at the time the production speed will be much higher, also the mappers could specialise on one or two certain parts of the development like i.e.: design and optimizing. If you like to help out please send a PM to Svendy.