GEEX 2011 - USA TrackMania 2 Canyon Public LAN Tournament

[Hylis]

Congrats to everybody! and especially Iceman off couse ^_^

It is really cool to read about a cool LAN in the US for TM. Maniaplanet should really have a bigger and bigger activity all around with time, updates, support and new games.

[MacDuffman]

It looked to me like there were about 1500 watching the live stream. Anyone watching the chat knew why it was delayed... because there were people from the event reporting on it. Overall everyone was very patient. We had a lot of well known TM players dropping by; frostbeule, phil, anxiety was there, ganjarider, havoc... and also a lot of people curious about TM. Iceman's roommate was there.

I was DRUNK! I dropped the ball for watching the stream... D:

[fng_thundr]

The TM2 Tournament was a blast! Congratulation to Iceman, Fallout and Kawa for winning! These guys have some amazing mad speed skillz! Was a pleasure to be schooled by you!

Thanks to all the trackmakers who built the tracks specifically for this tournament! Thanks to UbiSoft and Intel for sponsorship, providing the prizes, and also the tournament PCs - They really went all out to make this tournament a success! Thanks to MediaOne and GEEX for providing the venue and shoutcasting for the event.

And finally a HUGE shout out to fng_thatoneguy who risked life and limb (alright - sleep, sanity, and most importantly: time with his family) to code the tournament app, coordinate, organize, and keep things running smooth for this, the first North American TrackMania 2 Tournament! This event simply would not have happened without him.

[Anxiety]

Training and participating in the prelims was a blast as it was (sadly, I couldn't make it out to the finals )
But I can't thank Jeff (That One Guy) enough for doing this.

Also, congratulations to Iceman, on his new gaming laptop, and Fallout and Kawa on their new processors.
Watching the live stream was quite a blast (especially when the first 2 seconds of the ubisoft intro were played over and over again for 10 minutes, followed by the Pegi logo being looped for about another 10 )

All in all, it was a great event, and for sure I will be attending next year

[fng_thatoneguy]

@eyebo: Well put, and thanks for jumping in the stream chat and keeping people in-the-know about the situation Friday; you're a life-saver!

@Anxiety: The sad thing was... the reason we were looping the Pegi-3/Ubisoft logos was because we were trying to get the audio difficulties worked out whilst not spoiling the real video.

What is more sad is, they thought they had the streaming audio working to include the shoutcasting, but it wasn't to be... *sigh*

I can't apologize enough for that... I'm just happy some of you lasted through all that madness and still watched! Thanks so much for your support. It really was a fun tournament and I hope we'll see more like it in the future all across the United States.

Mad props to Hylis and Alinoa for getting us hooked up with Ubisoft... and for Ubisoft being such an incredible sponsor - also bringing us Intel; who sponsored not only our prizes, but provided the tournament PCs for the GEEX stage as well!

Also a shout out to all the track authors that made such awesome tracks for the competition (both prelims and finals) and to a lot of the members of Team FNG for spending a lot of time on our TM2 servers helping me test changes I was making to the tournament tracker app I developed.

This really was a huge undertaking, and it's really fun to know that we involved TrackManiacs around the world to make it such a success.

=================
* Sidenote *
Now, after I get some sleep and recover some from this whole thing, I'll retire the GEEX servers and bring our Team FNG one back up... actually, I'm thinking of leaving one of the GEEX servers up so we can have Time Attack and Rounds mode servers up... both will have the same tracks. We'll see which one we all like to play on most (I'll probably hop both because I enjoy both modes.) We'll see...

Either way, I'll try to get some MLEPP going on them so we can start tracking records and what-not too.
I'm looking forward to racing more with a lot of you.

GG

=================

BTW, you'll all be happy to know that we saw plenty of TM2 t-shirts being worn around the expo the day after the tournament, and found several people who had gone and downloaded Nations for a free peek at just how cool the TrackMania universe is.

Hope that means we'll start getting more and more TrackManiacs in the USA soon!

[Besus]

Awesome tournament guys; I really wish I could have been there and am definitely planning on attending next year. Thanks to FNG_ThatOneGuy Jeff for doing such a great job setting it up and following up with everyone - and to Ubisoft, Nadeo, and Intel for sponsoring. Also, grats to the winners!

[speedmonger]

Ditto to all the other Thanks messages from above!

But I'd also like to thank Anxiety, Besus, MacDuffman and the other better racers who couldn't make it, allowing me and my son (NapTime) to get in the finals

We both had a Blast! It was great to meet in person some of the people who have been routinely kicking our trash on the track.

The only thing that could have been better is if the GEEX guys would have had thier crap together
Oh well maybe they will figure it out next year.

Thanks again to all the sponsors and especially to ThatOneGuy for being crazy enough to try and pull something like this off. GG

P.S. Did you know ThatOneGuy sings a song called ButtMachine !? It's true google it

[nicknacknob]

It has all pretty much been said already, but thank you thatoneguy for putting in all those hours for making this tourny successful and helping me with my accommodations during my trip. Being one of two coming from a significant distance to GEEX, I was a little nervous on how it would all go down; but thanks to oneguy and the whole FNG crew, it went very smoothly and I enjoyed every minute of it!

While it was unfortunate that because of the GEEX staff's mistakes, it did not go fully as planned, but at the end of the day I believe it was a success and a lot was learned by all involved on how to put these tournys together; hopefully I can take this knowledge and help out on the forums if anybody else is planning on making on a tourny. During Christmas break, I hope to take some time to look into the possibility of putting together a tournament somewhere in Norcal or Portland, where I'm from and where I attend university (respectively). Definitely not guaranteeing anything of course. Either way though, I think Ubisoft should start maybe considering putting together their own tourny! Hopefully that will create a spark for the tourny scene and thus grow the level of play and fan base for the franchise!

It was really cool finally meeting people who play this game that I love so much, an absolute pleasure to meet all of you! Cheers!
-Nick

[fng_thatoneguy]

@All: Thanks for your kind words... you're certainly welcome. As mentioned before, it was incredible experience, thanks to you all, Nadeo, Ubisoft, Intel and all involved.

Ubisoft is interested in helping with other tournaments, so if you're interested in hosting one, please PM me and I'll get you in touch with them.

@Besus: Cheers, bro. Sorry we missed you here, but hopefully you'll see a tournament closer to home in the future too!

@Speedmonger: Just cause it's cracked doesn't mean that it's broke.

@Nicknacknob: Such a pleasure to have you join us in Utah for the tournament. I'm glad we could help out a little. I'm excited that you're thinking of putting together a tournament in your area and I'll help you where I can with what we've learned too.

[MacDuffman]

Ubisoft is interested in helping with other tournaments, so if you're interested in hosting one, please PM me and I'll get you in touch with them.

Spoilers: Stuff may get real in Ohio very soon...