Rampancy

The original organizers of the Halo Winter Season tournament currently run at iGames locations have resigned over philosophical differences with iGames. Jester and Psyrixx have both resigned; Jester posted about it in the HBO forum, and put his letter of resignation up at The Psyjnir Complex. It reads, in part:

For I have been a part of the Bungie community for five years, and that loyalty has made me extremely hard-headed and diffucult to deal with professionally. My zeal to give Halo players the best, cheapest tournament possible has interfered with my ability to effectively compromise and negotiate with iGames. [...]

Ultimately, I was trying to run a national level business-run tournament on a fan tournament budget. This was both idealistic ... and totally unrealistic. Thus my crusade comes to an end.

He also took a few moments to speculate on what the role of tournaments like the one at iGames will be in the future of Halo competition:

I simply don't think the future of national Halo competition lies in game center LANs. This summer PC/Mac Halo will allow online play. Next winter Halo 2 will support XBL. The online support of Halo will suddenly allow tournament directors like myself to run large-scale tournaments without the hassle of registration fees, finding a venue, securing the necessary equipment, and getting teams to actually show up to a physical venue. There have even been discussions regarding the possibility of the first Halo World Cup based on the popular Myth World Cup series.

He went on to say that he harbors no ill will to iGames, and that his team will continue to compete in the Halo Winter Season.

Thanks to Louis Wu at HBO for the original story.