As Josh pointed out, yes, I’m here in Dallas, TX rockin’ out at QuakeCon! For 13 years, QuakeCon has stood proudly over the corpses of other LAN events in the US because it’s fun, absolutely ginormous, and FREE. QuakeCon brings more to than your typical LAN party: the parent company, id Software, stuffs a big-ass vendor hall to the rafters with all of our favorite hardware manufacturers (like Antec, Patriot, Intel, AMD/ATI, NVIDIA, etc), and serves up incredible tournaments with thousands of dollars up for grabs. Keep reading, there’s more!
id Software’s technical genius-rocket-scientist director John Carmack highlights the event with his annual talk. In case you don’t know who this veritable programming bad-ass is, John Carmack towers behind landmark games like Wolfenstein 3D, Commander Keen, DOOM, and Quake. Basically, we worship the ground he walks on. But genius me, I flew in right as his talk was ending and I missed it. 🙁 Next year, right?
Love to LAN? The BYOC (Bring-Your-Own-Computer) section bursts out of control with 2,132 low-pinging LAN attendees ready to Rail Gun your face off. What sucks is when Team Fortress 2 gets an update last night and you have to share half of a T1 with thousands of other gamers also trying to update. I was wondering why everyone was trying to tether their 3G phones all day today…
Naturally, being Quake Con, the event focus rests with id games, like Quake Live, Rage, and Wolfenstein. This year, the tournaments will all be Quake Live with prizes for Masters 1v1, Open 1v1, and CTF. The prizes are $14K for 1st place in the Masters, $1.5K for the Open, and $12K for CTF. Not a bad time to be a pro-gamer, right?
So in case you missed all the cool stuff that happened already, here are a few links so you can catch up:
QuakeCon News
Kotaku — id Working on Three Lines of iPhone Games, One Potentially Rage-Themed
Kotaku — The John Carmack Keynote: Liveblogging QuakeCon
Kotaku — An Apocalyptic Look At id’s Rage
Kotaku — Wolfenstein: The Launch Trailer
Stay tuned for a recap on the tournaments and all the other awesome stuff going on this coming Monday!
Thanks to QuakeCon photographers entone and prognar for the awesome shots!
