Many established local gaming clans have opted to skip Call of Duty: Black Ops as a competitive title on the basis that it is simply not suitable for high level play. At the end of 2010, it seemed that the local competitive FPS scene would be dominated by Call of Duty 4 for at least another year, but then NAG magazine came along and managed to attract over 400 players to its very own Black Ops league, also know as the NAG Gaming League (NGL). <\/p>\n
We managed to catch up with NGL project manager Lauren Das Neves to discuss the future of NGL. <\/p>\n
The Telkom DoGaming CoD 4 league has been the biggest event on the local competitive calendar for a few years now, but with the NGL quickly establishing a strong player base, it is difficult to determine whether this is still the case. With 400 core players participating in the NGL, we asked Das Neves if NGL is now the biggest gaming league in SA, to which she replied, “As far as I know, yes.<\/p>\n
It’s an impressive number. So How did they manage to secure so many players in their first season? <\/p>\n
“<\/strong>We originally planned on 60 teams, wanting to have 3 divisions, but we had such an amazing response when we opened registrations in December, and reached our 60 cap within a couple of weeks. The concern we had at that stage was that we had an advert in the December issue of NAG, introducing NGL and the Black Ops League to all our readers, and before the issue had even gone on sale we were getting close to that 60 team cut-off. So it was at that point that we made the call to add an additional 20 slots, bringing the number up to 80,” said Das Neves. <\/p>\n NAG may have yet its feet in the competitive league scene with Black Ops, but according to Das Neves, they are looking to expand this going forward. “We’re currently looking at a couple of other FPS titles, League of Legends, and also suitable console games,” said Das Neves.<\/p>\n They will also be looking to expand the player base going forward. “At the moment we are in Week 6 of Season 1, with 13 weeks left to go. Once that is complete we take a break for one week and use that time to promote and relegate the top three and bottom three in each division. New entries for the 2nd Division will be accepted at this time, so any clans wanting to join the league can register on our website (www.nagleague.co.za) from 1 June. Season 2 then kicks off on the 28 June and runs through to the week just before rAge.”<\/p>\n Lastly, when asked why NAG decided to get into the competitive gaming space Das Neves had this to say:<\/p>\n “We’ve been talking about doing something like this for a while now, and the idea started to take shape in my head at rAge last year while I was watching the MW2 comp in the NAG LAN. The whole MW2 community in SA was amped for the release of Black Ops, and so we saw this as an opportunity to be the first organisation locally to support an online league for this new game. Our vision is to foster local competitive gaming and to give back to the communities that are currently not being supported by any other local leagues.”<\/p>\n