For a game to be considered "competitive" it needs to exhibit balance. You need to be able to say "Team A is better than Team B". Both teams need to start on (relatively) even terms and each be given the same advantages that the other team has, or in some cases one team must be given different advantages to compensate for those that they don't have. Let's look at a few examples:
Halo 3
Halo is great as a competitive game for a few reasons. The main reason is that after each encounter, the player gets their health regenerated to full. This means that at most times, all players are on nearly even terms in regards to how much damage they can take. The other great reason is that players nearly always have a variety of methods to deal that damage to their opponent. They can fire their primary weapon, they can move in for a melee attack, or they can throw grenades. This means that each encounter can be dealt with using a different strategy, unlike other FPS game which revolve around simply being quicker and more accurate than your opponent. The design of the maps also has a big part in the balance. If one team spawns near a sniper rifle, then the other team will probably spawn near another rifle, or the rockets, or something similar. Finally, each player can only carry two main weapons, which means you can assess what advantages your opponents have before an encounter.
MLG games, which would arguably be considered the pinnacle of competitive console gaming, take things a step further. Take soccer for instance - it's about getting the ball into the goal at your opponent's end of the pitch. If you get together with your ten of your friends in a clearing, and divide into two teams of 6 and 5, then you play a game using the gaps between trees as the goals, then the game cannot be considered competitive. The team with more players has the advantage of numbers. One team might have a wider gap between the trees. The clearing might be slightly sloped so that one team has to run harder uphill. What does soccer have to do with MLG, you ask? Well, MLG games are primarily played on symmetrical maps with identical weapon loadouts at either end, the same way competitive soccer is played on a flat pitch, with the same sized goals and the same amount of players on either team. In competitive soccer, the rules are very restricted and enforced equally on both sides, while in that clearing you might make a few exceptions for when you make a small mistake like touching the ball with your hand. MLG condenses the range of weapons available so that there are less discrepancies in balance - if your team has both of the available sniper rifles, it's only because your team played better and managed to gain control of them.
Street Fighter
Street Fighter is a harder game to define but a lot of different factors are involved, while there are a lot of the same. Yes, there are some characters that are vastly overpowered by other characters, but especially in the competitive environment, the player is given a choice of which character they select. Some tournaments allow for double-blind character selection, which means that both players select their starting character without knowing which character the other player selected. This prevents one player from starting with an automatic advantage over the other and requires the player to assess the opponent's strengths and weaknesses before an encounter. Both players have the same range of strong, medium and light punches and kicks, activated by the same range of buttons and a joystick - competitve Street Fighter disallows controllers with turbo buttons and the like.
Here's where I'm going to blow your mind. Street Fighter and Halo work on the same main principle: controlling space. Crazy, huh? In Street Fighter, your character has an array of special attacks that your opponent may not have access to. Competitive Street Fighter players are all pretty much as capable as each other when is comes to executing these attacks. It comes down to how they use these special attacks to control the space in front of them. Here's an example: Ryu can throw fireballs, controlling the horizontal space in front of him. You need to jump to avoid it, but if you jump forward you may move into the space controlled by his Shoryuken uppercut. Say you're playing Zangief - you basically only control the space immediately in front of you, although can deal excessive amounts of damage if you get that advantage, but you can also use the spinning clothesline through fireballs withoutbeing hurt. Your Ryu opponent knows this, and will be wary of throwing fireballs at you. On the other hand, he might be using them to force you to keep spinning close enough for him to perform the Shoryuken move, which due to your size, will hit you twice. This is a great example of how balance is implemented in the game. Now let's look at how this same principle is found in Halo.
For the purposes of this example, we'll be imagining that each team is a high level MLG competitor, with the maximum communication, accuracy and reaction time. You are holding a sniper rifle, and are forcing the opponent to get into cover to avoid death. The sniper rifle, like Ryu's fireball, controls a certain corridor of space. In order to remove the threat, the opponent needs to get in close, and deal damage with their shotgun, a bit like Zangief's powerful throws. They might use grenades to force you back into cover, or move around the back where you can't see them until it's too late. They might split up and all attack you at the same time with mid-range weapons like the battle rifle. To prevent this happening, you might move away so that when they come put into the open there is not target to fire upon, instead leaving them prone to a rocket launcher attack from your teammate.
This is where a good game can be considered a great competitive game. By giving all of the players the same options, a la Halo, or by giving the players options which counteract each other, a la Street Fighter, the game become less about who has the better dexterity on the control pad, and instead who is better at out-thinking their opponent. A good thing to note is that when Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo was re-released in HD, along with some obvious balances in the strength of attacks, all of the complicated moves had the commands replaced with simpler ones. All of a sudden, being good as Zangeif does not rely on your ability to input a full circle motion on the joystick, but instead how, where and when you perform that Spinning Piledriver move.
So ultimately, the question is, does Team Fortress 2 exhibit these qualities?
Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress 2 operates roughly the same as Halo 3. You can't go into open spaces covered by a Sniper, you can't stay exposed to a Heavy for more than a few moments before being killed. However, the role you play on the battlefield is more rigidly defined by your class, while the range of actions each player can perform varies more greatly and makes for a more interesting game. I haven't played much TF2 but I do quite like the dynamics introduced by the Engineer class and the Spy. The issue that is raised, however, is that this might introduce too many variables for the game to be considered tight and competitive. Will a team full of Snipers always dominate a team full of Heavies? Would you end up with games that are simply sniperfests? Of course, this could be limited and augmented similarly to the way MLG does it, maybe by creating a restricted team structure like soccer. In a soccer team, there is one goalkeeper who plays under different conditions to the other ten players on their team - what if a competitve TF2 team was required to have two Scouts, two Heavies, one Sniper, three Soldiers (and so on)? The other issue is the maps. Two Fort is a great classic map, and is evenly balanced for both sides. Some maps might be considered too unevenly balanced for competitive play and would have to be omitted. At this stage, I would say that yes, Team Fortress 2 is a fantastic game and lots of fun. But it would require a level of control in order to be successful in the competitive space like the previously mentioned games.
Oh, and I would punch your friend in the face for what he said.
If you want to know more about competitive gaming, you should check out David Sirlin's book "Playing to Win". It's free on Google books to view on the Internet, but you can still buy it, and he certainly deserves your money - he was the guy who rebalanced Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD ReMix in the manner mentioned before.
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