Wow. What a weekend.
Background: I'm the president of the Texas Gaming Association, UT's legendary campus gaming group that got UT rated the #1
gaming school in the USA. We do tournaments.
We got approached by Red Bull back at the start of the year; they wanted to "support" us as part of their guerrilla marketing scheme.
It started out small. Red Bull's campus rep brought some drinks to a Guitar Hero tournament to give away.
Then it got big. Real big, real fast. I wound up meeting with local marketing peeps - the guys who invent the guerrilla marketing schemes. Fast-forward to March: TGA ran two Halo 2 tournaments on campus, using 16 TV's and 16 Xboxes all on RB's dime, and sent the winners to an event called the Final Exam.
The jist here: UT's two winners play against seven more collegiate champion teams in a statewide tournament, all for the chance to play against
Final Boss. Set the tournament in a schmancy restaurant and it becomes an unforgettable experience: exactly what the RB guerrillas want. Since I knew tournaments like the back of my hand, I wound up adminning the tournament, and got all the rights and privileges thereof.
Friday: An invite to The Warehouse. A nondescript warehouse in South Austin houses all of RB's gear and just enough indoorsy stuff (carpet, ceiling, bathroom, etc.) to pass city code. The original plan was to hang with the Boss and throw down a few scrimmage games, grab some dinner, and generally chill. Then that got shelved when a Dallas gaming center that's RB-friendly wanted to send down a team to play the Boss. We expected a team of 4 to show up and play a couple rounds, then go off and do whatever.
That didn't happen. For fear of garnering bad press for multiple people, I'll just say that a huge, huge van full of rather young gamers showed up, got slaughtered for a couple hours, and then had the fortune to get their controllers signed by the players themselves - mind you, these kids are growing up in a generation where Saturday Morning Cartoons are replaced by
Saturday Morning MLG. Still, one kid had the stupidity and the nerve to yell out, in front of everyone, "eBay, here I come!" - and mean it without joking.
The team took it well though. Well, sort of. They laughed off the whole incident, so it's good that they're laid back enough to find comedy in the times when things don't go quite right. But of course, some of that comedy came at the expense of the kids and their chaperones - and while it was hilarious, and probably well-deserved given the circumstances - it goes to show just how young these guys are. The youngest player is 19, the oldest 22. I come from a slightly older school in pro gaming where your rep lies entirely in your perceived maturity. It left me feeling a little out of place, but it's totally to be expected - the gaps between PC gamers (where the older pros came from) and console guys, combined with the age differences, explain away whatever actual differences in maturity there are. Still, Final Boss largely act like pros, in-game and in-person, so I was happy to see that the old-school importance upon maturity among the best players had carried over somewhat.
Once the meet and greet was done, a celebration dinner was in order, so it was time for some BBQ - and also the first of many times I'd get to eat on RB's expense account that weekend. There, I saw the first hint of FB's brush with fame. Their favorite game, you see, isn't Halo. It's a little game they like to call "$50 Coin Toss." It's exactly as it sounds. And it never stops at one coin toss - there's multiple tosses, multiple coins, multiple coin tossers, and lots of double-or-nothings. It's the only sign I saw all weekend that
these guys have money, and lots of it.
Saturday: SXSW Day 1. That meant it was time for the Final Exam. I showed up at 10:00am, and by 10:30am was elected the day's tournament admin in exchange for a pair of
badass headphones. There was a tournament, and it was largely too boring to read about - on-time, no hitches, and the 'better' UT team took second place to UNT's team, who repeated their win last year. Throughout the day, though, I came to know and be known by the RB guys who were there, and that part of it was rewarding.
The afterparty was where that part really shined. If you haven't had the chance to stop by
Hi-Lo, check it out - I recommend it as a swanky place. Two rooms, some good electronic DJs up front, and a chill atmosphere in back with Atari 2600s and Xbox 360s all playable. Oh, and the decor? Guitar Hero guitars, but designed by famous artists. (Bonus points if you can find the one done up by Tenacious D.) There, I met the "RB Family," as they're known, and it included everyone from marketeers to pro gamers to legendary breakdancers to hackers - and they were all thoroughly interesting people. I had never before realized, though, that I had actual potential as a networker. With the help of one of RB's marketeers, I was introduced to most of the important people at the scene, but by night's end I realized that most of them remembered my name and treated me kindly. If this - organizing gaming festivals, tournaments, and parties - is what Red Bull calls marketing, then by god I'm ready to sign up for a traveling salesman gig. Needless to say, I'm trying to find my way into the family, and start my actual career by hitting the ground running with the Bull.
