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Who's heading the department this year?

Take their ID.

The L4D tournament was always supposed to be 4v4. We didn't have the equipment for it, but it was originally planned as 4v4. Look at all our planning files. They say 4v4.

And maybe we should work out a deposit system for tournaments. They don't get their money back until they're officially out of the tournament or whatever (or at least tell us they're backing out). It should reduce the amount of random people dropping. Though handling money would make the insanity even worse.

To add to Camilla's post, please do not discuss what is legal or not legal without providing evidence of this.

The thing is, you normally can't show anything is legal to sell. You can only show that it's illegal. You'd need a court case to be clear, and there hasn't been one in the US over them.

The only reason I'm saying pretty darn good instead of totally freakin' awesome for my hotel stay at the Marriot, was that we don't get free breakfast like they do at the Hilton D: ....ok, well that and the elevators took literally 20 minutes to get on....but one can't have everything, can they?

I could have gotten free breakfast at the Hilton? Oops. I missed out on free food.

The rooms were pretty nice this year. It was remodeled since last year, so it was all new looking. The inclusion of an HDTV was really nice too. The only complaint as usual is the elevators. Some of them didn't seem to work too well (like some elevators randomly flashing the alarm and going back down, even though it wasn't that packed). People who stay on the 3rd floor and use the elevator were also annoying, but that's not the hotel's fault.

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.

I believe R4 is illegal to sell.  I think you should report to fanime officlal

I don't see how R4 would be illegal. I use to it for homebrew games (and to play 'backup' games  :P). lol

The device itself isn't illegal, but it's most commonly used for illegal purposes.

By chanocular's quoting of backup, I'm assuming he's one of the ones who use it for illegal purposes.

No, I'm not talking about inputs on the side of the TV. There's a separate input box on the side of the drawers that the TV sits on. And it does work. I just tested a PS2 on it.

I have no idea about the Marriott, but the Hilton also has LCDs now. I haven't tried hooking anything up to it, but it seems like you can since there's a whole input panel in the side that looks designed for guests to use. It has HDMI, VGA, composite, S-video, and 1/8" audio in. I wish I brought my 360.  :P

It's always been required. If it wasn't, there probably just wasn't anyone posted at the door (which happens quite often).

I need to get a preliminary hand count of who may want to assist in tournament running this year.

Who's interested? I can teach anyone how to run a tourney. If you have access to a laptop that would be great. 

I suppose I can try to help again next year.

I need to contact Richard so I'm actually on the staff list for next year, but he's pretty much impossible to reach.  :D

Read this. If it doesn't make you want to play Galactic Civilizations 2, there's something wrong with you.

The tournament was a logistical nightmare. Waaay too many people signed up, and then most of them didn't show up. If we have it again next year, I know I wouldn't want to deal with running more than one of them, but that's not up to me to decide.

Just wait...wait until 2012....just four more years...and I'll be eighteen. ^^; *sigh* SOS/Rovers sounds so much fun! >__<

In the meantime, you can join another division... like E-gaming. ;D

I don't expect staff to babysit. That's a waste of people who could be helping out elsewhere. It was a bad on the attendee's part. And understandable about the shortage for controllers and what not, but if you have popular games like that, in my opinion, it would make sense to just zip tie the controllers to that system since they're liable to be used all con.

As for the sign, I dunno, I NEVER saw it. I'd seriously recommend making more if you continue the system next year, even if it's just someone bringing a few pieces of posterboard in bright colors and writing something along the lines of
"CONTROLLER/GAME CHECK-OUT THIS WAY
              <-------
"

Or something of that sort. It was a shame I didn't get to play this year, but not the end of the world. But I'd definitely like to see something changed next year. It seemed like you had a great selection of games and consoles, you just didn't have the staff and since it was a new thing this year, something was bound to go wrong. Oh well.

Hopefully all I've said makes sense?

As we admit, there were a lot of problems this year because of the new system. The first post in this thread will show you that we ARE trying to fix a lot of the organization issues we had this year. We just need better planning, which we sorely lacked this year because the system was new. Hopefully, we'll have enough active staff to do everything planned.

If we spread these tournaments 4 hours apart, that would help prevent overlapping tournaments so i wouldn't be so stressed.  2 hours apart is for like 16 man tournaments on 2 systems.

You could always just get omre people to help run the tournaments. The tournaments do need to start later though. Maybe start around 12 and end later in the night.

Which entrance? There was more than one to the area, and I entered through both doors multiple times.

The other issue is that when it gets busy, it's harder to see what's going on in the middle. So, no, I didn't see the controllers, nor did my friends, and we were each there at different times. I figured it wasn't up to the staff to control the systems, but rather the players, as it seemed to be in the past, you simply showed up and more or less waited for your turn. I did ask at one point to share a controller, but the people were all over the place with whose turn it was to play and what not. *shrug*

I'd really recommend NOT checking controllers in and out next year. For the big games : SSBB, some of the other fighting games.... (my mind just drew a blank right now.... >_<  ) just zip tie the controllers to the console like you have in the past? I'm not exactly sure why you changed that system. (Stuff got stolen 07 or something?) I think it's pretty safe to say I wasn't the only one confused by the system this year.

From what I've read, gaming was pretty under-staffed this year; not trying to rag on you guys; just trying to hopefully get things changed for next year.

The check out area was facing the direction the entrances were in. It was closer to the one near the artist alley.

I don't know what we can do about forcing people to take turns without babysitting them. I guess it got a bit confusing at the Brawl areas about who got to play next.

The problem with tying the controllers to the system is that there aren't any dedicated systems for any games, and sometimes zip tying the controllers will block the DVD from being removed. We need to be able to change games and move controllers to other systems when we need them since we were often short on controllers (especially GC ones). The only way I see zip tying working again is if we don't have as choices for what games and consoles to play, and the plethora of choices was one of the only things we did well at this year.

I stayed at the Hilton and there were no major issues. The elevators weren't so bad and I didn't have a noise problem.

The only downside is the crappy TV and the fact it didn't have any front inputs for us to use our own stuff.

Big signs so people understand the check out system. Some people were complaining they didn't know how it worked this year and didn't get to play.

Yes. I was one of those people. Perhaps someone can clear this up for me? Was this the first year the Check-out system was in place? If so, it needed to be better advertised. I REALLY wanted to play SSBB this year, and it literally seemed to me that the only people playing were ones that had their own controllers. And I did walk around the gaming area multiple times throughout the con, never saw the sign to check things out. I only FINALLY found out about the system at closing ceremonies.

If you do the check out system again, BIGGER SIGNS. And have them facing each direction, so people will ALWAYS have a chance to see them.

Yes, this was the first year it was used. We tried to make it obvious because the check out table was facing the entrance. If you looked at that area, it would be quickly obvious that we rented out controllers (not to mention, didn't you see our huge collection of controllers in the middle?).

I'm sorry you didn't get to play, but even if you somehow didn't see the check out area, you should have at least asked a staff member about how you could have played. You could have also asked to share a controller with someone who was playing. We encourage people to share controllers so there's less checking in and out involved. I'm sure most people would have been willing to share.

I wouldn't mind so much brawl if we had more TVs and more consoles to be honest.  It helps alleviate big masses of people around a single console.

But that presents the problem of getting more TVs and consoles. More consoles is probably doable, but more TVs isn't that easy.