games The Challenge Pro Mode (CPM) project was created by Richard 'Hoony' Sandlant in May 1999 (when the 'Q3test' was released) after he realised that Quake 3 Arena was going to have a lot of "newbie-friendly" features and after John Carmack admitted a more challenging version might be better for professional gamers (which is where the name "pro mode" came from). The Challenge Pro Mode's goals were, first and foremost, to make a more exciting and challenging game to play and we hoped that this would help advance Q3 into a professional sport. Along the way we made a choice between making only small conservative changes to Q3A, and making the changes that our design team recommended. We took the path of making the changes that our design team felt were necessary. Our approach was to form an international project team and to separate "Design" from "Programming". While the programming team might have input into the design process they didn't make final design decisions - that was left to a team of experienced Quake players who tested changes using a "tweaks" mod. The design team consisted of players with a mix of competitive experience across Q1, Q2, Q3 and even UT. Before the design team began their work we asked the community to 'brainstorm' a list (called the "candidates list") of all the possible changes they would like to see (some were contradictory). We also asked noted commentators (pundits) in the community what they thought might be best. The designers took note of all of these suggestions, and used a long process of tweaking and testing to develop the Challenge Pro Mode design. The team released two public betas of their work for feedback and input from the community. And that is pretty much how the project team has worked ever since. The result is a gameplay design which we think is "finely tuned".