This unfortunately meant that their games were often loved by the hardcore FPS players and fans and disliked by the wider audience in the long run but now Splash Damage have tried to even that out a bit, in order to attract a wider player base to their game. Whether or not this will prove successful is uncertain at the moment, but it is definitely something that can go both ways in terms of success.

With Brink it seems like they have borrowed ideas from various popular and tried to mix it all together into something that works and by the looks of it they have succeeded. You have got the different body types and the cartoony looks from Team Fortress 2, the objective based gameplay and the class system from the previous Splash Damage games and then funnily enough a new and innovative way of creating your character that allows you to customize his looks, sound and weapons to your liking, something I personally find really entertaining, almost like The Sims – but with guns.

Last but not least we have got the new movement system called SMART (Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain) which Splash Damage claims will add a new and refreshingly different way to how FPS games are played, if this is true only time can tell.

When it comes to adding features that support the competitive community Splash Damage have always been known to include both spectator modes and demo recording and dedicated server files and mod tools, things that used to be quiet common a long side games just a few years back, but today it is quite special when a game comes out and features those things.

This is one of the things that really talks in favour of Brink becoming a popular eSports title in the future, as it features all of these things and has the latest graphics all together with a new and cool looking movement system that makes it enjoyable for spectators to watch – I am sure I am not the only one who is tired of looking at Counter Strike 1.6 graphics and slow movement on various eSports TV sites. The developers behind Brink have mentioned a lot in interviews how it will be completely up to each person, how they want to set up their server and what kind of perks/weapons they want to allow or disallow, something that is also great news for the competitive side of things as the latest titles have simply not had anything like this without different coders having to do tons of workarounds etc.

Splash Damage also said they added in different server profiles in the dedicated server tool and amongst one of those profiles there is said to be a competitive setup for the clans to use straight out of the box. For Brink to succeed it will also need a lot of the bigger competitive gaming sites such as ESL, Clanbase, TWL and so on to pick it up as an official game, and luckily by the looks of it that is just what they are planning to do, the American part of ESL already announced a release tournament with $4000 dollars in price money, a jaw dropping amount of money compared to what have been seen on other online tournaments lately and the European section of ESL have promised to announce something as well as soon as the game is released in Europe.

This is definitely something that should attract the attention of many competitive gamers from the different communities, a thing that is crucial for the games popularity and community to grow. There has already been shown big interest by many players from many different communities and many eSports associates and some gaming brands have already announced cups with prices to be won so I think it is safe to say that Brink will definitely get a good start with a big amount of active players, but if the game has enough potential to keep it that way is also something that will remain unknown for now.

Brink is without a doubt a game that has a huge potential when it comes to eSport, it has all the right tools and all the right people behind it, to make it happen. But like any other game it is going to take an effort from the community, to set up things like global rule sets and tournaments that can keep the game alive, but if people can manage this I have a good feeling about Brink as one of the next popular eSport games on the market.