Ulvespill just attended their very first event as a crew, the LAN-Party “The Link” in Norway. We were really excited about the idea, and for some of the crew it was their very first time going to a LAN-Party. What could possibly go wrong!
A movie Komplett made from the LAN-Party (Norwegian)
Wednesday
Full of energy and motivation, the crew met up and started organizing the different areas that needs organizing in an event like this. The assembly of the stand was started and for the first time we actually saw what the stand would look like. We split up the competitions amongst ourselves to make sure one person was responsible, in case things went south.
Needless to say, we were not very efficient in our work this day. Our main focus has always been to have fun, and things will work themselves out in the end! At about 4:00 we decided it was probably a good idea to get some sleep and continue with the details the next day, if Kim could manage to get of the retro setup from Øystein Andersen. He had racing chairs, home made arcade sticks and so much more connected to big screens with Mario Kart, the good old Tekken games etc. The best of all, Øystein has competed in the world championshipship in Tekken 3!
Thursday
After some emergency shopping, we got the last of our equipment transported out to where we would spend our entire weekend, and the job of connecting all the PlayStations, monitors, TV’s and computers started.
The crew of The Link were eager to test PlayStation VR and after experiencing only the start of Resident Evil VR, they made a decision to grant us even more space to give the participants a better chance to experience this for themselves. As great as this was, we had to move all the equipment and make some last-minute changes. No worry, there was MANY hours left until the doors opened…
Many hours, three rolls of duct-tape and plenty of sweat later, we were more or less done and everything was tested to make sure it worked properly when the doors opened the day after.
Friday
We all woke up quite exhausted, but very excited. Apparently I (Axel) had, totally unknowingly, been in danger of dying during the night. Apparently the other crew members were not pleased with my amount of snoring and contemplated strangling me in my sleep, but decided that getting rid of the body was too much work.
At 15:00 the doors opened and the participants started arriving and soon the entire hall was filled with computers, consoles and excited people. Having high hopes that our stand would be filled immediately, we waited and soon realized we had to work a bit to get people to come over to us.
Project Cars 2 was the first game to have a competition, being played on the big-screen. We forgot to take into consideration how shy people are in the beginning, but soon we had some participants and after a while, even a winner and the first prize was handed out! It had started!
Tekken 7 followed that night, with more participation and the other competitions we had going through the weekend was starting to get some interest as well.
Grumpy from not receiving any attention at all, our Pikachu decided to run of and we announced a price to whoever could find it and return him to us safely. This was just the first of many times that Pikachu ran of on us… We should really have kept a better eye on him.
Saturday
Already feeling the lack of sleep, the main day of the LAN-Party had started and the main competitions were being held. We helped the crew of The Link to host their FIFA 18-tournament while trying to focus on our own competitions AND keep the PlayStation VR corner going at the same time. This was harder than it looked on the paper during planning, but all in all we feel that it went well!
We were really surprised that on of our most popular games became Donkey Kong on NES, but once again the classics shine.
When FIFA was over, we started the Fortnite competition and Dragonball FighterZ tournament and a Quake Champions tournament. So much to do, so few hours to do it! It did not help that Pikachu decided to run of several times, so we kept ourselves very busy.
Sunday
The final day was here and the winners of the competitions that was held the entire weekend was announced, together with the drawing of the lottery that people had the opportunity to participate in, with the main prize.
Soon, people began to leave and we started the job of packing everything and leave after an exhausting, but fun, weekend.
Overall our experience has been both educating and fun. With approx 200 people packed into one small building, sweat, screaming and a lot of joyful atmosphere, we can easily say that The Link crew has done an incredible job setting this up in this local community. Not only with the event itself, but also hosting big eSports tournaments with big prize pools up 15K norwegian kroners.
We would like to take the opportunity to thank The Link and the crew that worked there for hosting this and letting us be there. Also another thank you to our sponsors that provided most of the prizes we had in our competitions!
Did you attend? Tell us what you think by sending a mail to: kim@ulvespill.no
