EPTFrom Gamer to Game Maker - Part 6
Tournament Aftermath and things thus far
Tournament Aftermath and things thus far
I'm back in my apartment again after what has been one of the best days/nights of my life. I just got back from cleaning up after the first tournament I've ever created, and it was nothing short of a huge success!
Before I tell the tale of how the tournament was brought to life, let's go back a bit until that very first day...
It's been almost two months now since I first walked through that rotating door in the entrance to the school. It was a new and scary place beyond those doors. Still, it was exciting - I knew that this meant that I was actually going to spend three years learning how to make awesome games. I mean, there's not a lot of stuff that beats something like that, especially when you're an avid gamer like myself. ^^
It started off great right from the very first day. In the short break that was between the introductory lectures I met an old childhood friend I hadn't seen in years, only to learn that we'd be classmates for those coming three years. Kind of awesome, to say the least.
After said lectures we got a tour around the (small, indoor) campus where we got to see a preview of all the different clubs that the school had. There were your usual kinds: the sports club, the business club, the music club etc etc... Last on the tour was a strange club - Särimners Kultingar (Särimners is a kind of name, I still don't know what it comes from, Kultingar = Piglets (At least I think it is. It's baby pigs anyway.)). Needless to say, we were pretty confused about what to expect from that specific club. All we knew was that our "guides" (older students) told us that it was by far the best club. They weren't kidding.
Särimners Kultingar (SK för short) is basically a club where you have fun. Or, more specifically, what it's members does is to create themed events every tuesday afternoon where people can come and have fun with the theme for the day. Also, they're the club that arrange all the LANs there. Needless to say, I was hooked.
One thing we also learned that first day was that there was three "levels" of students at school: Normal students, members of the student..
Wait... Student society I guess you'd call it in english? A sort of body that's run by students and governs the clubs. well, I'm sticking with student society for now. Anyway, three levels of students:
Normal students, members of the student society and Active members of the student society.
The "levels" have no purpose other than 1. cheaper stuff in the cafeteria and 2. More access to extracurricular stuff (if your an active member). Most clubs had pretty tough demands if you wanted to become active through them, but not SK. Only thing you had to do was to arrange two of those tuesday events every term. Last night (morning now) I held my second event - a StarCraft 2 Tournament.
The tournament.
It. Was. Epic. So much planning was done for this - we (technically I, but when I say we I mean the four of us that joined forces to arrange the event) started planning for it more than a month ago. There were classrooms to be booked, casters to be hired, prizes to be ordered, network problems to be solved (we needed to host a small LAN, duh). It was a pain, but we did it. It was a HUGE success; one of the most packed SK-nights I've been to these past two months.
25 players signed up from all over campus (the campus/school building is shared by the IT-sections of two of the biggest universities/colleges in Stockholm) and a lot more decided to show up to just watch the games. I think there were at least 60-70 people watching the first quarter finals play out. As the night went on, more and more people decided to leave though since the trains stopped going well before the last match was finished (hehe, a miss in the planning from our part). In the end though, the casters were great, people had lots of fun and people got to see great sc2-games. And now I'm the "youngest" active member together with one of the others that helped out today and at my first event! :D
I won't tell you all the details since it's nothing confirmed, but the tournament got more attention than any of us imagined, and there are great plans to expands this (with some familiar faces stopping by). So if you're living in Stockholm (or more specifically close to Kista) and want to play in or watch a good tournament - keep your eyes open. ;D We will try to have a stream running the next time as well so anyone with internet can watch, this time we just didn't have the time to fix it. ^^
The actual road from gamer to game maker is coming along just fine by the way. I'm in three different game projects as the graphics designer, so I'm not too unhappy. ^^ One class completed, next week it time for the exam for class number two, then it is time for us to start to learn some actual programming! :D
+ Show Spoiler [Some crappy pics from the tournament!] +
Crappy because they're taken in a hurry with my crappy camera on my phone xD
People getting ready and setting up:
(Not all players have shown up yet here)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/rDdOK.jpg)
What the audience got to see, with our two casters down in green t-shirts:
(the center projector shows the casters view, the two smaller on the sides shows the player views)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/R5MPG.jpg)
Some of the quarter finals being played:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/VL2qk.jpg)
The winner with his new trophy standing next to his opponent in the finals:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Seiwn.jpg)
Now it's 5 am here. Staying up to watch SotG is tempting, but not this time ^^ Fortunately I don't have any lecture until 4 pm, so it's time to sleep! :D Goodnight TL. <3
