I have to admit, when I first heard about the Quake III Arena Road Tour it sounded pretty cewl. It was probably this same lack of thinking it through that made it a joke. After showing up at the UT campus in Austin to check it out, I quickly changed my mind. Computer gaming geeks standing in line under the 105 degree glare of the 12 o'clock-high sun is not a very attractive sight. Add to that the id marketing department in true stereotypical marketing department form: hawking the uninterested first-day-back college students with "Fuck this! It's HOT out here!" written on all their faces. From there you have the beginnings of the end.
On my initial approach, it looked interesting. I couldn't see the bus that well due to the way they set up the crappy looking shade tents and the line to get in the bus right along side of it. Can you see the bus? Upon closer inspection, I must admit that the bus was genuinely bad-ass outside and in. It had an awesome paint-job and the inside was tripped out like a micro-version of Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas. The blacked out bus contained a small briefing area with a glowing 4'x4' Q3 emblem and an eight station gaming LAN in back with some pretty smooth running gaming stations. I won't get into the gaming setups. I heard complaints about having to stand, no room to mouse, etc... but as usual I didn't hear much from the winners.
You enter the bus into the briefing area.
Beyond the briefing area is the gaming area.
Well, that sums up the good points. First on the downward spiral is that the turn-out is close to lame. Probably some were smart enough to consider the heat before heading out. Some fans and/or misters would have been a good idea. The line to get in was, on average, the exact length of the bus, which means when you get in line, you come face to face with the id marketing reps. Whoever picks these marketing dorks to represent id should be smacked in the jaw! They can't answer a single question about Quake III Arena and probably wouldn't be able to tell the dif between Quake III and Doom! One even alluded to there being Inet connectivity to the game going on in the bus before he realized he didn't know what he was talking about, admitted it and asked us to ask someone else. Like who? So the stage is set with hardcore gamerz one side of the table and these marketing goofs on the other with a big awkward silence between the two.
The silence between the gamerz and the id reps made another faux pau even more noticeable. If you ever own a gaming company that is going to spend a butt-load of bucks on building a bus for gamers to come check out yer game on, you might want to remember to make some fucking T-shirts! In fact, it would be my advice to scratch the bus if it meant no T-shirts! IMHO, cewl looking T-shirts can have a longer promotional value to the promoter than almost anything else and also are a bigger crowd pleaser than anything else! They did have some small posters and plastic cups for the masses, but I didn't see anybody fighting over them. In fact, I only saw a few that seemed interested enough to pick them up. And before somebody says it, yes they did have higher end prizes like mouse pads and shit, but those were for the winners of each match. Who are they marketing to on this tour? The gamerz that already have Q3 and have been practicing every day or the guyz that stopped by to check it out? Bad marketers! Bad! No biscuit!
A next gen hardcore gamer in the making!
Add the fact that 101x is there doing a live on-site broadcast and publicizing the fact that they are there at the Quake bus and giving away copies of the "new Quake 2". In reality what they are giving out is only Q2 expansion packs. One of the 101x crew asked the editor of Gaming Entertainment Monthly and myself to write some Quake trivia questions for them to use in giving out prizes which we gladly did. I don't know if they ever used them or not though because I had endured quite enough at that point so I relinquished my Q3 Trivia Judge status bestowed upon me by 101x and hit the road.
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