I’m back from Las Vegas and most importantly the Call of Duty 4 National Champsionships that were held there this past weekend as part of the MLG National Finals. While I was there I met with up team FeaR (seen above) who took home the title as the best Call of Duty 4 players in the country. I watched over their shoulders as they shut out EnvyUs three games straight in some of the most impressive COD4 skills I’ve ever seen.
I caught up with (Robert) FeaR Assass1n, Kevin (FeaR Choppy), Joey (FeaR Moho), and John (FeaR PacMan) just after their win, before they scored their giant check, to congratulate them and talk about flying them out to the Infinity Ward studios at some point in the future.
While team FeaR came out as the best, 2nd place EnvyUs, 3rd place Head Trauma, and 4th place TBRE (seen below) were still some of the best Call of Duty 4 players I’ve witnessed. The fucking speed of some of these guys was incredible.
While sheer speed and skill will get you far, it definitely won’t get you the National Champion title which takes a lot more than just the ability to get quick headshots. The most impressive part of watching professional teams play is the level of communication they use (keeping the mics clear of useless information) and relaying the location of every enemy, what weapon they’re using, and any other useful information as they see it.
Overall the entire event was impressive, and a great debut for Call of Duty 4’s first live national champsionships. It was great to meet up with the MLG staff, and I have plans to meet up with them more formally once we get back to the studio and talk about how we can make Call of Duty 4 and it’s professional players a more prominent role in future seasons / tournaments.
Congrats again to FeaR on taking home the cash and title. Expect to hear from me once I get back to the studio.
In addition to those competiting in the tournament, I met up with several of our community members to talk “shop” and discuss Call of Duty 4, Infinity Ward, and get some of their direct feedback on what we can continue to improve on in the future (in terms of game development and a CRM point of view). I had lunch with Chase (Th3 Wiz4rd) and Brett (Th3 VerDict) on Saturday as well met with DpG Witness (when he wasn’t coaching teams). It was great to meet you guys and learn the meaning of “Jugger-twatting”.
The MTV Game Awards is this weekend in Berlin, Germany and we’ve been invited to attend thanks to our nominaton for the “Let’s Play Together Award” for Best Multiplayer Game. Regretfully, we won’t be able to make it out to Berlin for the live show, but we’ll be recording a little video tomorrow morning to show our appreciation and thanks to all of our German players who voted and supported the game in the awards, just in case. So if you’re part of our German game community, be sure to check the show this weekend, more info here www.mtvgameawards.de.
My Fallout 3 character. (Feral Mask + Chinese Spy Uniform)
Over 60 hours of gameplay later, and I’ve finally finished Fallout 3 this weekend; Holy hell was that an amazing game. You can definitely beat it in half that time, but I savored the gameplay, and completed every main and side quest before beating the main story line - as well as maxing out my character at the level 20 cap. I love the amount of detail and thought that went into every aspect of this game. Bethesda did a great job of really immersing you in their world and I’m kind of depressed it’s over. I still need to find a few bobbleheads and do a few random achievements, but for the most part it’s over, and I’m gonna miss it.
Although, thankfully I can get back to living a productive life now that it’s over, not to mention focus on finishing up Gears of War 2 (on the last level) and Mirrors Edge (on Chapter 6).
Hopefully I can finish them both up before Friday, because my entire weekend is being spent in Vegas. I’ll be flying in to attend the first ever LIVE tournament for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare at the MLG’s National Championships. There will be over $340,000 in cash prizing up for grabs overall this weekend - which will promptly be blown on hookers and blow immediately following the event. So be sure to drop me a line if you’re in Vegas or competing in the tournament. I’ll be held up at the Hard Rock where the event is taking place, so stop by and say hey. We can get together and gamble our life savings away in a horrible drunken rage.
Call of Duty 4 will be making it’s First Live Circuit Appearance at the 2008 National Championships in Las Vegas in two weeks (November 21st - 23rd) at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. Several of us here at Infinity Ward, including myself, will be flying over to Vegas to celebrate and support our community members competing in the event.
Check out what MLG had to say about the event:
Call of Duty 4, MLG’s first Online Pro Circuit title, will be featured as a live competition at the November 21-23 MLG 2008 National Championships. Throughout the 2008 Season, Call of Duty 4 teams battled it out through the course of three Online Pro Circuit Competitions. Come Vegas though, the teams will meet face-to-face for the first time this season as they do battle for some serious cash and the title of 2008 National Champion.
The Top 8 Call of Duty 4 teams will compete in a double-elimination bracket in Vegas. Six teams have automatically qualified for the National Championships by finishing in the Top 2 in any of the three Online Pro Circuit Competitions. The other two teams have been determined by cumulative ranking points. These teams will play using a closed-circuit internet connection, ensuring the highest match quality possible.
MLG will be providing editorial coverage of the Call of Duty 4 National Championships all weekend long, so be sure to tune in and see who will win the first Call of Duty 4 National Championship. Be sure to check out the prizes, rules, and schedule below, and remember that Vegas is open to all spectators. Best of all, spectatorship is completely free, so don’t miss out on the most intense Call of Duty 4 action of the year!
I’ve booked a suite at the Hard Rock (where the event is taking place) so I don’t miss a single part of the action. If you are competing or going to be in Vegas during the event, be sure to drop me a line and let’s meet up. Especially if you’re competing and I don’t know about it, because we need to hook you up with some IW / COD4 swag to represent at the event. Good luck to all of our teams competing for some cold hard cash.
Back from PAX! This weekend was insane. With just under 60,000 gamers, nerds, and the like converging on Seattle this past weekend; I was seriously in sensory overload. By far, the best part of PAX was the people. I met sooo many amazing people this weekend, hung out and just played / talked games. It was great to meet everyone, especially those from the community. Such as when I met up with TJ, one of our PS3 community members, (see:above pic) and hung out on Saturday. We hit up the show floor, checking out the booths and even inadvertently won a SOCOM: Confortation mini-tournament. I added the prize to the gaggle of swag the show had to offer:
… and that was just from the first day. The good stuff (including an exclusive Fallout 3 poster) came the next day. Fallout 3 was definitely the game of the show, with an incredible booth, complete with post-apocalyptic “booth babes”:
The game looks amazing, and is probably one of my most anticipated games to come out this year. Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead were both playable and looking fantastic, along with Gears of War 2, Spore, Mirrors Edge and quite a few more. It was cool to hear Call of Duty 4 being referenced when people were demoing games, such as:
Player: “What are the controls?”
Dev: “It’s just like Call of Duty 4, sooooo.”
When your game is being referenced as a standard for ANYTHING, you know it did something right!
After getting burnt out on the crowds of the show room floor, they had a console free play room I ended up crashing in for a few hours on Saturday night when I saw a lone Mario Kart-er looking for a challenge. That is exactly why PAX is so amazingly awesome. There is nothing like walking into a random room and sitting down to a four player game of Mario Kart with complete strangers and feeling like you’ve known them your entire life. PAX was filled with moments like that, thanks in no small part to the power of Twitter. The iPhone twitter app, Twinkle, exploded over the weekend with the amount of PAXers tweeting at the expo. I realized half of my tweets from over the weekend didn’t even publish to twitter because of Twinkle crashing, but the Near By feature was awesome for meeting up with fellow gamers around PAX. Sunday night was the craziest randomhappenstance I’ve had in years, by the end of the night our crew of 2 grew to 12 and ended in our hotel room. After taking a midnight wander through downtown seattle looking for a late night cheese burger, we ran into two fellow twitter addicts in the elevator which decided to join us. We got to a near by hamburger joint to find it closed, about the same time 3 PAX enforcers from New York were seeking some grub of their own. So the eight of us decided to seek food together and wound up at a local bar / grill called Taphouse Grill a few blocks from the convention center where we added a traveling musician from Bejing, China and a fellow PAX attendee who was hanging with him to the group. All in all we ended up eating a great dinner and then hung out in the hotel room talking games, movies, music etc. until 4 AM before we headed to the airport for a 7 am flight. Again… moments like this made PAX what it is, and why I strongly believe it is FAR more important as a gaming event than E3 has turned into. It’s about the gamers, the fans, and just geeking out something we all have a huge passion for.
Other than that, it was really cool to run into Felicia Day of Dr. Horrible / The Guild (see: above), Wil Weaton, and several others while at the show (all of which are Twitterers). Last but not least, I ran into at least one Call of Duty 4 cosplayer:
In addition to scoring a PAX exclusive shirt of Wil Wheaton’s which has my new favorite personal motto:
Can’t wait till PAX 2009, and if you aren’t already GET ON TWITTER, follow me, let’s play some games. It’s great for keeping touch with what your friends and fellow gamers are doing and joining in. Go to Twitter, sign up, go to my Twitter, follow me, and let’s play some games. Come on…. everyone’s doing it man! PEER PRESSURE!
I’m flying out to the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, WA tomorrow morning and will be hitting up PAX all weekend long until Monday. If you’re in Seattle and hitting up PAX be sure to drop me a line if you haven’t already and let’s get some food, drinks, and play some games. PAX Meet-up: robert.bowling@fourzerotwo.com
I‘ll be heading down to the opening night festivities of the 4th annual i am 8-bit art show tonight in Hollywood, CA. Any Los Angeles locals planning on attending as well? If so, drop me a line, let’s meet up, check out some game art, and chat. It’s an awesome show, you won’t be disappointed.
For those who can’t attend, don’t worry. I plan on having the good ole’ Flip handy (that thing is becoming quite useful) and grabbing plenty of footage to let you guys share the experience with me.
Update: I went, I saw, I left. The crowd was outrageous so we bailed early. Sorry, no video tonight guys. I’ll be taking some when we return a bit later and can see the actual artwork instead of the backs of people’s heads. Way too crowded to actually enjoy any of the art, but I did score an awesome Mega Man 9 retro boxart poster.
I headed out a bit early yesterday to check out the launch event for Madden NFL 2009 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA. I figured with them renting out the entire Rose Bowl and bringing in mainstream bands like Good Charlotte, Bustra Rhymes, and more. It’d be good research for me when thinking about future events for our games. I’m always checking out other games collector editions, launch events, community days, first to play events, etc. for inspiration on what we can do in the future for our titles.
While I was there, I grabbed some quick footage to share the experience with all of you. It was a massive set-up. I was there early, so most people didn’t show up till late afternoon (5pm onwards).
The Dtoid army is descending on the Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky tri-state area for their largest ‘No Apparent Reason Party’ (NARP) ever this weekend and I’ll be flying in from Los Angeles to join them.
With, whats growing to be nearly 1000, gamers locally and from all over the country making their way by land, sea (wait… it’s ohio..), and air to the event for no apparent reason other than to hang out with fellow like minded gamers (and COD4 fans of course); I’ve decided to come fully prepared and will be packing heat… in the form of limited edition Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare t-shirts fresh off the press. We’ll be throwing them out to the crowd during the party so be prepare yo’ snatchin hands.
Live locally or want to make a last minute spur of the moment trip across country to the hot bed of gaming activities Cincinnati Ohio? You can find all the details over at Destructoid.com, but be forewarned… those bitches crazy.
More importantly, I want to know who’s down for a trip to White Castles, Steak N Shake, and Skyline Chili this weekend? Drop me a message if you’re down.
Oh yeah… did I mention I got some awesome news coming down the pipeline at the end of the week for our PC players? I can’t say what it is now, but I’m sure most of you can see it coming a mile away. I’ll have that info for you around Friday hopefully.
Meanwhile, those of you subscribed to the video blog and those (nearly 9 thousand) of you who sent in messages and questions you’d like to see answered in the next video blog, I have a new one currently in the works that answers a lot of your questions as well as will be giving you a sneak peek at a line of new shirts we’re getting printed for Call of Duty 4 fans (and giving some away to subscribers), and one of the prototypes we already printed. I’m going to try to get that out to you guys as soon as I can (I want to capture some footage at the NARP event hopefully) to add to it, in addition to the fact that there is an awesome new Gaming site that’s preparing to launch in the not too distant future that will be playing a crucial role in the future episodes of the video blog series… details on that coming wayyy later.
Conclusion - See you all in Cincinnati, drop me a line if you’re in the area and we can hang out. Come to the Dtoid party, and be sure to check back at the end of the week for some great PC news!! Thanks everyone!!
We’ve touched down in New York and are held up in Hotel Chandler getting ready to head over to the Gamestop on Broadway to check out the set up for the Variety Map Pack hands-on event tomorrow. Before that though I made sure we took advantage of being on the East Coast and hunted down the first White Castles we could find to score a Crave Case of cheeseburgers.
Once we finished up destroying the Crave Case we stopped by the Gamestop location to check out the early set-up process. The first few hundred attendees will snag a token to download the new Map Pack for Free next week on Xbox 360. Along with that we’ll be hosting a tournament on the new maps tomorrow a the Gamestop here in New York where players can win a $1000 in Giftcards to Gamestop as well as some other prizing and swag including Call of Duty 4 Dog Tags to those in line, and a more swag.
If you’re in the area check out the details below, I’ll be there the entire time tomorrow hanging out and playing the new maps. Don’t forget we also have the same event going down in San Jose, CA for our West Coast players:
Be sure to sign-up and get all the details on Gamestop’s page:
New York
3/28/08, 9:00PM - 12:00AM
Store# 1363 33rd/Broadway
1282 Broadway
New York, NY 10001
(212) 967-9070
San Jose 3/28/08, 8:30PM - 11:30PM
Store #812 San Jose
3580 Stevens Creek Blvd
San Jose, CA 95117
(408) 261-9011
We’re heading back over to the Gamestop now to load up the new Maps and test them out to ensure all is good to go tomorrow evening. We’ll try to snag some more photos and will be sure to report back tomorrow to let you know how it all went down. Looking forward to meeting those of you who emailed me or let me know you’ll be there tomorrow night!!
Some more photos…
The epic opening of the long awaited crave case we walked miles to get and another shot of the Gamestop being set-up. If we snap some more photos tonight when testing out the new maps and set-up I’ll post them up here.
I’m flying out to the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, WA tomorrow morning and will be hitting up PAX all weekend long until Monday. If you’re in Seattle and hitting up PAX be sure to drop me a line if you haven’t already and let’s get some food, drinks, and play some games. PAX Meet-up: 
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