It starts with an exposure to one Quake. Maybe it was Quake Live. Or maybe it was Quake 3 and it just blows you away. Deathmatch games like Quake, perhaps they are on a decline and well past their maturity stage and growth stage but at the end of the day, deathmatch will like books never die. There will always be a niche and place for people to play the games they love. Ten years from now, maybe ESR won't remain, maybe DM won't remain, but I predict a sort of "cult of sorts" will become apparent. Maybe it will be the same twenty or so people playing 3v3 CTF in some Unreal Flash game. Maybe it will be look like a sort of mid-air, endif Quake World thing with people just playing that shit over and over again with faster rockets and slower falls. Who knows? The thing is... yeah, the age of DM has waned, but I don't think it will ever fall.

Why am I so certain?

Because honestly... the truth is... deathmatch is fucking addicting.

There's nothing like it. Picking up items. Moving around using some quirky movement glitch like bhops or strafes or sprints. Blasting the opponent with guns that function nothing like each other. Rock. Papers. Scissors. But of course, most of you reading this already know this. That DM is addictive because it's challenging and rewarding because it's fast and fun and challenging. And it seems like any DM can attract a true DM-er to give it a try.

Why how many times have we heard of a person from Quake Live hopping into Quake 3 or even CPM? From CPM to other things? From those other things to older and more ancienter things? It's insane. I was born around the Call of Duty 4 era... and I never got to experience what Quake was until '09. And it's amazing. I loved Quake Live. It led me to promode. I loved promode it led me to all sorts of other shit. Defrag. And fucking... wow... I can just play any DM and I love it now. I mean I fucking installed Doom 2 and played it with more people than I can count or name in the year 2011!!! Like what in the fuck... and then it all culminated when I found QuakeWorld. I've watched painkiller, I've watched Quake II streams, I've watched every DM stream known to man. I've fiddled with Warsow. I've tried it all. And the crazy thing is... so many people like me pick up Quake Live, pickup PQL and they just go WOW.... this movement is A-FUCKING-MAZING. And they want to try what inspired this baby. They want to try CPM. They want to try QuakeWorld they really do WANT TO GO BACK IN TIME. That's the beauty of Quake. It's timeless. Once a person loses that desire for eye-candy and graphics and GeForce cards and Radeon's. It becomes a search for the game with the most depth and gameplay and in the end. The person no longer becomes shallow. Their soul becomes cleansed. And DM lives on.