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Our first event for 2014 was a 100% casual event only. This event was more of a “thank you” event to all the casual gamers that have supported us over the years. This meant there were no professional competitions or professional areas, just a fun, all casual day with a 150 person limit. We also had the prize layout for this event planned a bit differently. We had dedicated prizes for main/scheduled competitions but we also had a whole table of prizes purely set aside for made up competitions and give aways. Having this saw us make up random competitions during the day when we saw large quantities of gamers playing a particular game. This is where we announced something like “The next winner in the next MW3 map gets to choose anything on the right prizes table”. We found this worked out well as gamers were able to choose what prizes they really wanted.
Setup started at the usual time of around 4pm on Friday. The first hour consists solely of unloading trailers, trucks and 4wds. We seem to have adopted a small army of helpers and volunteers which is great to see and cannot thank them enough for their effort. Each event sees our setup complete faster and more efficient. Being more efficient in setup means we can focus on the more smaller things which can often be missed. These include: how well cables are hidden away, how well sponsors are promoted (has every banner been utilised) and is the event ready for opening the next day?
Setup was going great and was looking like our best setup so far and also one of our earliest finishes. We were just about done at around 10pm with just the final task of firing everything up. This process for us is one of our most simple tasks and having most of gear localized in one rack makes this a breeze. Turning on a few physical servers, blade chassis and servers and our switches pretty much saw this done.
Doors opened right on the dot of 8am with eager gamers already waiting outside. By 10am the room was just about at full capacity. Being our first casual only event, we were 50/50 on how the turnout would go. The first competition for the day was our all day Minecraft competition. This has become a mandatory competition at GGF as of late and really gives gamers the ability to take their time and relax during the competition.
We also have the Gibztech booth which looks after the Minecraft competition and also the Server Challenge competition which runs throughout the day.
This event also saw the inclusion in some free to enter 1v1 competitions. GGF has many hire systems for professional gamers when we hold professional competitions. But being all casual, we had no need to hire these out. We put some of these systems to good use and had a TF2 1v1, Quake 3 1v1 and Chivalry Deadliest Warrior 1v1 competitions. We also had some great prizes coming from Asus Republic of Gamers and Corsair for these 1v1 competitions.
These competitions were in the form of hot seat layout which allowed gamers to enter any time during the day. Taking out first in each of the 1v1s were: Team Fortress 2 – C3t3rl1nk, Quake 3 – ZenAku and Chivalry Deadliest Warrior – Stien. Well done guys
The first main competition for the day was our popular Trackmania competition. We were thinking of replacing this competition for this event as Trackmania has been at all our previous LANs. But after receiving emails regarding if Trackmania was being held or not, we decided to go ahead with it. The format of this competition is very straight forward. Each gamer competes in 4 tracks and the person with the fastest combined time after all 4 tracks is the winner. With some familiar faces and some local favourites we knew this was going to be a close one. Taking first place was Koshie with a total combined time of 145sec and 3ms. Closely followed by The Guv with 146sec and 38ms and lastly Some_Random with 146sec and 89ms. Well done guys and well done to Koshie for taking first.
Over the course of the day many giveaways were handed out. Fun competitions were announced like the “Oldest Keyboard”, “Oldest Mouse” and “Oldest Mouse pad”. This was done by announcing this over the microphone and giving everyone 5 minutes to bring their item up to the stage. We would then go through each one to find the oldest and hardly holding together item. At some stages we found it just too hard to find one oldest item and in some cases more than one prize was given out. In the end we ended up giving away multiple keyboards, mice and over 15 mousepads to some well deserving gamers in-need of an upgrade.
Another large feature area at GGF are our sponsored display systems. These are on show at every event for gamers to check out and play around on. We now have 6 in total which range from budget and extreme rigs, two Corsair systems, a Tesoro display setup and a monster Cooler Master 4k rig. These are supported by many of the GGF sponsors and cannot thank them enough for supplying us this gear to have on display.
The next main competition for the day was our 3D Mark competition. This competition has been a tradition at GGF and was definitely on the list to run it again. Being Christmas not long ago, we were interested to see if anyone upgraded over the holiday season or if anyone unwrapped a shiny new graphics card for Christmas. An hour had past and it was time for the results. Last event saw a battle between the top two and it was exactly the same this time. Sneaking through and taking top spot was Some_Nob with 24326 points with his whopping 3x GTX 780TI’s and Pat taking second on 23540 points. Coming in third was Mental on 18052 points. Well done guys.
We would also like to make a special mention of Some_Nob for giving away his two GTX580s which weren’t being used any more. We made this into a competition to see which two attendees currently had the oldest GPU at the LAN. The only condition for this was that their system had to be capable of running this new card. Each GTX580 went to a new home replacing systems with a 8800 GTS and a 9600GT. Thank again to Some_Nob.
Up next was our lucky door prize which was sponsored by CM Storm by Cooler Master. Up for grabs was a brand new CM Storm case and a CM Storm Mech keyboard. Taking home this enormous package this time was Brett. Well done mate.
Best looking rig competition was up next. This is where we walk around hall checking out the best looking and latest builds. We would also chat with each builder to get an insight on their system, how it was done and what was used in it. Previously there has always been a stand out winner, but this time it came down to two Corsair Air 540 systems. And making it even harder was the fact that each one had side panel etching. Phillip ended up taking out first spot with Mental taking second and Koshie taking third. Nice builds guys and keep up the good work.
At this point everyone was ready for some food and it was time for our pizza run. 45 minutes later saw 50 pizzas ready to be eaten. While everyone was consuming large amounts of pizza, it was time to let the gamers decide on what game they wanted for the big organised competition which was being run later on.
With Server Challenge and Minecraft finishing up, it was time to announce the winners. With a very impressive time of 55sec and 35ms saw Hayden take out first place in Server Challenge winning him a 240GB SSD thanks to Gibztech. Taking out second place was our previous events winner Eject.
Having over 15 entries in the all day Minecraft competition was going to take some time to go over each build. We also had a theme this time which gamers had to stick to. The theme was to build or design a “House” or had to be in a form of house. With so many complex designs and having nearly 12 hours to build something saw some truly amazing builds. After roughly 45 minutes going through each build on the projector where everyone could see the creations, the winning build was a sophisticated multi story house with working doors and lights. This was built by Mystic-Girl which saw her take home first place. Unfortunately we couldn’t get a photo of first place. ConMan989 took out second and taking out third was Techie. Well done everyone.
Once again Chivalry Medieval Warfare was voted for the big organised game competition ahead of games like Battlefield 1942 and Call of Duty. We had roughly 60 gamers enter the competition and did an all in team battle best of one map, winner takes all. This game took roughly 20 minutes to complete and saw Alucard take out first place, Pat taking second and Aussie Boy taking third. We ended up running another map afterwards as everyone was still eager to play. We had spare prizes as well so we made a competition out of it.
By now it was getting late into the night and all the scheduled competitions had finished. With gamers playing some final fun call of duty competitions, others started to pack up after a long day. The final capacity for this event was 140 gamers (not including admins, helpers and attending sponsors). With the first event of 2014 out of the way we feel this was one of our best events yet. Everything just ran how it should and everything worked. Shout outs go to everyone that helped before, during and after the event. A huge thanks to all GGF sponsors. Without you guys we would not be here today. And lastly a huge thanks to everyone that rocked up on the day. Having such large support from casual gamers really assures us that the LAN scene is not dead and slowly on the rise. With the inclusion of a professional competition at the next event can see us up over the 200 person capacity.
