About TG
TeamTG: Refreshingly Different™
TeamTG is the Home of the Guardians. We are a mature team, grown in strength and tradition since our founding in 1994. With an emphasis on supportive team culture and a laid-back attitude, we recruit on the basis of brotherhood, unity, character and your personal activism with the team. When you choose to join TeamTG, you are making a personal commitment for how you experience gaming.
When we’re not gaming, TeamTG is the bar scene, 24/7. Via our persistent Internet Relay Chatroom (IRC), it is our number one objective to keep our members connected, talking, and having a great time:
And the subject matter can cover anything, from the meaning of life to a play-by-play of someone hitting on a chic at the bar:
OmniBerry: Holy shit, she just pulled out a Macbook Air.
SirSteven: Lick it.
CyberChicken: Don’t pull an OmniFail and go lick it.
Crasty: If you have any balls, you’ll do it right now.
OmniBerry: …
How is this all possible? By the strong dedication of our core members, our innate love for technology and gaming, and our fascinating chats about the latest hot chick (or flirting with our women members. Yes. Woman members.)
We throw parties twice a year, one called SummerBash and the other WinterBash. During these parties, we have a LAN party, grill some BBQ, play games (such as a road rally, softball, or water polo) and hit the bars. It’s a fantastic time, all of our local members meet up, and we talk about it for months afterwards. If you’re in California, why aren’t you joining us right now?
Our Leadership
Dedication and enthusiasm are paramount to the success of our team leaders. They are visionaries and are able to take criticisms constructively and gracefully. In order for one to become a TG officer, they must display exemplary dedication to the game, obtain a respect by the team, and use a strategic mindset that will empower the team. They spark inspiration and enthusiasm; a genuine kinship develops and becomes a bonding glue. Sheer speed, intellect, and quick on-their-feet thinking, as well as a knack for getting things done right, are the critical success factors of our TG leadership. Do you have what it takes to become a TG leader? Join us, and show us what you have got.
Code of Conduct / Terms of Service.
Our Code of Conduct, sometimes referred to as our COC/TOS, guides our behavior while inside of official matches, in-game practice, or out-of-game discussion, such as in our IRC (Internet Relay Chat) room. Please keep the following policies in mind and at-hand when interacting with fellow TG members:
No Globals
Global chat during official games are forbidden. Global messages (defined as messages / voice received by both your team and the opponents) is restricted to ranks Captain and above.
Violation of this rule will result in an instant kick from the current and next game.
Appropriate Globals
Authorized globals (Captain and above during official matches, or all players outside of matches) must follow these strict guidelines:
- Absolutely no trash talking
- Never make yourself or TeamTG appear in a negative light
- Offer insightful discussion; if someone on the other side would care less about your comment, don’t make it.
Anti-Competition
As part of TeamTG, you are not allowed to participate against our team within the same game. For instance, if TeamTG had a Half Life Deathmatch team, you are forbidden from joining another HL:D team.
If you are discovered to have competing interests, you will be disbarred from competition.
Team Harmony
If you have a personal problem with another member of the team, you need to resolve such issues privately. If you are unable to reach a resolution, please let someone of rank Chief Petty Officer or higher aware of your conflict.
IRC SOFA Rules
- [S]ubject: Read the subject line as you enter the channel. The subject line represents the *most current* up-to-date essential information.
- [O]perators: Operators are in charge of maintaining order within the channel and the game servers. In order to be a channel operator, you must be part of the IRC staff. Absolutely no asking for Ops.
- [F]looding is illegal; if you are found to be flooding our channel, you will either be kicked or banned.
- [A]ttendance is mandatory. If you are part of the TG team, you must be in the channel as much as possible. We utilize IRC as our virtual meeting place and it allows us to formulate strategies and get to know each other.
History of TeamTG.
Some teams start with a couple of guys at work. Others are a result of a master-planned organization by project managers. Our team began with two guys who loved games. Their first game being Doom.
1994-1996: Flamin’
Mark and Matt are gamers, enjoying some Final Fantasy VI on Mark’s Super Nintendo. He has a demo of this new game, called Doom, that he installs within DOS on his slightly-outdated 486dx. After waiting for installation to complete across several 1.3″ floppy diskettes, we are greated with a loud shotgun bang! and glorious midi music pumping from his speakers, and the words “DOOM” displayed brilliantly on his CRT monitor.
It was a bit choppy, and we couldn’t play full screen. But hell this game was 3D! And he had a modem. And so we played Doom. And played more Doom. And we had 1 on 1 deathmatches through the large catacombs of the underworld. And we co-oped from cyberdemon and spider masterminds alike. And it was good.
Then something happened. We discovered local area networking in our high school science class. These new speed demon machines had Windows 95 installed. We were amazed as we double clicked the doom launcher icon and the machine dropped into DOS. And our first LAN party game was born.
And thus TeamTG got their first players: Matt, Josh, Harris, Mark, and Adam.
1996-2001: FTech
Mark and Matt loved gaming so much, that they moved on to create their own games in qbasic, hypercard and Apple IIe basic. In continuation of their historic (or at least, for them) production of “Spy Quest” in 1994, an edutainment title for Durham Elementary in Fremont, California, they continued the series with Phantasy Quest for the Apple IIe, Star Legacy for qbasic, and Zombie Island for the Apple Macintosh Hypercard.
They moved on to play more RPGs, such as the Phantasy Star series for Sega Genesis and Lunar for Sega CD. After playing these games, they became inspired to create their own story: Trinity.
The Trinity Project was an ambitious plan to create a role playing game in a fully developed world, saturated with sub-plots and fresh game play. The masters of this universe, called the Guardians, were very well liked by Mark and Matt– so much that their identities became incorporated into the story: Matt as “Epic” and Mark as “Excalibur.”
In the world of LAN parties, Epic and Excalibur continued to play the latest releases, including Quake II, Half-Life, Doom, Alpha Centauri, Baldur’s Gate series, and Starcraft. They also held their first public LAN party at Irvington High School in Fremont, playing hours of Half Life after school.
In 1999, Epic changed his name to OmniRune, and lead the high school computer club.
And thus TeamTG gained more members: Al, Eric, qgoldq, brinstar and friends.
2001-2004: The Guardians
2001-2003: (Gatekeepers of Power)
2003-2006: (Power True, Grace Infinite)
OmniRune browses Amazon.com and discovers a game called Starsiege Tribes. Reading the description and some reviews, he immediately purchases it. With a handy cable modem, he loads Tribes onto his overclocked Intel Pentium II 300 @ 450 and sees what his GeForce II GTS and Soundblaster Live can give him.
OMG WTF. The Best Gamer Experience. Ever. Massive online first person shooting. Freedom of movement. Team-based gaming. Capture the flag. Deployables. Vehicles. Basically, all the fun one could ask for from a game.
And so OmniRune played. And played. And bought the game for Excalibur. And his friends. In-game, he created the first tag TeamTG has ever worn: |TG|OmniRune.
Shortly after joining Tribes 1, Tribes 2 was released and OmniRune immediately purchased it. Excalibur, not seeing the full value of the Tribes series, did not own the game until OmniRune purchased and gave him a copy.
Pushing his college work aside, OmniRune played Tribes 2 day and night, dedicating all his free time to this fantastic world. He immediately created The Guardians in-game, and convinced Shadow Cat to allow The Guardians to annex his team, Shadow Guardians. With the influx of players, OmniRune was able to build his team and recruit talent that still is active with TeamTG today.
The Guardians became competitive and continued to annex smaller teams to create a massive roster of talent and fun. With over 80 players, TG frequently concurrently held multiple roster games at once for their various divisions of The Guardians. The main division of the Guardians wore the TG| tag.
In 2002 they held their first team LAN party at San Jose State University in San Jose, California. Members came in from as far away as Victoria, Washington to celebrate in-person team spirit and to finally meet one another. Little did they know they would still be friends 6 years later!
2005-2006: The Tribeless
During this time, TeamTG did not have a core game. With Tribes II on the decline, the Guardians loosely played Counterstrike, Raven Shield, Warcraft III and a few other FPS games. None quite had the drive and passion that Tribes II gave us, but with OmniRune thick in his college studies, he was unable to dedicate his time to leadership.
2006-2007: The Guardians (Thus Always to Tyrants)
With OmniRune’s college studies behind him, he glances around and begins to rebuild the Guardians. He announces his support for Tribes Vengeance and begins to build a team around the title. He announces TeamTG’s bold return by throwing the Santa Cruz LAN party, where many of the members finally reunite after the last LAN parties several years back.
With TeamTG again in full swing, OmniRune recruits aggressively and puts into place a multi-command structure to share command responsibilities. They compete in Tribes Vengeance until it becomes obvious that the community is too small.
The Guardians splinters into another game, Day of Defeat Source, using the in-game name “TeamTG.” After informally being known as TeamTG, OmniRune declares that the Guardians will formally adopt the name.
2007-current TeamTG (Refreshingly Different)
TeamTG continues to game more strongly now than ever before. With FOUR LAN parties (at minimum) a year, two held on the East coast and two on the West, TeamTG has full dedication to PC gaming and LAN party goodness.
Our members are actively attending LAN parties, and those too far away are a very active part of IRC and our online games.
We presently are playing Fallen Empire: Legions, the spiritual successor to Tribes II, and Team Fortress II, a goofy fun team-based game.
Four Pillars: Brotherhood, Unity, Character, Activism.
Our team operates with four pillars to ensure the success of our mission: to be the victor in any match. By being a member of TeamTG, you are required to be familiar with our core values and practice them.
Brotherhood
Brotherhood is the glue to our organization; it is the kinship bond that holds us together as a team. In this case, it is our joint ownership of the game as well as our desire to succeed. True to brotherhood, when we aren’t playing the game, we like to talk to one another about our lives, and we try to plan formal gatherings, such as LAN parties. By being in TeamTG, you are creating a strong bond with the TeamTG family.
Unity
The ultimate success of TeamTG rests on its ability to function as a single, cohesive unit. As such, unity is one of our core values. We work together, and we all have the desire to win. Occasionally, one might become distraught in the heat of battle, and feel that another teammate made a grave error. It is important that such conflicts are resolved with the interests of the team kept in mind; that is, above all else, the success of the team is most important. Thus, if you believe that a member did something offensive, let them know in private. Not only will such conflicts be limited in scope to those members involved, the conflict will also not have the potential to grow larger due to its immediate, swift, and careful handling of the matter.
Character
We all have personalities, and it is important that your personality works with ours. When we are playing games, we absolutely do not tolerate talking back to the game commanders, nor giving negative remarks to our competition. If a competitor royally kicks your butt, tell them they had an excellent shot. Not only does this keep the game friendly and light-hearted, but you may later run across this individual again — and will be happy that you were friendly the first time around! Thus, are members have several things in common: we wish to win, we want to have fun, and we let others have fun with us.
Activism
The team is only as strong as its members, and thus it is whatever one makes it. Thus, we expect that our members dedicate their time and energy into the team; they are expected to active participants in our IRC channel, as well as play in our games. If they meet someone who they think would be a good fit for our team, they are expected to introduce them to the rest of the team. If a member wants to see a change in a process, they bring it up. Above else, these things are done while keeping our four pillars in mind.
