A vast and varied army of people coupled with a sea of monitors, computer towers and peripherals greeted me upon my arrival at QuakeCon 2011 in the scorching heat of Dallas, Texas. I stood in line among the other gamers and felt a rush, a jolt of the electric excitement that had already enveloped them. Volunteers called for registration papers, bar codes and yelled to the crowd that they held a coveted rite of passage for gaming conventions: the free T-shirt. The crowd shuffled through the long hallway and pushed along large carts with towers that felt like they belonged on a sci-fi set.

The first 30 minutes of my QuakeCon experience set the tone for the whole weekend but didn’t articulate the massive amounts of fun and games that would ensue. I met a slew of folks who were more than happy to explain their gaming rig, where they got it, their favorite games and what they planned on playing during this gigantic gathering of gamers. Austin was there to dominate in QuakeLive, the browser-based Quake game by id Software that he’d mastered over time, John was a studied Zerg Starcraft 2 player ready to rock some Terran marines with his beast of a machine, and Gary’s tiny red computer was air-cooled and more than capable of handling all of the fast-paced shooter action that the weekend promised.

The BYOC, Bring Your Own Computer, event was where gamers came to hook up their machines to a web of ethernet cables connected to arguably the fastest Internet connection in all of Texas. The event had brought them to an arena to test their skills and destroy all in their path to victory. The BYOC and its tournaments and revelry continued throughout the weekend while other great gaming-related experiences came about through informative panels, gut-busting movie riffs and reflection on the gaming world old and new.

The BYOC

Imagine a warehouse. Now imagine that warehouse filled wall-to-wall with 10-foot tables loaded with a seemingly endless line of computers, power cables, monitors, mice, keyboards and every color of LED light in existence. Fans whirred and power flowed from outlets as shooters lined screens. Furiously fast clicking ensued while I watched cyber gladiators wage war in far off galaxies, weapons factories and desert wastelands. BYOC and its extensive collection of gaming rigs was extremely impressive, and I saw so many different configurations it was hard to remember them all. Folks had brought in their powerful boxes to take part in tournaments hosted by Cyber Sports Network, but also to host their own games and blow away foes.

As I kept my eyes on a projector that broadcasted a Starcraft 2 match and a few Call of Duty players talked trash to one another, I heard a loud “Woooo! Woooo!” noise. I came to recognize that sound as achievement, a marker of major accomplishment: the uber kill. I heard that noise throughout QuakeCon, an audible alert that something fantastic had happened and the player who’d pulled it off was a pro. Matches and games were everywhere, gaming rigs of every color and size littered the tables. Even TVs had been carted to the event (one of which had Solitaire using up its screen real estate) that was a true meeting of gamers everywhere.

The amount of technology together in one place with the only aim being to have fun only made me smile while I walked through the aisles and admired each piece of machinery hooked up to the swift Internet connection. The BYOC was incredibly competitive, incredibly colorful and simply colossal. If you’re a shooter fan and want to try your hand at a large number of gaming tournaments, or just want to go to one of the biggest LAN parties in the world and game hard, then I recommend coming to hang out at QuakeCon’s BYOC next year!

The Exhibition Hall

Directly next to the huge expanse that was the BYOC room was an equally large room filled with giant TVs, announcers, vendor booths, pumping music and, most of all, games. And not just any games, but some games that aren’t due out from a few months to a year and a half away. Plus, a sweet-looking, decked out truck from id Software and other companies that folks could win and drive off in an inspired super-cool ride. I felt a bit overwhelmed while I passed by the TVs setup by Alienware, id Software and Hi-Rez studios to show off their upcoming and released titles — all ready to play!

Three games present were what I got the most chance to play during my days strolling through the exhibition hall, including Rage, Pay Day: The Heist and Tribes: Ascend. Each game was a first-person shooter and each held its own unique style, its own flavor and its own feel. I tapped away at keys or game pad buttons while announcers called out who was winning the most recent Team Fortress 2 or Left 4 Dead 2 tournament going on at the Alienware booth with its Humvee outfitted with large monitors for gaming.

In addition to the giant collection of gaming going on next to the BYOC, there were gaming gear vendors who had everything from top of the line headphones and keyboards to sleek mice and mouse pads. All of the gear seemed to have some cool glowing LEDs hidden somewhere inside them. Perusing these booths, I noticed a number of raffles and drawings where players could take a break from gaming to see if they might win some swag like a mouse, a T-shirt or a majorly powerful gaming rig like a friend of mine managed to snag.

Between the awesome tech being shown off (one of the gaming mice I swear felt like I was moving a cloud) and the giveaways, I did manage to get back over to the main attraction of shooters and cheering crowds. The lines to play each game’s demo (from my knowledge they were all in alpha status) wasn’t incredibly long in the least, I normally only had to wait for one person to finish playing before I got my turn. It was definitely faster than some of the conferences out there, a major perk to QuakeCon.

First thoughts on Rage

First of all, I have to say that Rage looks gorgeous, though it should with the new megatexture technology that’s rolling around in the new Tech5 engine crafted by id Software. My first thought in watching someone blow away an enemy bandit was “Man that blood splatter is wicked!” Even watching someone play Rage was great as they ducked and dodged enemy fire and lobbed grenades to repel their foes.

Rage is set in an apocalyptic world where a meteor has collided with Earth and wreaked havoc, a place where bandits make the rules, civilization is slowly crumbling, and mutants are abound everywhere. You’ve been put into suspended animation until a pre-set time passes where the computer wakes you up. When I stepped out of the stasis tube, I noticed the pristine look of the world, how orderly and scientific it looked, how shiny and shimmery.

Although, my expectations shifted when the door from the lab area opened and wasteland filled my view in its full desolate glory. I stepped out into light with the ease of the fluid controls and noticed a man calling me. When I headed toward him, a beautifully detailed enemy landed on me and immediately fell away in a flurry of bullets, it was a quick, fast-paced and awesome moment. I reached the man, Dan, and the dune buggy he drove and he brought up to speed as far as who I was, where we were going and what the state of the world was.

I don’t want to give a large amount away, but from the combat I got to play through, the storyline hooks I noticed, and the immensely rich detail of the world and its inhabits I’m sure that Rage is a game you’re going to want to pick up. In the short time I played it the world felt vibrant, alive and just huge. Being informed that the world expanded even further made me take another look at it and make sure to mark its release date of Oct. 4 on my calendar.

First thoughts on Pay Day: The Heist

I didn’t get much time to check out Pay Day: The Heist, but the concept of being a bank robber in a first-person shooter definitely intrigued me. I can see a big number of moral choices and a mix of gameplay elements happening. I compared notes with a friend of mine, and we both had different approaches to the game’s challenge of breaking into a safe which both seemed to work. He killed the bank manager while I used the high-tech drill to get in. What can I say? I liked the idea of the tech.

The art style fit well with the realistic look that Pay Day: The Heist was going, for and the controls worked well. The game enabled even a more unskilled first-person shooter player like me to keep my crime-spree going and stop anyone who wanted to halt my gang and I from getting a huge pay load. I’m not entirely sure what’s planned for Pay Day: The Heist, but it’s got potential, possibilities and a fresh take on a theme for the first-person shooter genre that I haven’t seen before.

First thoughts on Tribes: Ascend

I played Tribes once at a friend’s house years ago, but let’s go with the idea that I’m a newbie when it comes to the jetpack-loaded team-oriented shooter. There’s a system known as “skiing” in which you’ll gain momentum from hitting spacebar to glide down hills then jump yourself up with your jetpack. The key is to get momentum going so you can slip across the map quickly and, in the case of the challenge I was given, capture the enemy flag.

I had a lot of fun with the jetpack and mixing the different classes and their weapons while I tried to get somewhere near the top of the leaderboards (I think I managed middle of the pack at best.) There were about nine or so classes to choose from with different weapons and stat ranges so I switched and tried a few here and a few there. Each class had a different feel and lent themselves to either offensive or defensive play.

One of the things that was stressed by the announcer was that Tribes: Ascend is a team-based game, and it was capture the flag at that. So, sitting in a corner as a lone sniper didn’t seem terribly effective (unless you were sniping folks from getting the flag in which case you were doing great). I felt like the idea of team-based play was fantastic. I loved being able to focus more on completing the objective and stopping the enemy team versus just trying to kill them more.

Granted, team deathmatch does have its place, but seeing a different approach to it was great. Plus, I mean come on, jetpacks!

Panels! Panels and speakers everywhere!

Alongside the gigantic combination of games being played for the first time by the public and others played for the hundredth, there were various panels hosted by incredibly talented speakers from various companies. The ones I managed to go to during the adrenaline-filled wave of QuakeCon and its many events was John Carmack’s key note, “20 Years of id Software,” and an interesting panel called “Ultimate Origins: The Games That Inspire Us”.

The welcome speech for QuakeCon 2011 was electric and fun where a listing of different events that would be going on during the conference was mentioned. The crowd around me roared when the trailer for Rage was displayed in all its bloody glory. Then, the man of the hour, John Carmack, came on stage to talk to us about the conference, himself, his projects, basically anything he saw as relevant.

Key Note by John Carmack

I’d read about id Software and its history in the book, Masters of Doom by David Kushner, and of course, I played their games growing up, but to get to hear John talk about his passion for games, for programming, and mix it all into this experience of a conference was pretty unreal. John talked about the undertaking of Rage and the six-year project that it was. He explained his feelings on the game, almost giving a mini post mortem on things that he felt had gone well but could’ve gone better.

It was fascinating listening to him describe the process, how he sees projects and always wants to improve them, plus to witness the sheer mountain of knowledge he’s attained in his 20 years of making games. I listened to him describe working on Rage, creating the engine, and ultimately pushing the limits of what graphics could be do via the new megatexture process (which he described as only a small piece of billions of lines of code). Though what floored me the most (despite the fact that there were times in his explanations that it definitely went over my pseudo-coder head) was the question and answer session following the talk.

Here, Carmack took questions from the audience via a small mic and kept true to his word of answering questions until everyone felt like there was a need to wrap up. He answered questions ranging from the starting days of id, his interest in rocketry and working with NASA, and his thoughts on just where things are headed as far as the game industry. He also talked a lot about game programming, its practices, and anything from general to immensely specific pieces of it.

One thing that I definitely got from this talk (aside from the fact that the technology behind Rage and any other Tech5 games on the way is insanely cool) is that John Carmack has such a huge wealth of programming knowledge. It might be obvious, given how long he’s been doing it, but he’s got an immense love for what he does, and it shows in his work and when he talks about it. The best part is that he was more than happy to share his knowledge with coders that had been inspired by his work.

If you get the chance to go to QuakeCon, I’d say, if nothing else, go to the key note. It’s an experience that’ll show you the passion that game developers have when they create a game for others to play. Plus, I got John Carmack’s autograph after the Q&A session which is pretty freakin’ sweet!

20 Years of id Software

That same passion has held strong at id Software for 20 years, and it shows in Rage just like it showed in the Doom and Commander Keen series. For the 20 Years of id panel, it was like any gathering of old friends almost. The small group of guys that started it all held up mics and mentioned funny things that had happened during their tenure at the company, how they got there in the first place, and shared time with each other reminiscing like old friends do.

However, it’s not always the case that those old friends talk about decisions to move the company across the country happening literally overnight at 3 a.m., or the process of creating hardcore games. It was mentioned that sometimes the guys had nothing more guiding them than the want to make something super cool and awesome. In similar fashion to the key note, questions were taken and there seemed to be emphasis on how the id guys got going and the correlation to current newbies gunning to get into the industry.

The general consensus seemed to be to find a game you loved and make a mod of it, create a level with a level design tool you found interesting, and never stop making games. The amount of enthusiasm shown by the id guys showed that after making games for so many years they loved it even more than when they started. They’d practiced their craft and after 20 years and seemingly mastered it, they were just beginning to have a ton of fun.

Their take on game creation was something akin to always expanding on the idea of “what if?” What if a Marine were to fight Hell to save the world? What if you had rocket launchers to blow away enemies? More and more, expanding to creating a living breathing world all from a simple “What if?”

All in all from the description of how the games were conceived, their journey into game making, and their appreciation and love of the art of game creation, this panel I felt was inspiring and informative.

Games that inspired game makers

Speaking of inspiration, there was a panel that was standing room only where various game developers talked about games they grew up playing that inspired them. At "Ultimate Origins: The Games That Inspire Us,” a plethora of games were listed, but there seemed to be a theme among them. Each game had a unique piece to it, the art, the mechanic or the general feel that made it stand out among the rest.

Some games mentioned were Super Mario Bros., Left 4 Dead, Half-Life and Doom. Some features cited were exploration for secrets, intense difficulty and the mod community surrounding certain games.

The talk about exploring for secrets led to mention of players wanting to find out more about the world, the intense difficulty that caused game makers to experiment with reverse engineering of how a game was created and studying it. There didn’t seem to be a particular major theme of which games influenced all of the designers, since all of them had different play experiences to draw from, but there did seem to be a common thread of a creative spark.

Something in one of these games caused the players to want to become game crafters, to have players “transition to real living breathing worlds” as one designer put it. Some of the designers mentioned their use of mod tools to delve deeper into the worlds they so loved and create more of that same world and expand it into their own. It was fantastic hearing about everyone’s different games, what mechanics they enjoyed and how it shaped their thoughts on games.

It’s safe to say that given the right gameplay experience and access to game creation tools or even the inspiration to seek them out, these game makers found themselves desiring more and more to become a part of the game industry. They wanted to create something as equally as inspiring and awesome as the games they grew up with. From the creators of Dishonored to Rage to Tribes, I’d say they definitely succeeded.

Conclusion

QuakeCon 2011 was like a whirlwind and a flooding river all at once. I’m sure it was similar to even more water-related metaphors that I’m not thinking of right now. The sheer volume of activities, talks, games, gamers and all around fun that the conference created was something that I hope you readers will experience at some point. The words of experienced game designers was inspirational as both a player and creator of games myself, the number of fun games to play for the first time was epic in scale, and the massive collection of technology held in one hotel for an entire weekend was nothing short of breathtaking.

Get your shooter skills ready for the release of Pay Day: The Heist, Tribes: Ascend, Rage and many others in the coming months ’cause if any of the skilled and crafty players at QuakeCon have their way, it’s going to be a fun and competitive romp once the games hit shelves. The conference really was a blast, and I for one can’t wait for the games to come out!