On Jan. 17 and 18, the Sixth College Technology Committee hosted UCSD’s 4th annual Winter Gamefest where over 1,453 gamers, minus those who signed in twice, showed up at Price Center ballrooms A & B to play computer games. The gamefest was mostly a series of tournaments where hardcore gamers competed for glory and prizes.
28 Madden NFL 09 players competed, with their last game displayed on the largest projector for the fans of virtual football teams. There were 32 Starcraft players who competed to separate the noobs from the Koreans. There were 35 Guitar Hero World Tour players who, like the 28 Rock Band 2 drummers, showed everyone the power of spare time. There were 60 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare players and 144 Halo 3 players who demonstrated the importance of twitchy fingers and swearing. There were 75 Defense of the Ancients players who reminded me why my first year at UCSD was awesome. And there were 247 Super Smash Brothers Brawl players who showed us what 4,000 dollars in prize money can do, some of the competitors coming all the way from Florida, Oregon, Nevada, or Tijuana. (Despite starting at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, SSBB players stayed even when the SSBB tournaments didn’t finish on time in the Price Center at 9:00 p.m. on Sunday. They finished in the Sixth College Commuter Center, broadcasting their games through ustream.com late into the night.)
Some casual gamers came too; they played LittleBigPlanet and Soul Calibur IV and Mario Kart 64 and Rock Band and Super Smash Brothers Melee and others on the two spare projectors and the five extra televisions. The other nine projectors and twenty-six televisions were mostly used for tournaments; StarCraft and DotA players brought their own laptops, keyboards, and mice.
I asked a casual gamer, Jessica Chaisson, a Sixth College junior, what brought her to play Rock Band, and she replied, “I am part of the Sixth College Student Council; I am here to support.”
I asked a hardcore gamer from Tijuana named TKD why he competed in SSBB, and he said it was because Tijuana is dangerous, and up north more people played SSBB.
The event was larger than last year’s and attracted attention from Channel 10 news and other organizations. If WGF continues to grow, perhaps someday gamers from all over the world will compete at the San Diego Convention Center because of Sixth College.
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