I already mentioned this in my blog post reviewing my flights on EVA Air from Los Angeles to Hanoi, but one of the major reasons I decided to travel to Hà Nội, Việt Nam was because my company Tempo’s game The Bazaar was having its very first community-run in-person esports event at PK Gaming Ngoại Giao Đoàn. This event happened earlier today (or yesterday, if you convert Hà Nội’s local time zone to my home time zone in Las Vegas).

As you probably expected, while I was in attendance, I took a lot of photographs.

The entryway to the gaming café had a banner advertising the tournament, which invited competitors to wander the bazaar in a paid event with a total cash prize pool of US$750.00.

The interior also had a banner, this one being significantly taller and larger.

Tempo’s Lead of People and Culture was also in attendance, and he was responsible for bringing over a bunch of prizes for the competitors.

There were some embroidered hoodies…

… some specially-branded mousepads in partnership with PK Gaming…

… and the grand prize trophy, a Founder’s Edition collectible statue of Dooley, one of the characters from The Bazaar.

I showed up pretty early, so while the venue was still almost empty, I had an opportunity to walk around and explore the rest of the gaming café.

As the players started trickling in, some of them got set up on the computers in the competition area and started warming up.

After everyone found their way to the café, the tournament started with a small opening ceremony by the casters.

Once all the rules were explained, the players took their positions and started playing.

The event was live streamed on Tempo’s Twitch channel from the “Alaska Zone” streaming booths.

This is a shot I got of the person who eventually went on to win the entire tournament.

As a reminder, I work solely on the corporate side of Tempo and have no involvement in game design or game development pretty much whatsoever, to the extent that I have literally never even played a single game of The Bazaar. It was an amusing experience going around and looking at people’s screens, only to be completely clueless as to what’s actually happening in the game.

The main stage of the gaming café was used to play the live stream for in-person spectators.

One of the spectators, of course, was the Dooley statue.

Once in a while, players would be brought into the casting booth after finishing a round so that they could get interviewed about their most recent game.

The tournament was going on for longer than I expected, so I decided to order some food from the on-site kitchen.

Their menu was in Vietnamese, and I couldn’t understand what their entrée options were, so I just went with the recommendation of one of the staff members at the gaming café. I ended up with some grilled chicken, vegetables, and white rice. This actually ended up being pretty unexpectedly delicious.

A handful of hours into the tournament, we were approaching the end, with only a couple players left needing to finish their final run.

I believe some people left early, but those who wanted to stick around gathered around the stage area to watch the final moments of gameplay.

Upon the conclusion of the tournament, the winner was crowned, and he received his limited edition Dooley statue.

In addition to the trophy, both the first place winner and the runner-ups received an envelope containing their cash prizes, and pretty much all participants got some form of consolation prize, be it a set of earbuds, a desk mat, or apparel.

After all the prizes were distributed, the casters gave their closing speech.

The tournament organizers hired an actual, professional photographer to take pictures throughout the event. I’m not sure what his name is so I can’t give proper credit at the moment, but I found these on PK Gaming Ngoại Giao Đoàn’s Facebook page in the Cộng Đồng The Bazaar group.

He captured this shot of me helping set some of the technical specifications of the live stream software to ensure a smooth broadcast…

… as well as this shot of me joining the casting booth for a little bit while the Vietnamese caster was busy helping tally up the final results.

Here’s a screenshot taken of the live broadcast from the short period during which I was filling in for one of the casters.

It is very amusing (and quite difficult) trying to be a commentator for a game that you’ve literally never personally played before and hardly even know the mechanics for. The other caster next to me hard carried both the play-by-play and color commentary, while I mainly contributed by telling stories of Tempo’s past and how The Bazaar came to become what it is today.

Before parting ways, we took a group photograph with everyone who stayed until the end of the event.

During my time at Tempo, I’ve been a member of the production teams behind a decent number of live events, so this one wasn’t particularly special for me. However, I could tell that everyone else in attendance was very excited for it, which was nice.

I went into this thinking the turnout would be in the low multi-hundreds. I didn’t know how or from where I established that expectation, but as you can see from the photographs, there were nowhere near even a single hundred competitors. With that being said, I might just be used to running events taking place in larger cities for more well-known games, and it’s possible that the turnout for “Catch the Cash” was still considered a success given the circumstances.

I thought the gaming café was decent and comparable in quality to some of the smaller and lower-budget gaming cafés you might find scattered throughout less populus areas of the United States. The food, though, was incredible. I found the chef and the literal full-blown kitchen to be amazing and comparable in quality to a very good street food vendor or a small family-owned restaurant that focuses on replicating authentic flavors derived from their local cuisines. I had two meals there—one on tournament day and one on the day prior during a walk-through preview—and both entrées were delicious.

With that being said, I had a persistent headache and an overall miserable time being in PK Gaming’s facility due to the smoking room.

Cigarette smoking is far more common in Việt Nam than it is in the United States. It is also far more socially and culturally accepted, so this gaming café had a designated smoking room indoors, directly in the center of the café. The smoking room had a door, but every time someone opened the door to go in or out, waves of cigarette smoke would escape and spread throughout the rest of the building.

As long as there’s good ventilation, it’s fine, right? Well, from what I could tell, it felt like they had no ventilation. They had fans running everywhere, so the cigarette smoke would expeditiously get blown around into all corners of the building to make sure everyone would smell it, while none of it got sucked up into the vents to be exchanged with fresh outdoor air.

Marinating in cigarette smoke for about 7 hours was horrific, and that alone was single-handedly enough to make me hate the entire thing. It is insane to me that everyone who showed up to compete had to be subjected to degrading their health from fairly dense second-hand smoke because some people were too lazy to spend one extra minute walking outdoors before smoking.