UKTerrorist
Posted by Myers at 16:04 19/1/2004.
iGames UK have just announced their partnership with London EventCo to hold a new LAN event here in the UK. The European Online Gaming Championships will consist of LAN qualifying rounds at iGUK centres around the country, before the LAN finals event, which will be held at the GameStars Live event from the 1st - 5th September 2004.
Event organisers London EventCo have revealed that the forthcoming Game Stars Live consumer videogames show is set to play host to a huge multiplayer gaming tournament, billed as the largest of its kind in the UK.The European Online Gaming Championships is the co-creation of London EventCo and World Cyber Games organisers Sujoy Roy and Dominic Mulroy, and the finals events at Game Stars Live will be the culmination of months of qualifier rounds held around the UK and via online leagues.
As well as those who have qualified through earlier rounds, visitors to the show will be able to turn up and enter on-site qualification rounds, with entry to the Championship included in the price of admission to the show.
Details of the prizes on offer have yet to be announced, although cash prizes are promised as well as "money can't buy" packages - whatever they are. It's also not yet known which games will be played, although the organisers rather optimistically claim that this will be a 25,000 player gaming championship - which is rather a lot of gamers.
"Launching the European Online Gaming Championships is a dream come true for Dominic and I," according to EOGC organiser Sujoy Roy - a bit of a dab hand at Quake himself, we might add. "A large-scale event such as this sitting under the umbrella of the greatest-ever consumer games exhibition will really help put competitive PC gaming on the map."
Game Stars Live runs from September 1st to 5th 2004 at London's ExCeL exhibition halls in Docklands, and hopes to attract 100,000 consumers over the course of the event. It will run alongside European Games Network, a trade-focused show which will also be held in ExCeL.
The downside of this event, of course, is that iGames UK will no longer host the UK World Cyber Games. Whether another organisation will run the event in the UK this year remains to be seen.
Comments
16:08 19/1/2004
surely theres gotta be euro teams and therefore euro quals ?
or is it just another random "pro" name ? [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
16:08 19/1/2004
Online Multiplayer Gaming
16:10 19/1/2004
2seXeh 2perfoRm
16:10 19/1/2004
ooooo a big big rival to i series ? [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
16:12 19/1/2004
Last Chance
16:12 19/1/2004
16:14 19/1/2004
16:17 19/1/2004
16:17 19/1/2004
Dom, iGUK. [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
16:18 19/1/2004
Last Chance
16:19 19/1/2004
16:21 19/1/2004
if worst comes to worst one of the lan centres just hosts the teams most likely to qual, the 4k, tag, i-es, + a few etc [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
16:22 19/1/2004
16:25 19/1/2004
Another point is that clans can be clans, not tied down by the country of origin of its members, aka wcg. So we can ensure that the clans are full strength. [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
Rush!
16:26 19/1/2004
16:28 19/1/2004
16:40 19/1/2004
g30rg3h
UKTerrorist
16:52 19/1/2004
Online Multiplayer Gaming
17:15 19/1/2004
so i wouldnt be counting your chickens yet dh [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
Shoot First Ask Later
17:20 19/1/2004
Last Chance
17:27 19/1/2004
up north ? newcastle/scotland is upnorth :)
also
hrm.. [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
deliverance
17:33 19/1/2004
Infinity-eSports
17:33 19/1/2004
17:43 19/1/2004
thed0n
17:49 19/1/2004
17:58 19/1/2004
Can a lan centre hold WCG quals even though they are in the iguk ? If so, gooo unicon! :) Even though wcg is normally a 4K mix team attending :)
Any news on the ESL Nations Cup?? Are iguk doing it or are TeamUK myers and doz or some random noobs? [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
Choke
18:15 19/1/2004
lol an online competition, which is all played on LAN? Someone needs to slap Sujoy and get him to give it a new name. [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
Lite
18:25 19/1/2004
Last Chance
18:52 19/1/2004
19:45 19/1/2004
Infinity-eSports
20:25 19/1/2004
With WCG being in USA this year, it would be so much better than Korea, cause there will actually be things to do outside of the competition.
Perhaps some1, Dom or Sujoy, could explain why they havent decided to drop running the WCG. As there really is no other organisation in the UK any more, i take it we wont have a uk qualifier and no1 from the uk will be in attendence.
Also, with licencing issues, the cafes will all have to have the cafe licence anyway for counter-strike to be running, for a small pre-qualifier maybe they could get away without valve knowing? :D Or if the main competition buys a licence, then the qualifiers may also be covered by this licence, i think the CXG licence covered them to do their LA and Miami qualifiers. Not necessarily correct, but what i heard. [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
21:57 19/1/2004
DArt, i think the reason they aren't holding the WCG quals is the simple fact that the contract ended and i dont think WCG wanted to renew it with them, though i can't back up that claim. [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
00:57 20/1/2004
If Unicon arent part of iguk, then Unicon 4 ever! [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
01:07 20/1/2004
I know its describing the iguk leagues, but i cant see there an exception. If a LAN centre doesnt do the WCG quals, then thats another tournament iguk is freezing out for the normal teams to attend, with 4K just having 2 UK players It would be a good challenge for one of the other teams to play in San Fran for the WCGs.
Ditched CPL quals for WCG quals now ditching WCG quals for European Online Gaming Championships, which their basically saying wont have any CS at, so trying to promote it to mainly CS'ers isnt the way to go, they event could be awesome, but without CS this community doesnt give a f*** basically. [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
Infinity-eSports
03:39 20/1/2004
09:28 20/1/2004
10:36 20/1/2004
Running a tournament is not simply get gamers to come, set up a lan and hope it goes for the best. Those in vegas last week will know how true that is.
It is a full time job, with operational responsibility for selecting a venue, building the show area and staffing it. There is sponsorship requirements, holding dozens of meetings with loads of companies to pay for the thing (WCG 2003 had a total cost last year of over £240k), press and media relations, to ensure its promoted and covered to a) let gamers know and b) keep sponsors happy as their names are mentioned. Then there are qualifiers, both online and LAN to organise. For WCG there is also weekly reports which took us ages to produce to keep Korea happy on our progress. Then we had to accept responsibility for the cost of the event and pay it ourselves, and commit to finding the money through sponsorship to make the event a success.
On top of that, all the income we obtained for last years WCG (luckily over the cost of £240k!) we then had to pay Korea 10% royalty fees for running "their" tournament.
It just seemed to us that as a business the only people that earned money from WCG was... WCG. As such we notified WCG last year that although we had a "first option" contract to run WCG 2004 in the UK, we had decided to turn it down.
Instead, we have some great plans for iGUK LAN tournaments EVERY day of the year from March onwards. Just turn up and win a prize every night.
Then when we were called to a meeting with ELSPA, DTi and London Eventco and they said they had plans for a European games tournament to be held as part of Gamestars Live. And they wanted us to help them achieve this. We couldnt turn it down, a European Finals - not just a UK qualifier - to be held at a massive gameshow?! Bring it on.
So thats it in a nutshell, we dont go around ditching one event or another for the fun of it, our business is to promote our LAN gaming centres and to try and get you online nobs to come in and play LAN instead.
As for CS, well, its dying, face it. Im not happy about it, remember when I setup Lanarena I opened the same week as the first beta came out and everything Ive done since has been based on the success of CS in the early days. But now Valve want to cash in too, and you the gamers will be the one paying to play it online. But we the LAN gaming centres will remove it as we refuse to pay a license fee. And remember its not that we are refusing because we cant afford it - the price is not that bad, only £7pm per machine, but its the precedent. If EA, Atari, Novalogic, Activision et al then come to us and say "well if you are paying a license to valve, then you can pay us too", then thats the end of LAN centres.
So go out and buy Call of Duty and the upcoming Joint Operations - 2 definates at the EOGC - and get practicing in your teams down iguk centres. Oh and puesuade myers and co at UKT to change the emphasis of this great site to more than just cs, otherwise it will die too along with the game. [ Score: 5, informative | Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
Rush!
11:14 20/1/2004
11:23 20/1/2004
EA are next... so imo either way LAN centers' are going to get pretty much owned unless some form of price scheme is agreed between centers and the games companies. Or you make the prices for people playing the games like double....
And might I add to give a bit of credability to what I said, after speaking to Tony Bickley of Konami Europe. He stated that companies will definately be looking at the monthly price plans within the near future.
What are you going to do when the inevitable happens? [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
11:40 20/1/2004
THX
14:39 20/1/2004
Clearly lots of thought gone into the name [ Comment: Report | IP: Logged ]
18:11 20/1/2004
Saviour of UKT
UKTerrorist
20:33 20/1/2004