Unreal Tournament's CTF mode tweaked for better e-sports presentation

Unreal Tournament
YouTube YouTube
Watch On

Changes to Unreal Tournament's CTF mode have so far proved "quite controversial," according to Senior Gameplay Programmer Joe Wilcox, who says in the latest Unreal Tournament Project Update video that the implementation of halftime, overtime and sudden death are just "the very beginning" of an effort intended to make the game "more friendly to a viewing audience."

Community feedback will go a long way toward determining what, and to what extent, various aspects of the new Unreal Tournament are changed, but the developers are clearly making the game the game with e-sports in mind.

"There are a lot of things we want to try," Wilcox says. "We really want to do some things presentation-wise that I think are going to be really kind of unique, that nobody's seen before and that are really missing in the e-sports arena right now in terms of giving the spectator a chance to gain more information without having that frantic pace that you always see in e-sports."

Other topics of conversation including the translocator, the dodge button and the overall game speed, which is still being tweaked to ensure the game remains accessible to everyone. "The general consensus in the forums has been that the old UT99 players feel like we're too slow, and so we recently sped it up just a little bit," Senior Designer Jim Brown says. "But we don't want to get to the point where it becomes so frantic that the average player kind of gets lost in the shuffle or can't keep up."

To find out more about what's in store in the new Unreal Tournament, have a look at our epic Epic interview from May.

Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

Latest in FPS
A monster made of glowing skulls has a brinrevolver aimed at it in Abyssus.
Wield a brinerevolver as a brinehunter in Abyssus, the briniest ‘brinepunk’ shooter this side of the Mariana Trench
A mascot character from The Finals winks at the camera while brandishing a minigun.
The Finals new season is here, toting permanent team deathmatch and a giant minigun
quake champions classic gordon freeman mod
Gordon Freeman joins a retro pandimensional deathmatch in crossover mod Quake Champions Classic
Painkiller (2025) screenshot
Painkiller is back, and maybe they'll finally get it right this time
Helldivers 2
Arrowhead’s CEO got a call from PlayStation when he said players could save their money and wait to buy Helldivers 2 until the servers were fixed: They ‘asked me what the f*** I’m smoking’
A screenshot of Helldivers 2, depicting a Helldiver saluting while wearing an anthropomorphic facemask
The United Nations asked Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead if it'd give a talk on psychological manipulation: ‘Could we brainwash an entire community to fight for a fascist state? … Would we be okay with that? Turns out, yeah’
Latest in News
A woman with short hair stands next to a pot plant, provocatively
GOG's version of Silent Hill 4 has been updated with missing content from the original console game
A blue dragon rises into storm clouds
Wizards of the Coast throws a bone to players who miss vanilla Magic: The Gathering with a dragon-themed set called Tarkir: Dragonstorm
Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders
Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders is getting a new mountain next month and a whole bunch more throughout the year, including a game editor
Lady smiling with the sun in her face
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's director was 'starving for new turn-based RPGs,' and figured if he wanted them, there would be others out there who'd want to play his game
farcana
'The Middle East's answer to Marvel Rivals' is an 'AI-powered', crypto-infused hero shooter that looks like hot garbage
A monster made of glowing skulls has a brinrevolver aimed at it in Abyssus.
Wield a brinerevolver as a brinehunter in Abyssus, the briniest ‘brinepunk’ shooter this side of the Mariana Trench