My day opened up with claiming my all-access “e-sport” badge and eating dinner in my hotel room.
Because I had to release the super secret project today at 8 AM PDT, I didn’t get a chance to go together with the team to the convention center, which was a problem. I ended up going a few hours later by myself, and took somewhat of an eternity to actually find out where they were.
Apparently, even with my all-access pass, there were some security guards who had no clue what they were doing, and told me I couldn’t go where I wanted in order to figure out where my players were. To make things worse, I was carrying around a bunch of apparel for the players, as well as a mouse pad for a player who had forgotten his at home. Fortunately, I was bold enough to ignore security guards and keep searching the convention center for real help.
After about an hour or so, I finally found someone from Twitch hospitality, who walked me to the correct place. The player practice area was apparently within the actual main area, off to the corner.
Twitch hospitality also set up a place for players to relax away from the main convention area. With Twitch being Twitch, they lit up the room with nice dim purple lighting.
At first, I had quite a bit of difficulty figuring out how the Hearthstone and Smash tournaments were going, but luckily, our Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team was easy to find and help. They had a game early on in the afternoon, so I went on stage with them to help them set up and settled in the playing area.
Unfortunately, the day was filled with delays, with our CS:GO team being the first of many. Our coach’s laptop had some severe audio problems, so I ended up sitting behind the players on stage for about 20 minutes trying to figure out a resolution to a problem that the DreamHack techs sort of gave up on. Eventually, I found some obscure line-in setting in Windows that fixed the problem.
Next up was Heroes of the Storm. Our team’s first match was against Astral Authority, a team that sort of came out of nowhere. They started out as King of Blades Alpha, left the organization to form Gust and Bust, and finally got a new sponsor, Astral Authority. I’m usually not too interested in other teams, and generally funnel my energy entirely into just Tempo Storm, but the manager of AA is pretty kind-hearted, so I pay at least a little attention to them.
Our delays continued when the Internet connection at the convention center started wavering, and our Heroes of the Storm players started to randomly disconnect from the game. At first we assumed that it would just be a short pause before we would be able to resume playing, but it ended up taking much longer than that. To avoid getting bored, Zixz loaded up a Taylor Swift song on YouTube so he can sing along with his favorite artist.
After over two hours of delays, we finally got everything back up and running. Unfortunately, we ended up dropping the series to Astral Authority, and dropped into the losers’ bracket, where we had to face COGnitive Gaming.
While our HotS team’s second series of the day was going on, our CS:GO team was also playing their second series of the day.
To keep things simple, our CS:GO team smashed, while our HotS team got smashed. Our CS:GO went 2-0 in series today, so they will be skipping tomorrow and advancing straight to Sunday’s matches. Our HotS went 0-2 in series … and got eliminated on day 1. -__-
Because I was keeping tabs on all our esports teams from our entire organization, I didn’t get to watch all the HotS team’s games, as I was either with the CS:GO team, or in the Hearthstone area with Reynad. However, from what I’ve heard, apparently, up until they lost the game, they were winning.
Our HotS run is now over, but we have competitors still going strong in every other game. Check back tomorrow (or the day after) for more updates.