Welcome to Team Fortress 2 Gaming Economy Education website
This website will teach you the Team Fortress 2 Economy,Community and History
Do keep in mind, you have to read alot so prepare your eyes. Also you can always go on the TF2 Wiki and I stole most of the info there.
The History
Team Fortress 2 (TF2) is a team-based multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It is the sequel to the 1996 mod Team Fortress for Quake and its 1999 remake, Team Fortress Classic. It was released as part of the video game bundle The Orange Box in October 2007 for Microsoft Windows and the Xbox 360. A PlayStation 3 version followed in December 2007. The game was released for Windows as a standalone entry in April 2008, and was updated to support OS X in June 2010 and Linux in February 2013. It is distributed online through Valve's digital retailer Steam, with retail distribution being handled by Electronic Arts.
In Team Fortress 2, players join one of two teams comprising nine character classes, battling in a variety of game modes including capture the flag and king of the hill. The development is led by John Cook and Robin Walker, creators of the original Team Fortress. Announced in 1998, the game once had more realistic, militaristic visuals and gameplay, but this changed over the protracted nine-year development. After Valve released no information for six years, Team Fortress 2 regularly featured in Wired News' annual vaporware list among other ignominies. The finished Team Fortress 2 has cartoon-like visuals influenced by the art of J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell, and Norman Rockwell, and uses Valve's Source game engine.
Team Fortress 2 received critical acclaim for its art direction, gameplay, humor, and use of character in a multiplayer-only game. Valve continues to release new content, including maps, items and game modes, as well as community-made updates and contributed content. In June 2011, it became free-to-play, supported by microtransactions for in-game cosmetics. A 'drop system' was also added and refined, allowing free-to-play users to periodically receive game equipment and items by use of a random number generator. Though the game had a unofficial competitive scene for many years, support for official competitive play through ranked matchmaking and an overhauled casual experience was added in July 2016.
Development
Origins and early development
The original Team Fortress was developed by Robin Walker and John Cook as a free mod for the 1996 PC game Quake. In 1998, Walker and Cook were employed by Valve Corporation, which had just released its first game, Half-Life. They and Valve began developing Team Fortress 2 as a standalone retail game using Valve's GoldSrc engine.[43] In 1999, Valve released Team Fortress Classic, a port of the original Team Fortress, as a free Half-Life mod.[44] Team Fortress Classic was developed using the publicly available Half-Life software development kit as an example to the community and industry of its flexibility.[45]
Team Fortress 2 originally featured a modern war visual style
In contrast to the original Team Fortress, Valve originally planned Team Fortress 2 to have a modern war aesthetic. It would feature a command hierarchy including a Commander class, parachute drops over enemy territory, networked voice communication, and numerous other innovations.[46] The Commander class played similarly to a real-time strategy game, with the player viewing the game from a bird's-eye perspective and issuing orders to players and AI-controlled soldiers.[46]
Team Fortress 2 was first shown at E3 1999,[47] where Valve showcased new technologies including parametric animation, which blended animations for smoother, more lifelike movement,[48] and Intel's multi-resolution mesh technology, which dynamically reduced the detail of distant on-screen elements to improve performance.[48] The game earned several awards including Best Online Game and Best Action Game.[47]
In mid-2000, Valve announced that Team Fortress 2 had been delayed for a second time.[49] They attributed the delay to development switching to an in-house engine that is today known as the Source engine. Following the announcement, Valve stopped releasing information about Team Fortress 2 and the game entered six years of silent development.[50] Walker and Cook worked on various other Valve projects; Walker was project lead on Half-Life 2: Episode One[51] and Cook became a Steam developer.[52] Team Fortress 2 became a prominent example of vaporware, a long-anticipated game that had seen years of development, and was often mentioned alongside Duke Nukem Forever.[3] Walker later stated that Valve had built "three to four different games" before settling on their final design.[53] Shortly before the release of Half-Life 2 in 2004, Valve's marketing director Doug Lombardi confirmed that Team Fortress 2 was still in development. Valve reintroduced Team Fortress 2 at the July 2006 EA Summer Showcase event with a drastically different visual design.[9]
Final design
The exterior of a RED base, showing warm colors, angular shapes and wooden construction materials The exterior of a BLU base on the same map, using cooler colors, orthogonal shapes and metal construction
Both teams sport their own art design and color coding to help players navigate the levels
Departing from the realistic visual design of Valve games such as Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source and Day of Defeat: Source, Team Fortress 2 features a cartoon-like visual style influenced by 20th-century commercial illustrations[10][54] and the artwork of J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and Norman Rockwell,[4] achieved through gooch shading.[55] The game debuted with the Source engine's new dynamic lighting, shadowing and soft particle technologies alongside Half-Life 2: Episode Two. It was the first game to implement the Source engine's new Facial Animation 3 features.[56]
Valve abandoned the game's earlier realistic style when it became impossible to reconcile it with the unrealistic gameplay, with opposing armies having constructed elaborate bases directly next to each other.[57] The Commander class was abandoned as players would simply refuse to follow the player's orders.[57]
The art style was inspired by the artwork of J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and Norman Rockwell.[4] Valve designed each character, team and equipped weapon to be visually distinct, even at range; for example, the coloring draws attention to the chest area, bringing focus on the equipped weapon.[58] The voices for each of the classes were based on imagining what people from the 1960s would expect the classes to have sounded like, according to writer Chet Faliszek.[59]
The map design has a evil genius theme with archetypical spy fortresses, concealed within inconspicuous buildings such as industrial warehouses and farms to give plausibility to their close proximities; these bases are usually separated by a neutrally themed space. The bases hide exaggerated super weapons such as laser cannons, nuclear warheads, and missile launch facilities, taking the role of objectives. The maps have little visual clutter and stylized, almost impressionistic modeling, to allow enemies to be spotted more easily. The impressionistic design approach also affects textures, which are based on photos that are filtered and improved by hand, giving them a tactile quality and giving Team Fortress 2 its distinct look. The bases are designed to let players immediately know where they are. RED bases use warm colors, natural materials and angular shapes, while BLU bases use cool colors, industrial materials and orthogonal shapes.[58]
Release
During the July 2006 Electronic Arts press conference, Valve revealed that Team Fortress 2 would ship as the multiplayer component of The Orange Box. A conference trailer showcasing all nine of the classes demonstrated for the first time the game's whimsical new visual style. Managing director of Valve Gabe Newell said that the company's goal was to create "the best looking and best-playing class-based multiplayer game".[9] A beta release of the entire game was made on Steam on September 17, 2007 for customers who had pre-purchased The Orange Box, who had activated their Black Box coupon, which was included with the ATI HD 2900XT Graphics cards, and for members of Valve's Cyber Café Program.[60][61] The beta continued until the game's final release.
The game was released on October 10, 2007, both as a standalone product via Steam and at retail stores as part of The Orange Box compilation pack, priced at each gaming platform's recommended retail price. The Orange Box also contains Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and Portal. Valve offered The Orange Box at a ten percent discount for those who pre-purchased it via Steam before the October 10, as well as the opportunity to participate in the beta test.[62]
Post-release
Since the release of Team Fortress 2, Valve has continually released free updates and patches through Steam for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux users; though most patches are used for improving the reliability of the software or to tweak gameplay changes, several patches have been used to introduce new features and gameplay modes, and are often associated with marketing materials such as comics or videos offered on the Team Fortress 2 website; this blog is also used to keep players up to date with the ongoing developments in Team Fortress 2.[63] As of July 2012, each class has been given a dedicated patch that provides new weapons, items, and other gameplay changes; these class patches typically included the release of the class's "Meet the Team" video.[33][64][65] Other major patches have included new gameplay modes including the Payload,[19] Payload Race,[23] Training,[66] Highlander,[67] Medieval,[68] and Mann vs Machine modes.[20] Themed patches have also been released, such as a Halloween-themed map with unique items available only during a set period around the holiday.[69] Other new features have given players the ability of crafting new items within the game,[70] trade items with other players,[71] purchase in-game items through funds in Steam, and save and edit replay videos that can be posted to YouTube.[73]
Valve has released tools to allow users to create maps, weapons, and cosmetic items through a contribution site; the most popular are added as official content for the game. This approach has subsequently created the basis for the Steam Workshop functionality of the software client. In one case, more than fifty users from the content-creation community worked with Valve to release an official content update in May 2013, with all of the content generated by these players. Valve reported that as of June 2013, over $10 million has been paid back to over 400 community members that have helped to contribute content to the game, including a total of $250,000 for the participants in the May 2013 patch. To help promote community-made features, Valve has released limited time events, such as the "Gun Mettle" or "Invasion" events in the second half of 2015, also including the "Tough Break" update in December 2015, in which players can spend a small amount of money which is paid back to the community developers for the ability to gain unique items offered while playing on community-made maps during the event.
Development of the new content has been confirmed for the Xbox 360, while development for the PlayStation 3 was deemed "uncertain" by Valve. However, the PlayStation 3 version of Team Fortress 2 received an update that repaired some of the issues found within the game, ranging from graphical issues to online connectivity problems; this update was included in a patch that also repaired issues found in the other games within The Orange Box. The updates released on PC and planned for later release on Xbox 360 include new official maps and game modes, as well as tweaks to classes and new weapons that can be unlocked through the game's achievement system. The developers attempted to negotiate with Xbox 360 developer Microsoft to keep the Xbox 360 releases of these updates free, but Microsoft refused and Valve announced that they would release bundles of several updates together to justify the price. Because of the cost of patching, Valve has been unable to provide additional patches to the Xbox 360 version since 2009.
On June 10, 2010, Team Fortress 2 was released for OS X, shortly after the release of Steam for OS X. The release was teased by way of an image similar to early iPod advertising, showing a dark silhouette of the Heavy on a bright green background, his Sandvich highlighted in his hand. Virtual earbuds, which can be worn when playing on either OS X or Windows once acquired, were given to players playing the game on OS X before June 14, though the giveaway period was later extended to August 16.
On November 6, 2012, Valve announced the release of Team Fortress 2 for Linux as part of a restricted beta launch of Steam on the platform. This initial release of Steam and Team Fortress 2 was targeted at Ubuntu with support for other distributions planned for the future. Later, on December 20, 2012, Valve opened up access to the beta, including Team Fortress 2, to all Steam users without the need to wait for an invitation.[94] On February 14, 2013, Valve announced the full release of Team Fortress 2 for Linux. From then to March 1, anyone who played the game on Linux would receive a free Tux penguin, which can be equipped in-game.
Team Fortress 2 was announced in March 2013 to be the first game to officially support the Oculus Rift, a consumer-grade virtual reality headset. A patch will be made to the client to include a "VR Mode" that can be used with the headset on any public server.