Wooooow…
For some reason I have not been able to come up with the motivation to write about my trip to Las Vegas, partially because I have told it to so many people and partially because I do not believe that the people that might be reading this are from the same crowd as I am.
To sum everything up, very few teams actually attended MLG Las Vegas. Where there should have been in the neighborhood of two hundred, four man teams in attendance, there was about fifty. Keeping that in mind our placing is not what it would have been had there been a full crowd.
The first day was FFA aka Free for All (every player for himself in a race to amass the most kills in fifteen minutes).
I am pretty bad at FFA and I was not surprised at all when I got knocked out first round (still disappointing!)
The next day was the team games and that went ok for us, out of fifty teams we made thirtieth (semi pro bracket.)
Even though I don’t count it due to the lack of people technically we can say that we went to an event and got semi pro, which is about the top two hundred players in the world.
What did count and that thing I am the most excited about was playing against a Halo 1 pro (keep in mind that we have been playing Halo 2)
Halo 1 definitely is where I excel and it is my favorite game; getting to play it against someone who was a Halo 1 pro was a dream for me.
What happened next blew my mind. We agree to play 1v1, first on his host, then on mine (host plays a very large role.)
Both games I won with relative ease. A day later I we played some 2v2s (again on the Pro’s host) and we won four out of the five games we played.
I knew that I was good at Halo 1 but I never would have guessed that I was good enough to beat a Halo pro. The only thing that makes me sad is that I never had the opportunity to play Halo 1 while it was being played competitively or else I too could have been a Halo pro. Partially this is because of growing up in Alaska, cut off from the rest of the world. Another reason is that my mother did not want me to play “killing games”. Because of these two reasons I missed out on having something that few people in the world have the skill to take, a pro contract. That would have changed my life in such a huge way.
Parents, I urge you to really think before you stop your children from doing something. I have been playing “killing games” for years now and I have never, nor ever will without sufficient reason kill another person. This is because of the morals that were instilled into me by my parents, not because they stopped me from playing video games.
If anyone really wants to know more about my trip to Las Vegas or pretty much anything concerning video games, feel free to come talk to me.
-Jason
Ok, when I said I was going to keep this blog more or less up dated, I really meant less. I do apologize for keeping everyone waiting in suspense but, as those of you who are intimately familiar with last minute vacations would know, things can get a little hectic.
Last blog I left off with a three man team, plane tickets, and not much else besides a stubborn resolve to make this happen even if it wrecked us.
Here is a quick tip for people thinking about going on a trip to Las Vegas, don’t! Ok, well I am obviously joking but there is a lot of hassle involved.
If you are under twenty one there are only a couple hotels that you can check into, one of those being the Hilton.
Secondly you might leave with all your appendages attached but you will return missing an arm and a leg at least. Food there is so expensive you would think that America was enduring a serious famine.
Another thing that was amusing to me were the Mexicans that stand on the side walk, flicking their hooker trading cards. They are there on the pretense of handing them out as cheap advertising, but really they are just mocking you for not have trading cards with ladies on them whom are only covered by advantageously placed stars, stars that you would wish on if you were into wishing on stars.
Enough tips, back to the story.
There was only one other person that I could think of to fill out our roster, and he was already on a team. A quick wish on a hooker star later and Nick was on the phone telling us that his team couldn’t go and he wanted to talk with us about getting on ours. As an added bonus he also brought a coach to the team.
Coaches for gaming teams have a rather interesting role, instead of coaching us before the game and letting us do our thing during the game, they let us do our thing during practice and coach us during the game. I will explain that a bit more later.
Somehow (again with my mom’s help and quite a bit of luck) we managed to get our hotel situation figured out. It was fairly complicated but it boiled down to someone from a different team that was over twenty one would get two rooms (one for our team one for his) and we would give him cash once we met up.
With everything set up we got down to practice like good little children. Yeah right.
A combination of conflicting schedules, lag due to living in Alaska, and ACS (Do not subscribe to ACS they are terrible) we never had much practice before we left. In fact, the most practice we had as a team was once we arrived in Vegas.
well I wrote quite a bit but said little right there. I am ADD and can never pay attention to one thing for to long, so I guess I will post this now and write more later.
It’s all about Vegas.
For those of you who read my last blog, you will know that Major League Gaming is a company that hosts gaming tournaments. Go figure.
Somehow in a moment of insanity, brought on no doubt by a lack of sleep and medication , my friend and I decided that it would be a good idea to try to throw together a team and buy plane tickets to compete at MLG Las Vegas. The upcoming PFD would take care of the money side of things and we would figure out two other people to fill the remaining spots on our team.
The next day we contacted our mutual friend Jeff, aka Evening, and offered him a spot on the team; to our utter delight he quickly accepted. Three spots filled, one to go.
Filling the roster proved to be one of the smaller problems as we browsed for plane tickets and hotels. Because this was a last minute affair plane tickets were horrendously expensive. The cheapest coming straight from Alaska Airlines and weighing in at seven hundred twenty dollars for each of us. After adding about thirty dollars a night for hotel (splitting it four ways), sixty dollars each for entry pass, food, and transportation things were not looking good at all.
We were concerned that our first serious hurdle would knock us out. Redemption came in the form of my mom who had a companion ticket which lets two people go for basically the price of one. This cut the plan ticket down to about four hundred dollars each. A bit more searching online yielded hotels for twenty dollars a night; things were looking up.
The next problem we came across is that we needed to buy everything as soon as possible, however, the PFD refused to be hurried. Like typical teenagers we decided to hit up a parents for a small loan, or about eight hundred dollars. Hysterical laughter ensued. Actually we are in the process of convincing our parents now. Once we have that done most of our worries will be taken care of. There is still the problem of an incomplete roster but I am confident that we will be able to pick up a capable fourth.
I will keep this blog more or less updated on our progress both prior to and post tournament.
Gaming in todays society.
We live in an interesting age, everything that we know to be fact now can become incorrect or obsolete within a couple years.
At one time video gamers were considered to be socially dysfunctional, unaware of the rules that govern modern society. Deemed to be totally unaware, these rejects were often the brunt of mean spirited jokes.
In a remarkably short time things seemed to have changed altogether. Now gamers that are capable to competing on the highest level are placed on a pedestal, admired by thousands of fans.
What caused this change? The answer is simple, money.
With the creation of a video game league that handed out contracts and cash payouts, gamers suddenly became more popular. People were flocking from all over the country to challenge each other, the winners have walked away with as much as $100,000 checks.
Who is responsible for this? What company would be crazy enough to pay gamers to game?
I introduce Major League Gaming
With a tournament coming this Friday (September 21), that will be aired live straight from the website, I greatly encourage you to sign up for an account on their website.
