I went into E for All with no expectations whatsoever. I didn’t know how big the venue would be, how cool the swag would be, or how many people would be in costume. (The answers: fairly large, not that great, and three if you include myself—I dressed up as a podcaster.)

CGS staffers put the finishing touches on the old-school H2i cabinets.

The only thing I knew for sure was that I’d end up spending enough money on gas, parking, and food that I could have bought a couple gigs of RAM if I had stayed home. This is the Law of Convention Overpricing, and it roughly states that if you have enough money to buy a pass, you’ve also got enough money to buy a $9 hamburger ($9.50 if you want to get the cheese expansion pack) after five hours of walking. As a general rule of life, when a seven dollar personal pizza seems like a good deal, something is horribly, horribly wrong. I am reminded of this every time I buy a seven dollar pizza at a convention because I can’t stomach the price of the hamburgers, which, for that price, should be made of steak and win.

The Feel

Looking back, the thing that stuck out about the event, besides the overpriced food and purple aliens playing H2i, was how strange it is when the casual and competitive gaming communities are forced to intermingle at conventions like this. I think it’s a little like two dogs sniffing each other out. On some level, each dog recognizes the other as a weird variation of itself. Maybe the ears are a little floppier, the tail a little longer, but a quick sniff-over confirms that all the basic parts are still the same.

At a convention, the casual gaming community comes up to something like the H2i cabinets, the Fatal1ty booth, or WCG, and pauses in wonder. I recognize these things, they say. These are video games! But it seems like there’s some kind of competition going on, and … wait, people make money from gaming?! Are you serious??? All this time I’ve been playing against bots in UT3, and I could have made real money if I was slaughtering real people, instead?! (Okay, maybe not really slaughtering real people, but you get the idea.)

Meanwhile, the competitive gaming community walks by the people staring in wonder and stares in wonder at them. You’ve been playing UT all this time and didn’t realize competitive people would make a competitive game out of it, and eventually somebody would come along and put money on the line? This is really that much of a foreign concept to you?

Still, it’s fun to see those worlds collide. The competitive gaming community needs to branch out and attract casual gaming fans; in the short-term, it’s the only way we’ll ever have a fanbase big enough to support real growth. So when I’m at E for All for about five hours and there are seven hundred entries on H2i for that single day, that’s both impressive and a little uplifting.

Swag

I mentioned this on the podcast we did from the event (it’s scheduled for release tomorrow, 10/7), but the idea stuck with me for a little bit and I was compelled to hammer out more of the details.

The basic idea is this: somebody needs to scout swag at an event and distribute (read: sell) maps letting you know what areas to avoid and which areas have worthwhile prizes.

I don’t know about everybody else, but if you’re like me there are always a few awkward moments at any convention where somebody is shoving something into your hand that you don’t really want. At the same time you don’t want to ignore them like they’re part of the convention décor or an overgrown Venus Fly(er)trap. That’s just rude. You try not to make eye contact, hoping they’ll get the message. You try to have your hands full with other things, helpless to pile on anything else. It never works out that way. There’s always something they can give you.

So then you’re stuck walking about this huge room, burdened with junk. Flyers, stickers, booklets, pamphlets, and all other various kinds of things you can’t even sell on eBay for a penny. But you can’t just dump them on the floor, either. That’s littering. And more importantly, if everybody did this the whole floor would be covered in crap and Mother Earth would shed a single tear for all that wasted paper.

Enter the maps.

Convention floor, LD version: Just before the doors, you get a map. It looks like an old, worn, pirate treasure map to help sell the products and improve marketing. The only trick is that it’s not an exact guide. You don’t go to Point A to get Product A. Part of the fun about conventions is seeing all the booths and being surprised about the swag. Getting a map with specific products would be like understanding how the Matrix works before watching Neo become The One. It spoils everything.

Instead, there are simply warnings about “dangerous” areas—like the Fearsome Fen of Flyers—and vague notifications about rewarding places. This lets the map owner scout and discover their own treasure, or decide to wade into the forbidden areas if they think they might like the product. Maybe you’d like to enter the Newsletter Nexus of Nothingness. I’d prefer to stay away, and I want a map to warn me.

(Note: If anybody makes this product and gets insanely rich, don’t forget about your old buddy, LD.)

Concept Art

Find out on Wednesday if this episode of CGS Live! is a concept podcast.

One of the coolest “exhibits” was a walled-off area in the middle of the hall dedicated to concept art for various games. I’m a big fan of concept art, especially for coming games like StarCraft II, Diablo III, and any game with a Blizzard logo attached to it somewhere. Concept art opens up a completely different world—one where a game’s underlying world idea isn’t constrained by pixels, graphics cards, or file size.

There were too many games represented to list, but one of the pieces was for Half-Life: Episode 3. There weren’t any spoilers, unfortunately. It was just a generic dystopian scene with a ruined building and an intrepid-looking hero standing among the wreckage.

All I have to say about Episode 3 is this: If there’s not a portal gun, heads are gonna roll. I’ve had enough of shooting my enemies. I’ve shot them with crossbows, machine guns, pistols, shotguns, gravity guns, and grenades. All I want to do now is put one portal on the fiftieth story of a massive building and place the second portal right under my opponent’s feet, cackling at my malicious creation.

I don’t think this is too much to ask.

The WCG/ESL Competitions

The vast majority of my time on Saturday was spent watching the ESL competition. I also caught up on WCG results, but ESL was hardcore Counter-Strike for a hardcore Counter-Strike fan. I was hooked.
To be honest, I was surprised by how much I watched the competitions. I thought I broke up with 1.6 years ago when I made the full-time switch to Source as a player and when the current CGS teams switched over. What was left for me in 1.6? As a fan of those teams and a player, not a whole lot.

But then Pro-Am came, and with it 1.6 was back in my life. Now I’m re-educating myself, and it’s fascinating to see how the game has changed. Some strategies have gone totally out the window. It seems like certain boosts and stacks are still sitting in somebody’s 2004 playbook, gathering dust. They weren’t competing there, but even watching Complexity has been strange. On a few of their Nuke matches, Warden has been AWPing more than fRoD. This feels like watching Johnny Damon swing for the fences while Alex Rodriguez lays down a sacrifice bunt. If it works, more power to them. But it’s certainly different.

Some things have remained the same over the years. SK is still a powerhouse. MiBR still has talent coming out their ears, especially Cogu, who went something like 24-4 on a half of Dust2 against world-class competition. Still, despite having established powerhouses, there are plenty of upsets and surprises. PoV and EG performed extremely well at ESL, probably better than most people expected. As a fan, it was great to watch them come in after having a lack of credibility (PoV) or a few disappointing results (EG) and become the talk of the tournament—or at least part of it.

The Takeaway

Different elements of the pro-gaming universe came together at E for All.

Even with the enticing concept art, competitions, and all the other bells and whistles that come with a convention, the best thing about E for All was the gamers, themselves.

There were faces from the previous CGS seasons, and chatting with them (you guys and gals know who you are) was incredibly rewarding. And that’s what the event was really about, for me: being able to immerse myself in gaming, both competitive and casual, while seeing gamers of all flavors do the same. Whether it’s watching people play Donkey Kong a few feet away from H2i, walking across the hall to watch WCG, or talking to sWooZie and hoping some of his cool rubs off on me, you just can’t replicate that feeling of belonging and common interest anywhere else.

It's even worth the price of the concessions.