“The Orange Box”: Four years later, each game in the dreadfully named “Orange Box” has graduated to becoming legends in their own right. “Half-Life 2: Episode Two” was the last the world has seen of Gordon Freeman, and he has yet to reappear. “Team Fortress 2” has gone from elegant class-based shooter to war-themed hat simulator.

Last week, I documented my team’s now-legendary victory in Week 1 of the European “‘Team Fortress 2’” League’s Community Highlander Tournament. It was a defining point in my career as a professional gamer, and I was harboring plans of dropping out of school to hone the art of the Demoman. Enter Week 2.

There used to be a time when I thought that I was good at “Team Fortress 2.” Those days are long past, and now I sit at home nursing my still-bruised ego. You see, I just made the mistake of competing against people better than me. It’s a mistake I’ll never make again.

It’s easy to take for granted just how much “Team Fortress 2” has changed. Remember the commander, a class that was supposed to oversee the game from a top-down strategy perspective? Yeah, me neither, because – oh, right! It was in a version of the game that was shown to the public in freaking 1999.