Alico Arena has seen its share of big-game excitement in recent years, but this weekend the sharpshooting won’t be done by Florida Gulf Coast University basketball players. Neither will Eagle volleyball players be orchestrating the kills.
Instead, the carnage will be crafted by the quick minds and quicker hands of skilled electronic gamers, hundreds of whom are expected to spread out on the arena floor Saturday, April 23 in the first EagleLAN event. The regional gathering is attracting serious competitors from as far as Texas — even a few professionals.
The fun starts at 10 a.m., and admission is free — although a special VIP pass is available for $25 that includes a “loot bag” and other goodies. With multiple tournaments going on throughout the day, well, the PvP, f2p and FPS warfare among the playerbase will be at ping-speed in a massive battleground of AAA titles when competitors go FTW! as they grind for cheese with nary a nOOb, camper, griefer or spammer in sight — and perhaps even an Easter egg or two in store.
To paraphrase, that basically means really good gamers will compete in really good games during what should be a really exciting day full of surprises.
And while we’re clarifying and defining terminology in an eWorld with which many of us are not familiar, the LAN part of EagleLAN stands for local area network, which is what Alico Arena will be transformed into after 5 p.m. Friday when members of the sponsoring FGCU eSports club crash on to the protected hardwood floor with computers, cables and other connectors to wire up and fire up their biggest event to date.
“It’s a lot of setup,” said Derek DePontbriand, a junior digital media major and president of the eSports club. “We pretty much split the arena into eight sections because each game has different requirements … some are offline, some are online, some need network capability, some don’t. We’re trying to place everything in the optimum spot, so the day of the event, you’ll see 40 computers in one section, then that stretches to the wi-fi section, then to a no-network section.”
Estimating the time each event will take also is an inexact science that creates scheduling challenges. “Some games will be over in five minutes, some can last as long as an hour,” DePontbriand said.
The 2½–year-old FGCU eSports club — a group for serious, competitive gamers that informally has about 200 members — staged its first “Free to Play” event in the fall and about 300 people showed up at the Cohen Center Ballroom, prompting the club to get Student Government funding and the larger Alico Arena venue for this bigger and better spring LAN fling.
“We’re hoping to get 1,000 people,” said Maikol Brito, a senior business management major, former eSports president and now the club’s project manager, who has been setting up EagleLAN for about a year. “About 70 percent will be gamers; the rest will be general attendees, people checking out what’s going on, parents watching their kids play.”
Saturday, eight games will be used for tournaments, all of which will have various prizes awarded, including three competitions — “Smash 4” singles, “Smash Melee” singles and “Street Fighter V” — with $1,000 pots. Other tournaments scheduled Saturday are doubles play in the two “Smash” games, “League of Legends,” “Call of Duty: Black Ops 3,” “Hearthstone,” “Pokemon DS” and “Magic The Gathering,” the latter in both standard and EDH formats.
“We chose the games based on their popularity,” DePontbriand said.
Cosplay — costume play— also is part of the festivities, with members of the FGCU Cosplay and Costuming Club scheduled to participate. Spectators are welcome to stroll freely around the arena watching the competition, and various games will be rotated on the video screen suspended above the floor.
Helping DePontbriand and Brito with planning one day last week were fellow eSports members Taylor Broad, a journalism major; and Ben Diamond, who’s studying software engineering. Both are sophomores.
Broad, who’s in the newly created position of streaming media coordinator, will be hosting a live feature called “Main Menu” during EagleLAN. “It’s basically ‘SportsCenter,’ but we’re turning it into a ‘GamingCenter’-type of deal,” Broad said. “We’ll be featuring people who know the games very well and can ‘dummy down’ the terminology used so people can understand it. You know, eSports is a new entertainment platform that’s not just for gamers, but for the average viewer.”
EagleLAN will be streamed live on Twitch TV, a popular gaming network.
Diamond, meanwhile, is a relative newcomer to the club and the only member in attendance this day who’s actually gaming at EagleLAN. “I’m competing in ‘League of Legends,’” he said. As for next year? “I’m sure they’ll put me to work in 2016-17.”
Indeed, there’s no such luxury as playing games for the other FGCU eSports crew this spring. “For the majority of our staff, as much as we’d like to be competing, we’ll be too busy running around all day making sure things run smoothly,” Brito said.
Gratz, guys. You’ve earned a ding! (For all you nOObs, that means congratulations on taking your game to a new level).