My trip up to Halo-ville
So, as my previous entry announced, I was invited up to Bellevue earlier this week to play Halo 3 early. Now, granted, I'm not a FPS guy AT ALL, I was not planning on getting Halo 3 in any version, and was really content with never seeing it. (I've still never played Halo 2 to this day!)
But the invitation was there, and I was definitely NOT going to say no just because it was for an FPS. I was asked to keep things highly confidential - so pretty much my girlfriend and my employer were the only ones that knew where I was going and why. (I had to tell my employer because he wasn't going to give me the vacation time off initially - until he heard what it was and then it was a no-brainer.) There was only a group of 17 community bloggers and podcasters invited - a very select few, and according to the Microsoft guys, each person was specifically selected for one reason or another.
And they wanted a representative of The Bobby Blackwolf Show, which was the first surprise - I wasn't being invited from All Games Radio (the site my show is on) - I was invited as a representative of my specific show.
And so thus began my most-expenses paid trip to Washington.
They had me fly out on Sunday morning on the 9:45AM flight out of Atlanta. Thanks to Twitter, I already knew some of the other people going, and one of the updates from them was "Just landed in Atlanta, getting ready for my next flight." I Twitter'd back that I'd shit a brick if they were at gate A2...And then I saw a dude eating a sammich wearing a shirt with his site on it. I didn't take a dump, don't worry!
The flight was fine - was the first time I had been on one of the new Delta planes that had the video units in the seats. I pwned at the inflight trivia game, so much so that people would come up to me and ask me to stop playing. (You play against other people on the plane and your seat number is listed on the scoreboard.) We got in at noon, and apparently MOST of the other people got in at noon as well, so we all met up at one of the Baggage Claim areas. I went off with people from The Gamer's Pub, one of whom was local, and the rest of them went off on their own ways. (We were not provided transportation to and from the airport.) We met up that night at our hotel in Bellevue.
We had...a lot of drinks that day. And some food. Reps from Microsoft's Gamerscore Blog came over and treated us to more drinks and food, and we just sat around talking about stuff and just meeting other community members.
Monday morning, we met up at about 8:30AM and got on a charter bus to go to one of Microsoft's satellite buildings. (Unfortunately, we did not go to the main campus.) We were escorted into a conference room where the picture from the last entry was taken and given some schwag. Munchies, a Monster energy drink (what, no Mountain Dew Game Fuel?) and a T-Shirt and a Hoodie.
The conference room, set up with 8 Xbox 360 Elite's all with Halo 3 running.
The hoodie is actually really nice. They had personalized each one with our gamertag:
Doesn't exactly scream "I'M A GAME NERD" but those who know will recognize it. Unfortunately, it's still 80 degrees out here so I won't be wearing it anytime soon. But since I didn't pack a jacket and it was going to be in the 50's that night in Bellevue, it was very nice to have.
After the initial welcome speech, they split us up into two groups of 8. (Well, one group of 8, another group of 9.) All morning we played co-op campaign. I played with three other people in the room on the first four chapters of the game. I'm thankful they were there, as I probably would not have been able to complete it without them. I wished I had brought my gamertag with me on a memory card so I could have saved the achievements...
Then we had lunch catered to us - deli sandwiches. But then a cooler came in with BEER. So at 1:00, we got some beer and started doing some 8v8 multiplayer. Some Team Slayer, then some CTF. It was a lot of fun - partially because we were pretty much anonymous on the screen (The consoles had the names "Brute 03" and "Master Chief 02") and the trash talking was good natured - not the typical insulting shit you hear on Xbox Live. It took me a few games to get some kills, but eventually I did pull out some good moves. I actually...had fun.
Except for the time the guy sitting next to me grinned and told me that he hadn't fired a shot in the last three games - and we lost those three games horribly because he was walking into them giving them free kills without putting up a fight...But it was just a game, so no harm truly done. (It was embarrassing, though.)
Chris, John, and Nelson (not Major) from the Gamerscore Blog prove that gaming really IS a spectator sport!
They catered some Mexican in for us in the conference rooms, and that was our dinner. During that time, I did another interview with On10.net about my time there and didn't realize that we were supposed to plug our affiliations - so I had to get prompted a couple of times. I hope they edit me as good this time as they did on the E3 Show Floor Wrap-up video...I'll need all the help I can get on this one.
Then it was time to hop on a charter bus and give out schwag. We were given some tshirts and lanyards and were heading to the Bellevue Best Buy for the big midnight launch event. And let me say, it was an EVENT. I've covered midnight launches before, and none were as crazy as this one.
There were several hundred in line, this was just the beginning.
We arrived in our bus and everyone crowded around - thinking we were Bungie. We all walked off and was supposed to slap Master Chief's hand but we got there too early for him to make it out of the Best Buy. We all remarked on the bus how disappointed everyone was going to be - the people there thought we were important people. Luckily some of the other guys threw out their tshirts - schwag always makes people happy.
I decided to do a little thing for my tshirts which backfired in so many ways. I was gonna get people to do the monk chant, unfortunately as I was getting it put together, Best Buy employees came out with the exact same shirts that I was giving out and were just giving them out to everyone, so the groups left. Two did stay, but then On10 came up and took over the contest anyway - which will make for great footage. (I'm not in the video though, they used one of the other community members as the MC, and I think he did a better job than I would.) I gave the shirts to the people that On10 chose as the winners who were really troopers about waiting for it all to start.
Another charter bus showed up, and this time it really WAS Bungie. The bus was full of drunk Bungie employees, fresh off their release party. They gave out schwag themselves and generally took in the atmosphere. Then, THE MAN rolled out of bed.
That's right, Bill Gates himself rolled out of bed to walk the line and shake some hands at 11:45PM and to sell the first copy. Then he went back to bed, most likely. This is also when the batteries in my camera died. But it's okay, there really wasn't much more to take pictures of anyway.
We left right after Midnight - nothing left to see once people were buying stuff. Tuesday afternoon I flew out and made it home on Tuesday night, just in time to go build a new database server for work on Wednesday.
You can find more pics over at Podtacular and at XBL10KClub - and it's amazing how much I was able to evade people's cameras. I'm actually in NO pictures on Podtacular's site and the only picture of me on XBL10KClub is of me taking a picture that didn't make it into this writeup. Face for radio, I tell ya.
Unfortunately, there's some drama going on because of the secrecy of the event (and that I actually did what I was asked and kept the event under wraps) which is why I'm not fully divulging everything I received. We were asked to bring "The Big Suitcase" and I am glad I did. We only got the standard edition Halo 3 (no collector's or legendary) so it was something else that made it all worth the while. And no, I'm not telling you what it is, and if you do find out what it is, no you can't have it.
But the invitation was there, and I was definitely NOT going to say no just because it was for an FPS. I was asked to keep things highly confidential - so pretty much my girlfriend and my employer were the only ones that knew where I was going and why. (I had to tell my employer because he wasn't going to give me the vacation time off initially - until he heard what it was and then it was a no-brainer.) There was only a group of 17 community bloggers and podcasters invited - a very select few, and according to the Microsoft guys, each person was specifically selected for one reason or another.
And they wanted a representative of The Bobby Blackwolf Show, which was the first surprise - I wasn't being invited from All Games Radio (the site my show is on) - I was invited as a representative of my specific show.
And so thus began my most-expenses paid trip to Washington.
They had me fly out on Sunday morning on the 9:45AM flight out of Atlanta. Thanks to Twitter, I already knew some of the other people going, and one of the updates from them was "Just landed in Atlanta, getting ready for my next flight." I Twitter'd back that I'd shit a brick if they were at gate A2...And then I saw a dude eating a sammich wearing a shirt with his site on it. I didn't take a dump, don't worry!
The flight was fine - was the first time I had been on one of the new Delta planes that had the video units in the seats. I pwned at the inflight trivia game, so much so that people would come up to me and ask me to stop playing. (You play against other people on the plane and your seat number is listed on the scoreboard.) We got in at noon, and apparently MOST of the other people got in at noon as well, so we all met up at one of the Baggage Claim areas. I went off with people from The Gamer's Pub, one of whom was local, and the rest of them went off on their own ways. (We were not provided transportation to and from the airport.) We met up that night at our hotel in Bellevue.
We had...a lot of drinks that day. And some food. Reps from Microsoft's Gamerscore Blog came over and treated us to more drinks and food, and we just sat around talking about stuff and just meeting other community members.
Monday morning, we met up at about 8:30AM and got on a charter bus to go to one of Microsoft's satellite buildings. (Unfortunately, we did not go to the main campus.) We were escorted into a conference room where the picture from the last entry was taken and given some schwag. Munchies, a Monster energy drink (what, no Mountain Dew Game Fuel?) and a T-Shirt and a Hoodie.
The conference room, set up with 8 Xbox 360 Elite's all with Halo 3 running.
The hoodie is actually really nice. They had personalized each one with our gamertag:
Doesn't exactly scream "I'M A GAME NERD" but those who know will recognize it. Unfortunately, it's still 80 degrees out here so I won't be wearing it anytime soon. But since I didn't pack a jacket and it was going to be in the 50's that night in Bellevue, it was very nice to have.
After the initial welcome speech, they split us up into two groups of 8. (Well, one group of 8, another group of 9.) All morning we played co-op campaign. I played with three other people in the room on the first four chapters of the game. I'm thankful they were there, as I probably would not have been able to complete it without them. I wished I had brought my gamertag with me on a memory card so I could have saved the achievements...
Then we had lunch catered to us - deli sandwiches. But then a cooler came in with BEER. So at 1:00, we got some beer and started doing some 8v8 multiplayer. Some Team Slayer, then some CTF. It was a lot of fun - partially because we were pretty much anonymous on the screen (The consoles had the names "Brute 03" and "Master Chief 02") and the trash talking was good natured - not the typical insulting shit you hear on Xbox Live. It took me a few games to get some kills, but eventually I did pull out some good moves. I actually...had fun.
Except for the time the guy sitting next to me grinned and told me that he hadn't fired a shot in the last three games - and we lost those three games horribly because he was walking into them giving them free kills without putting up a fight...But it was just a game, so no harm truly done. (It was embarrassing, though.)
Chris, John, and Nelson (not Major) from the Gamerscore Blog prove that gaming really IS a spectator sport!
They catered some Mexican in for us in the conference rooms, and that was our dinner. During that time, I did another interview with On10.net about my time there and didn't realize that we were supposed to plug our affiliations - so I had to get prompted a couple of times. I hope they edit me as good this time as they did on the E3 Show Floor Wrap-up video...I'll need all the help I can get on this one.
Then it was time to hop on a charter bus and give out schwag. We were given some tshirts and lanyards and were heading to the Bellevue Best Buy for the big midnight launch event. And let me say, it was an EVENT. I've covered midnight launches before, and none were as crazy as this one.
There were several hundred in line, this was just the beginning.
We arrived in our bus and everyone crowded around - thinking we were Bungie. We all walked off and was supposed to slap Master Chief's hand but we got there too early for him to make it out of the Best Buy. We all remarked on the bus how disappointed everyone was going to be - the people there thought we were important people. Luckily some of the other guys threw out their tshirts - schwag always makes people happy.
I decided to do a little thing for my tshirts which backfired in so many ways. I was gonna get people to do the monk chant, unfortunately as I was getting it put together, Best Buy employees came out with the exact same shirts that I was giving out and were just giving them out to everyone, so the groups left. Two did stay, but then On10 came up and took over the contest anyway - which will make for great footage. (I'm not in the video though, they used one of the other community members as the MC, and I think he did a better job than I would.) I gave the shirts to the people that On10 chose as the winners who were really troopers about waiting for it all to start.
Another charter bus showed up, and this time it really WAS Bungie. The bus was full of drunk Bungie employees, fresh off their release party. They gave out schwag themselves and generally took in the atmosphere. Then, THE MAN rolled out of bed.
That's right, Bill Gates himself rolled out of bed to walk the line and shake some hands at 11:45PM and to sell the first copy. Then he went back to bed, most likely. This is also when the batteries in my camera died. But it's okay, there really wasn't much more to take pictures of anyway.
We left right after Midnight - nothing left to see once people were buying stuff. Tuesday afternoon I flew out and made it home on Tuesday night, just in time to go build a new database server for work on Wednesday.
You can find more pics over at Podtacular and at XBL10KClub - and it's amazing how much I was able to evade people's cameras. I'm actually in NO pictures on Podtacular's site and the only picture of me on XBL10KClub is of me taking a picture that didn't make it into this writeup. Face for radio, I tell ya.
Unfortunately, there's some drama going on because of the secrecy of the event (and that I actually did what I was asked and kept the event under wraps) which is why I'm not fully divulging everything I received. We were asked to bring "The Big Suitcase" and I am glad I did. We only got the standard edition Halo 3 (no collector's or legendary) so it was something else that made it all worth the while. And no, I'm not telling you what it is, and if you do find out what it is, no you can't have it.