Crowds LOVE Shootmania

[Zechs]

I just returned from the Multiplay I49 gaming festival. I volunteered to admin the Shootmania tournaments - Joust and elite.
In total there were 48 players signed up for Joust, and 11 teams for Elite.

I was speaking to the Insomnia Esports manager, and it just so happened that the Starcraft tournament was running late, and there was a 2 hour gap of nothing on the main stage. I suggested he put Shootmania, and he thought it was a great idea and scrambled to make the necessary arrangements.
Within 15 minutes, the awesome production team got everything ready, and the players were told to make their way down to the stage. The only thing missing was casters, so Wabbitface and I volunteered to try that as well.
Just to make it clear - we are NOT professional casters, we were NOT paid to do this, and we've NEVER done anything like this before; we just wanted to support Shootmania. Here's the link to the nail-biting Grand final between Reason gaming and FM! Esports: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCwX85MtHNw

During the course of the match, something interesting happened. The audience, which totaled around 100 people at the start when the players were saying their GLHFs, grew louder as the match went on. Their enthusiasm was amazing, and their appreciation of the game was on full display. This drew in more spectators as the show went on, so the noise got louder, and we grew in confidence as casters. There were probably 500 people watching by the time the last laser was fired! There was so much energy in the room, it was really overwhelming - for both the players and us casters.
Not only were there 500 in the crowd, I've been told by 2 different sources that the livestream on twitch peaked at 2500 viewers. (By contrast; unless i'm much mistaken, the $100k launch event hit around 750?)
But do you know what was the coolest moment of all for me?

Around 1 hour after Shootmania had finished, I was walking through one of the halls, a few feet behind a group of people. I couldn't help but overhear their conversation: "By far the best tournament this whole weekend was Shootmania, wasn't it?" The rest of them chimed in and concurred. It was a unanimous vote (admittedly in a small test sample) that Shootmania was the most enjoyable spectacle in all of the Insomnia 49 gaming festival.
These guys weren't players; most of them hadn't even heard of Shootmania until they saw it on the main stage, so they weren't in any way biased to prefer it over other games. This was amazing to me, because it's not like I asked their opinion; they just so happened to be having an excited discussion about the match I recently finished casting. Too cool!

Shootmania stood out in the face of a £12,000 Razer League of Legends tournament, the £3,000 ESET UK Masters Season 2 Starcraft Finals, the WCG SC2 finals, the £5,000 Aquatuning Team Fortress 2 cup, the £7,500 Mad Catz CS:GO challenge, the DOTA2 cup, the Halo cup, the FIFA cup... you get the idea.
I joined a server today, and was asked by a player "How come there are suddenly so many British online?" Perhaps a lot of people enjoyed the event, and were inspired to play? I don't know.

What I do know is: I love Shootmania, and so do many others.
You can catch me on twitter: @shootmaniazechs

[steeffeen]

i loved reading this
thanks for your efforts and the insights man

can't wait to watch the vods

[novationx]

Good Job zeXy.
My nails were bit You did a good job mate.
Lets gets 2.5K for CPS too :p

Cya then

[Rots]

Good to hear I followed the stream and I can confirm everything The stream was on the twitch main page for almost all match. Great job

[infarctus]

Thx for this nice job dude, i watched the stream and it was awesome

[GabrielM]

That's great news ! I watched the stream also it was really cool, thank you for casting .

[PapyChampy]

Much appreciated. =)

[Kryw]

2500 viewers cuz le caspa was on the stage

[jeesports.nicer]

thanks for the tournament zechz and wabbit! cant wait to see announcement for i50

[Alexey85]

Well done, casters! Appreciate those insights on players' moves and tricks also!