eGaming. Pre-2009 - Early-2010 Preparation Setup

[xxxplizit (pogi1kenobi)]

Hello,

For those who have went to the Exhibit Hall 2 for eGaming, please post any thoughts that you guys have of this year's eGaming.  What did you guys liked about egaming?  What criticisms and suggestions did you guys recommend for next year?  We will gladly take whatever opinions you guys have to improve eGaming next year!
 
Thanks and see ya guys next year!

Jonas
Co-Head
eGaming

P.S. For those who are wondering about that was prepared before FanimeCon's eGaming, click here.

EDIT: Changed it to Official 2010 eGaming thread.  We are already on the ball of preparing for next year.  Yes, we are early birds, but we want the best eGaming possible.  :P

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UPDATES:
- PC Gaming is back! (2/24/10)
- FanimeCon eGaming now has a Twitter account! (2/24/10)

[abcbadcat]

I'm sorry but the SFIV tourney was a cluster-#*$&.

Standing around for four hours?
Getting into the third round w/o fighting once?

This seriously needs to be worked on for next year.

[Xepherian]

You should already know who I am,

buuuut... As far as the Halo 4v4 tournament, I realize that any more than 4 would've taken forever...
but that's only 16 players. That was a really... lame idea, maybe we should've just stayed with the one 2v2.

[Raydere]

eGaming had a very nice selection of games (at least if you're a shmup fan) as well as any number of arcade sticks, and for that I really liked it this year.

I'd also like to say thanks to my friend who lent his Tetris: The Grand Master arcade board. I got many chances to play it, as well as to introduce Tetris players to the wonderful world of the TGM series. ;)

However, I do have one major complaint: while I like the Beatmania IIDX setup (real arcade controllers? hell yeah!), IIDX on an HDTV is horrible. As anyone who has played on Sunnyvale Golfland's IIDX machine between 2003 and 2007 knows, HDTV + non-HDTV game = delay = serious timing problems in a game where a few milliseconds makes all the difference.

[blu3marker]

i dont know how the other tournaments went but as far as the left 4 dead tournament, it was a mess, 1st off they change it from 4v4 to 2v2? wtf? a HUGE misscomunications from the organizers and the ppl at registration, it got annoying after the 3rd time they decided to change it back to 4vs4 and keep changing it for like 30 minutes breaking and making new teams,i dont think the guys at the registration had any idea that a 2v2  l4d tournament wouldn't had work, unfortunately l4d is not a game were u can just cut the players by half, sure the survivors have bots but the zombie players would be soooo unbalance, the only way they could have a chance is with a tank and even if u guys decided to make the survivors only had to players then it would only take the zombie team to pounce them or pull them and its over.
maybe next year if u guys choose to have another l4d tourney(and u guys should totally do it)  should organized a little better, start the tournament early so teams dont have to drop out due to time  and have a limit amount of teams

[Reikon]

However, I do have one major complaint: while I like the Beatmania IIDX setup (real arcade controllers? hell yeah!), IIDX on an HDTV is horrible. As anyone who has played on Sunnyvale Golfland's IIDX machine between 2003 and 2007 knows, HDTV + non-HDTV game = delay = serious timing problems in a game where a few milliseconds makes all the difference.

The reason for that was simple. There was no space to put a CRT TV behind the controller. We didn't have any spare tables to put a TV on behind it.

i dont know how the other tournaments went but as far as the left 4 dead tournament, it was a mess, 1st off they change it from 4v4 to 2v2? wtf? a HUGE misscomunications from the organizers and the ppl at registration, it got annoying after the 3rd time they decided to change it back to 4vs4 and keep changing it for like 30 minutes breaking and making new teams,i dont think the guys at the registration had any idea that a 2v2  l4d tournament wouldn't had work, unfortunately l4d is not a game were u can just cut the players by half, sure the survivors have bots but the zombie players would be soooo unbalance, the only way they could have a chance is with a tank and even if u guys decided to make the survivors only had to players then it would only take the zombie team to pounce them or pull them and its over.
maybe next year if u guys choose to have another l4d tourney(and u guys should totally do it)  should organized a little better, start the tournament early so teams dont have to drop out due to time  and have a limit amount of teams

The tournament was supposed to be a 4v4 from the beginning, so that's what we told anyone signing up for the tournament. But we had way too many people and too little equipment, so a 4v4 wasn't going to be feasible since it would take way too long. So it was changed to a 2v2. I don't know what happened after that since I wasn't around.

[blu3marker]

The tournament was supposed to be a 4v4 from the beginning, so that's what we told anyone signing up for the tournament. But we had way too many people and too little equipment, so a 4v4 wasn't going to be feasible since it would take way too long. So it was changed to a 2v2. I don't know what happened after that since I wasn't around.

really? cuz at first we heard the reason they changed it to 2v2 was because not that many ppl sign up, oh n btw any1 know who won?

[LordKefka]

I was personally upset that there was no Rock Band 2 for people in eGaming to play. There was GHWT...except it was missing the drums, mic and hooked up to a TV that can't display color when I played it or something.... yeah.

[Chun]

BlazBlue for 75 cents was highly disappointing, same with Dance Maniax crazy 1$ charge. Third Strike 50 cents was also a huge letdown for many other people. The arcade was just too pricey.

[LordKefka]

I think arcade and eGaming are separate issues.

[Logik]

I'm honestly surprised that there wasn't any sort of (scheduled) tournament for Soul Calibur 4. There wasn't even a dedicated station for it. :-\ I wanted to see Rock Band as well but found no stations for it, only Guitar Hero. Other than that I'd say that eGaming was alright (tournaments aside since I didn't enter in any).

[Zerocide]

Pros: Great selection, was really digging the Arika Tetris The Grand Masters.

Cons: Tournaments got a little out of hand. RPS tourney got canceled.

Suggestions: Hold tournaments at separate time blocks and make sure to give more time for the bigger tournaments *Smash and SFIV* If that fails then make Smash Bros it's own department.

As far as the arcade goes (I know it's a separate department)

They needed an info table with OCE on speed dial.

[Dracil]

I think I would've liked a section for portable gamers to just get together and see what they have and get any multiplayer games together.  Otherwise, people are just scattered and end up doing their own thing.  One of the anime conventions I've been to was a LOT smaller where the gaming section was basically a normal-sized room, but because of that people just sat on the floor with the portables and would all be in wifi/talking range of each other.

More PC gaming would've been nice.  There was one guy who had a laptop with various Touhou games.

[JTchinoy]

Well my biorhythm is utter garbage right now and I'm awake at 3am, so I'll give my rant.

Apologies to everyone in the Brawl FUBAR tournament.  That bracket turned into a nightmare fast.  People walking away, people not listening, people not being registered properly, the bracket not lining up right... OMFG.  I'd like to thank everyone who helped me with it and everyone who participated in the tournament for making running the tournament as smooth as possible.

For everyone who participated in my Bleach, Naruto, and Pokemon tournaments I'd like to give thanks to all of you!  The casual/ friendly atmosphere that everyone was giving off and the chill attitudes made the tournaments rather enjoyable for me to run.  Even though Pokemon was a little behind because of a certain pokemon *cough* it went very smoothly.  I hope the top 2 winners enjoy their prize Latias =)  Thanks ken for the dots on the floor for pokemon, was a very good idea!

To everyone who entered Rock, paper, scissors, I wholeheartedly apologize for the tournament being canceled. I was looking forward to seeing that tournament happen and it got canceled without anyone consulting me.  I'll be looking into why it was canceled as I am extremely annoyed at the decision to cancel it.

It was nice meeting everyone who entered our tournaments and once again thanks for being very cooperative with our Tournament coordinators.  Thank you E-gaming staff for assisting me with the Brawl tournament and for doing such a great job attending to all of the attendees.  I can't wait for next year.  We'll make next year work smoother than this year... although I think casual gaming went very well this year aside from a smaller selection of games compared to last year.

[Zerocide]

If I remember correctly the RPC tourney was scrapped because there wasn't enough staff/volunteers in egaming to do the touney due to the size and length of the smash bros tournament. To that I say, you only need like two people and maybe a megaphone for the RPC tourney.

[kollunz]

where was melty blood??

[Skyline]

where was melty blood??

Melty Blood Re-ACT Final Tuned was running periodically on the laptop setup next to IIDX, although it was mostly used for Touhou.  I don't believe Act Cadenza PS2 was on the inventory list.

I'm also going to offer my sincerest apologies to anyone who was miffed at the state of the tournaments (or lack thereof, in the case of RPC).  Towards Brawl time it felt like we were piecing together things out of leftover lawn clippings and bits of twine, pretty much.  For that, everyone on staff deserves a MacGuyver merit badge  ;D

I hope all of this thread gets taken into consideration for next year.  So don't hold anything back plz. 

[AmazingKenchan]

I've got a lot of ideas lined up for next year.  Currently at the top, I'm going to try pushing for better TVs and a wider selection of the more universally desired games like Rock Band 2.  If we compile a list of the games most people will want to play, we should be able to make absolutely sure there is a dedicated setup for those games throughout the con.

I am personally bringing my four laptops next year exclusively for danmaku shooters, fighters, and whatever else anyone wants to see.  Scarlet Weather Rhapsody got so much play, that it was hard to warrant swapping it out for anything else for very long.  I definitely want to see that back, as well as a dedicated Touhou setup, and maybe stuff like Ragnarok Battle Offline or Higurashi Daybreak.  I need sticks and displays though, or this can't really happen easily.  It'd be nice to dual-screen for these games; use the laptop screen and TV screen, but we had a problem with someone running StepMania this time around.  I'll probably have to set up guest accounts on these laptops to prevent any unauthorized use on the computers.

RPS was definitely an unforseen scheduling issue, the other reason it got cancelled is because so many people were also entering Smash.  We'll schedule things better next year.  Another scheduling issue was any long tournaments that started late; we'll definitely schedule those earlier so that they don't run over time.

We'll likely start shutting down eGaming around 4am for a few hours to do inventory check; things got messy pretty quickly.  This should help us better organize and prepare each day.  I think staffwise we were actually okay unlike the half staff we had last year, but the time is probably necessary to keep things running smooth.

To answer the IIDX setup, I know, the TV was awful.  There was little I could do on short time.  I'd like to apologize for the 2p keys giving out so much, I haven't figured that out yet.  Also apologies on the turntables and a big thanks to phasecactus for helping me eliminate the problems with them halfway thru con.  A big thanks to everyone who played on the controller; the wiring was finished the day before con.  With all the feedback I got on how the controller held up, it should work perfectly next year if I still have it.  Better TV promised :3

[soakrates`]

My main suggestion would be to PLEASE try to make sure you have enough people on-hand next year who have experience running fairly large tournaments. As was mentioned already, the Street Fighter IV tourney was a complete joke. How do you not at least make sure that all of the characters are unlocked on every console before running a tournament with (purportedly) 100+ entrants? This alone led to so much waiting and confusion that I got fed up and told them to remove me from the tournament altogether.

In retrospect, maybe I shouldn't have blown up as harshly as I did, but the whole thing was just an exercise in frustration.

Others:

- Try to get more CRTs for fighting games. A lot of the HDTVs there had an assload of input lag.

- Logik is right about the lack of a Soulcalibur IV tourney. When the game was running, people were playing it almost 'round the clock. Hard to believe there wasn't enough demand for a proper tournament.

[Spiritsnare]

Fate/Unlimited Codes Results

Fighting for the first place prize, an Alter Saber (no, not the Saber PVC by Alter) Revoltech figure by Kaiyodo.

First Place: Tsubasa (David Huynh)
Second Place: Commander Myers (Ernest Capulong)
Third Place: G (Gerardo Paz)

where was melty blood??

Melty Blood Re-ACT Final Tuned was running periodically on the laptop setup next to IIDX...

To my knowledge, they were playing MBAC PC. I don't see why they'd be playing FT.