EPTSaturday was the initial day, and both myself and my younger brother showed up for it. We arrived at about 9:30 AM (30 minutes after they officially started), we ended up like #14 and #15 on the sign-in list. Half an hour later, both of us and one other were called up into the 2nd room (they did this in 3's). In this room, they had 3 Xbox 360's setup - one with Forza 3, another with Street Fighter 4, and a third with COD: MW2.
Each station had its own judge who would rate your ability at the game. Each person took a seat, and played for about 2 minutes against the computer before switching. For SF4, it was a simple match against a "hard level" CPU opponent, for Forza 3 it was a single lap around a track, and for COD: MW2 it was some stage where one must kill 40 terrorists without killing hostages. Being that my brother and I are mostly PC players, I'm sure we didn't impress, but we did fairly well.
After that, you go in one-by-one to another room for a quick 3-4 minute mini-interview with a producer. He gains some information about you and tries one thing to throw you off your guard (I suppose to see if you freeze up or get overly defensive?). For myself, he randomly said that he "didn't need the attitude" in a serious voice, and for my brother, told him to throw his gaming resume in the trash. If you pass both parts, you get a "callback" for the next day (both my brother and I passed).
Our time for the 2nd day was supposed to be at 11:45 AM, but there still had not done the interview for 9:45 AM yet. Hence - they were running about two hours behind. This gave us plenty of time to get to know some of the other contestants, all of which were a great bunch of people. Sadly, very few of them had competitive experience, and those that did were mainly from EVO / CGS / MLG rather than WCG, but all were quite into gaming and had personality. The most vocal of which, and the one who is most likely to be on the show from our audition, is "TheChosenOne". His interview lasted around 40 minutes, the longest one that I noticed. Very nice guy.
Didn't notice any top PC gamers there - and asking around, the only ones to show up were World of Warcraft gamers. Hopefully some PC gamers with Xbox ability attended the other casting calls.
Anyway - my brother and I both had the same time (11:45), and only one other pair had the same time before us (a boyfriend/girlfriend pair) who was pulled to interview together. Due to this, we figured we would be interviewed together as well, and prepared as such. Our turn rolls around (now about 2:30 PM), and we find out we will be going in separate, which isn't ideal for playing up the whole "brothers" angle.
My brother get interviewed for about 10 or 15 minutes, and then it is my turn. I go in and they take a few pictures, and then the interview starts. I get asked about 5 questions - sadly, I don't feel I "nailed" any of them as well as I could have. The 5th question is especially grueling - the interviewers cell phone goes off, I stop figuring we would restart the question, but he motions for me to continue (likely meaning I had bombed by that point as it would be difficult to use video with a loud cell phone ring in it). Overall, my interview lasts about 10 minutes. Our interviews seemed to be among the shortest done - likely not a great sign. Hopefully, if either of us does get a callback, he does as his personality would really suit the show and he had flown down to Atlanta for the audition.
Was interesting to see how the entire thing was done, and as it was in Atlanta, figured I'd try for it since I live here. Some had flew in just for this audition (it seemed like 3-4 had done so) or had driven 9+ hours to attend. Overall, an interesting experience, and something I figured was good to level up my "selling myself" ability.
For reference, our gaming resumes were:
http://www.phdgaming.com/general_media/Accomplishments.doc
http://www.phdgaming.com/general_media/Wizard_Accomplishments.doc
