Even though I just started contributing to Bashers.nl, I was also invited to offer my Top 5 gaming experiences of 2008. Having had an adventurous year, I decided to look back on my various first time visits to some legendary and super fun game (related) events. Good times.

Its written in Dutch, but that won’t stop you from figuring out the surprising #1!

QuakeCon 2008 was all it promised to be and more. With only a few stories in the back of our heads, Jordan and I ventured towards the Hilton Anatole in Dallas to find ourselves at one of the most social and well-organized gaming events in the world. The support from id Software and the sponsors was obvious and went far beyond just financial aid: it’s about giving back to their fans. Seeing id Software’s CEO Todd Hollenshead and Executive producer Marty Stratton interact with the attendees on and off stage was hartwarming. They even helped out with cleaning up the BYOC area.

While big game companies have just recently started hosting their own private events for press & media, QuakeCon has already been doing this for an entire decade. For the fans. So here’s our line-up of things that caught our attention at QuakeCon, apart from all the fun we had. There’s still some stuff coming up though. I lost my mini-DV cable, so capturing all the video footage we took will take a while. Darn it.

  Down in Dallas for QuakeCon. Comicon coverage put on hold.

  QuakeCon Day #1: id Software press conference + Carmack keynote

  QuakeCon Day#1: The first pictures start rolling in

  Quake Live’s success will determine future Quake projects

  ‘Frag’ – A documentary about esports that everyone should see

   Wolfenstein RPG features Gary Oldman as Hitler’s evil twin.

   An interview with the creators of ‘Frag’ from QuakeCon 2008 in Dallas (Coming Soon)

   Our full photo coverage can be found over at the VGV Flickr, right here.

Special thanks to Jeff Dill (TheGameReviews.com) and Richard Christopher Boggs for helping out !

Remember the early days when Nintendo started to include games like Wolfenstein 3D into their line of 3rd party games for the SNES? Remember the horrid amount of censorship they used?

Nothing seems to have changed in more then a decade, with T-Mobile’s “nanny protectionism sort of thing” (- John Carmack) forcing Hitler’s facial hear down onto his chin for id Software’s new mobile game ‘Wolfenstein RPG’. He sure looks like Zorg from the Fifth Element doesn’t he? Also, a clear sign of antagonism often used in entertainment.

I didn’t know you could make Hitler more evil, but id Software (and T-Mobile) apparently just did.

A new documentary on e-sports premièred for the public at QuakeCon today. Quite a lot of familiar faces passed and unknown stories were told. To summarize: a great initiative that sheds some interesting perspectives on a world that is glorified by many, but has never really been understood. Here’s the first of two trailers:

I liked it, everyone here at QuakeCon liked it and if you’re even a little bit interested in E-sports, you’ll like it. They just opened their website over at FragMovie.com and we had the opportunity of having an interview with the creators Judd and Mike, so stay tuned for that!

Source: FragMovie.com

By now, most of us are familiar with this polished up version of Quake Arena. Quake Live will allow gamers to play Quake III Arena over their web browser, with small and quick installation.

Not having announced any upcoming Quake sequel during the id Software press conference, John Carmack said this year is all about Quake Live, which took half a year longer to build then initially thought. Carmack did mention that he was still uncertain about the project’s success and his aim for Quake Live is to reach a broader market that wants to play an FPS game, without having to endure the FPS experience of installing, patching and finding suitable online servers. Once 100.000 players registered for the beta, everyone’s hopes at id Software got up.

“We’re hoping for 5 million or more people,” Carmack said, pointing towards the possibilities of expanding Quake Live to a broader market. The game will be “playing to the strengths the PC still has,” such as superior web browsing and the keyboard/mouse controls. Carmack finished his talk on the game by stating that there were no plans to create a new Quake Arena sequel, but that the success of Quake Live will definitely determine the future of that franchise:

“The door is not completely shut for another Quake project and I would say that probably the success of Quake Live will determine whether is going to be another Quake Arena project. If we do go out and get many many millions people playing regularly on Quake Live, then the publishers are unable to overlook this. [...] Right now, the publishers aren’t all that interested in a multiplayer focused game and they’re probably right.”

Update: Spent 5 hours playing Quake Live in the BYOC area at QuakeCon yesterday. I’m hooked.

So Jordan, Jeff and I got to do two the the most important things at QuakeCon today: getting a spot in the BYOC and attending the id Software press conference. Oh yeah, we also got to check out the Wolfenstein booth babes while they were strolling through the BYOC area, annoying other gamers.

So enjoy the few pictures of many to come on the VGV Flickr account, right here.

The press conference mostly revolved around id Software’s newest endeavour to deliver Quake Live, a new browser version of Quake III Arena, to the masses. Completely free and add revenue driven, the currently in beta phase game will offer a matchmaking system, friend list, special events, personal statistics and more. And everyone at QuakeCon gets to join the beta, including myself. Guess what I’m playing for the rest of this event!

With just very short snippets of info on other projects in development at id Software, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the focus of this year’s QuakeCon: getting Quake Live out to the masses. More about the press conference after the break!

Read the rest of this entry »

My final weeks in the US are one big non-stop ride from game event to game event, followed by the occasional afterparty (or two). Starting next week, it’ll all be about finishing articles, packing up for home and preparing for unsere VGV Abenteuer in Leipzig!

So y’all enjoy our upcoming coverage of QuakeCon! My good friend Jordan will be joining the VGV ranks and we will also be helping out Jeff from TheGameReviews.com with their coverage of this event.

Yeehaw!

Picture is courtesy of the Dallas wiki.

It just hit me how much I’ve missed back home after seeing the extensive (and very nicely done) photo coverage of the NLGD Festival of Games 2008 in Utrecht. I could’ve been there. Instead, I chose to remain in the US in order to attend some events that I’ve had on my list for years: E3, Comicon and QuakeCon.

It fills my heart with great joy and pride to see that so many of my close friends and colleagues have come together at a thriving event such as the NLGD Festival of Games. The Netherlands has come a long way in the game industry, the NLGD Foundation has clearly proven that first hand.

Visit the NLGD Festival of Games Flickr account for the extensive photo coverage of the entire conference that was held a month ago in Utrecht, the Netherlands.