Jowan: Designated driver.

On the first day of the Expo, I noticed that on the ridiculously expensive Alienware computers ESL were using, people were playing Trackmania Nations Forever, a free game. I found this slightly amusing, and moved on.

On the Sunday, the Expo was less crowded. We found that there were competitions open to the public on the ESL stage. As the only person in the group who plays Trackmania, I was peer pressured into entering, even though I hadn’t played for months and thought I’d be really bad.

Maybe it would be a good idea to explain Trackmania, which is a free game, available to download on Steam or at http://www.trackmania.com. It is a semi-cartoonish racing game which I used to play a lot. It can become quite addictive trying to beat your best times, and that’s just single player. Multiplayer games become even more exciting and obviously more competitive. There is a huge selection of servers to play on, each of which can have different tracks. The inclusion of an easy-to-use track creator means that the possibilities are endless. Tracks range from small acrobatic tricks which, when done right, can be finished in seconds, to extremely long races with jumps and loops which might take several minutes.

» Read more: [MCM] ESL/Trackmania Nations Forever