How eGamer Rick Roll’d 2upGamers

2upGamers the 5th Round took place on Friday the 4th of May. We were asked to do a presentation regarding eGamer, as we needed to introduce ourselves before introducing a new addition to 2upGamers. Sticking with our approach to be different, we decided on a video presentation. Not only would this be shorter than an entire sleep-point-presentation, it would also be a little bit more interesting.

Whenever a video is being shown, the possibilities of what one can do are somewhat endless. Naturally, we took full advantage of having an audience of 120+ people. With all eyes on the screen, they were sitting ducks.

The video above shows our presentation, and ultimately, how we Rick Roll’d 120+ people at 2upGamers.

You’re welcome to hate us. And sorry about the video size.

About 2upGamers 5th Round

It was with excitement, apprehension and a beanie that I walked into the hall at Rygersdal Sports Club for the 5th 2upGamers event, flanked by Azhar and our good friend Nqaba (you may know him as Sage of the Six Paths). Let me explain. The excitement is obvious, the apprehension was due to eGamer doing something special this time around but also because we were late and so feared a beating from Dean for not being there to help set our special thingy up. The beanie was present on account of the cold weather.

Anyway, proceedings eventually got underway with a record crowd of over 120 people and 2up extraordinaire Glenn embracing the fighting theme of the night with an entrance reminiscent of Rocky. After needing help to remove his boxing gloves (he really went all-out on this one) Glenn announced that due to various corporate witchcraft, 2upGamers would soon be going national and is now an NPO which means that what you pay at the door will go to charity. It’s just one more reason to get your ass down to these events. More good news came when he announced that Hylton, 2up’s other frontman, was expecting a child with his wife and was appropriately attempting a Darth Vader cosplay (this was Star Wars day after all). Mazel Tov to Hylton and his wife and here’s hoping they don’t call the kid Luke or Leia.

Next up was Nizar from Readers Den Comic Shop who came to invite us all to his store in Stadium on Main for Free Comic Book Day which takes place on the first Saturday in May every year. For the record, I attended it the next day and was completely blown away by just how big the event was. I also got my hands on a copy of Watchmen and Batman: Year One which was awesome.

Friends of Design was up next to introduce Springleap’s new venture in game and app design competitions. For those unfamiliar with Springleap, they regularly host design competitions for advertising, apparel, and prints. They sell some pretty damn cool t-shirts as well. Springleap will soon host competitions for game and app design which should really produce some great stuff given the raw talent in SA.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things of the night was Friends of Design’s competition in conjunction with Springleap. The prize was a game-design course voucher from Friends of Design and one of 10 sweet tees from Springleap. The means by which you’d win that double prize was far more imaginative though. 20 members of the audience were chosen, including myself. We were split up into Sith and Jedi with me finding myself on the Dark Side. Fortunately my Yoda tee was concealed by my eGamer one, or things would’ve been strange to say the least.

How it worked was that we would take part in one on one lightsaber duels (with a green and red pool toy respectively). The winner of each duel would walk away with a tee and a voucher. I fought valiantly and even sustained some battle injuries but alas, the Force was strong with my opponent.

At some point in the proceedings, eGamer stepped up to have our say. We Rick Roll’d everyone present and announced that we’d be hosting a 2-v-2 FIFA 12 tournament on the night, but more on that later.

Following that, we also had the people from a new energy drink, called Ozone, talk to us about their product. Unfortunately, there weren’t samples for everyone, but the privileged few who did get to try said it tasted “like liquid fizzer” and “wasn’t as sweet as other energy drinks but was more refreshing”. Ozone has already already pledged allegiance to ZombieGamer and Xbox clan High 5, as well as 2upGamers which they will also sponsor with drinks from July.

One of the highlights of the evening was local actor Vince Andrews making an appearance. You may not know him by name, but you’ll remember him from the Prototype 2 live-action trailer. Not everyone remembers the trailer fondly, but it’s not his fault — the director was French. He shared some behind-the-scenes photos with us, and amazed us with not only the fact that he’s a homegrown Capetonian but also that the live-action trailer was shot in downtown Jo-burg with parts of it being shot in Soweto. We know, your mind is blown. Bet you didn’t know that tons of Indian movies are filmed here either but I digress. Tuns out, Vince is actually a really nice guy and even came in, mostly, full costume. He said that he was angry in the trailer because of a harness he had to be in for 4 hours, which gave him a wedgie of note.

Then, it got a little interesting when the Indian Alex Mercer cosplayer (he likes to go by Abduragman) showed up, but luckily Vince was having too much of a good time to beat him to a pulp.

The food arrived and all hell broke loose as 120+ people scrambled for some delicious pizza. Not really, but the pizza was still yummy.

Did I mention that MWeb had a dance-off competition to win a golden ticket to the Diablo III launch?

Okay — that’s all of the formal stuff out of the way, now we can talk about the eGamer tournament. Our tournament rocked. After the pizzas were consumed, we opened up sign-ups for the tournament where we had to deny two teams entry, to end off with 8 teams. The flavour of the night was 2-v-2 FIFA 12. It was a standard knock-out tournament but with the semi-finals taking on a UEFA Champions League style two-leg approach that relied on aggregate scores. The losers of the semi-finals faced off in a 3rd place match and on that note, well done to Jason (you may know him DieJason) and Ricky who took 3rd.

The final was a heated encounter between Rayaan and Taufiq’s Manchester City and BMT eSports’ Rohan and Francois who were controlling Real Madrid. Without going into too much detail, it was a tight but entertaining game which saw the BMT boys ultimately win 1-0 with a 2nd-half goal. Congratulations to Rohan and Francois on winning the tournament, and we’re looking forward to seeing you guys again next month.

The top 3 teams will be getting prizes courtesy of EA, but of course all thanks must go to Glenn who made it all possible. He pretty much organised everything for us, as we only needed to bring the banners and ourselves. We really appreciate everything you’ve done for us. We plan to make the eGamer tournament a regular fixture at 2up.

If you’re wondering why I’m the only eGamer team member in some of the pictures below, it’s because Dean doesn’t want photographic evidence of his existence for undisclosed reasons and Azhar’s sugar addiction means that he can’t stand still long enough for flash-photography — unless you have a high-end SLR camera. Thus, I was nominated as the face of eGamer and simultaneously branded as a hipster by Dean.

2upGamers 5th Round was definitely a knock-out blow, where the event doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of slowing down in growth. We hope to see everyone again at the next event.

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Name: A-G Sonday
Location: Cape Town
Position: Editor, News

A-G has published 2088 posts. Read all of A-G's posts.

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