Brisbane Gamers Meetup 3

Game Event from Yug - Saturday, 12 July 2008 @ 1:12am

Say what you want about me, but you can’t deny I know how to throw one hell-of-a-party.

Our involvement in the first GenCon expo in Brisbane prompted me to plan an unofficial after party, which evolved into the 3rd Brisbane Gamers Meetup, to be held on the Saturday evening, once again at my unit in Fortitude Valley.

Now that we had established the party twice before, I felt the entertainment needed to be upped considerably, and as such the party would not only include all the regular features - BBQ, ball pit, projector with games, guitar hero, singstar, etc - but also included a live DJ (DJ Kat) on the balcony, a $10 buy in Texas Hold-em Poker game, and a roving card magician.

Due to the open nature of my balcony however, these get-togethers are at the mercy of the weather, and in the days leading up to the party it did not look like the gods were going to be kind. After our live podcast at GenCon that morning, I high tailed it home to prepare for the party, only to find it absolutely bucketing down with heavy rain.

The host with the most - Yug has plenty to worry about 5 hours out from the party kickoff

What followed over those 5 hours was an amazing amount of preparation, frantically driving out to 3 separate Bunnings to buy marquees, gas heaters, tarps, a new inflatable pool (the old one for the ball pit had a hole in it), rope, tape, towels, and other essentials in an attempt to salvage the impending party. A collaborative effort of myself, Yahtzee, Elspeth, DJ Kat, JC and the lovely Lauren managed to pull everything together at the very very last minute.

Half an hour before the party was set to begin and as I was inflating the ball pit pool (no pump mind you - a head spin after blowing those things up is almost as good as getting drunk) the rain started to die down, and was almost non-existent for the rest of the night. Which was fantastic, of course, while at the same time meant a lot of our preparation and running around wasn’t entirely needed. The things we do!!

The balcony filled up pretty quickly

There was an awesome cross section of people who turned up to the party, obviously including people from our forums such as Edgecrusher, Celendil, Lanky Picket, teashades and others. There was a nice little GameArena reunion with Hawk, Hinee, Badomen as well as Joaby flying up from Sydney for the weekend. Suprisingly some heard about the event from the Good Game forums, ZNMS from PALGN (who I feel we can claim as our own now though), a few from the Hyperactive forums, an AtomicMPC guy or two, and a whole bunch that heard about the party from Kotaku.

As per usual there was also a strong contingent of people from the local developers and publishers too, with individuals from Krome, Pandemic, THQ Studio Australia, Half Brick, Sega Creative Assembly, Fuzzyeyes and even Rockstar Games.

Yay for drunken group hugs!

Perhaps surprising was the amount of girls that were there, hardly ending up as the ‘all boys event’ some may have predicted.

Local developer Matt Ford successfully ran a mobile phone puzzle game in which about 20 people took part, and although I didn’t play it personally, I hear most of the questions were about me - which was confusing no end. I had people coming up to me asking ‘what I bathed in’, only to have someone else answer with ‘pudding’ - and that was the correct answer. Which is not true. Well, not all the time anyway.

We also gave away about 50 ‘Guitar Hero’ T-Shirts thanks to Activision, and 50 plastic ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ collectable cups thanks to Rockstar Games.

Tunes were provided by DJ KAT and Family Nightclub regular DJ JC, who provided his own speakers and mixer setup, and kept the crowd on the balcony pumping to some great house music.

A party at Yug's just isn't complete without a ballpit

As always, the ball pit downstairs was a defining component of the party - I mean seriously, how many gatherings do you go to where there’s an inflatable swimming pool filled with over 2000 plastic balls? As expected, it was sometimes a violent area to walk into (for fear of being hit), but usually just a nice area to chill out ... or pass out.

Kon the Magician turned up later in the evening and dazzled everyone with amazing card tricks. What I find most interesting is seeing people’s reactions - either you stand there slowly shaking your head in disbelief, or you get extremely angry and tell Kon to stay as far away from you as possible.

If I had my way, the next meeup would be a HUGE poker tournament

We also had a $10 buy in Texas Hold Em game, with around 8 players over all, setup in the main dining room. I can’t remember who won, but I wish I had the time to sit down and have a game because I would have easily cleaned up ... yeah, you heard me Phil.

Matt finally made an appearance after sleeping off the morning at GenConOz, and got the BBQ going - cooking up a feast of steak, sausages and salad.

Things started to get slightly ugly around about the time Joaby hooked up his PS3 to the TV and started belting out the Singstar. Say what you want about the game, but it IS more entertaining the more drunk you get. We also had the projector setup on the balcony upstairs, with the suprise game of the night being Boom Blox! Not even a multiplayer game, it had everyone attention and I know some people were playing it for hours on end (although, as per usual, Guitar Hero did get put on towards the end of the night).

Around 3am in the morning we started to wrap things up, as most everyone had started to move on to the clubs or had gone home.

Thank you to everyone who attended, whether you were a member of AustralianGamer, another gaming forum, or just read about the party on Kotaku. The point of these ‘Gamers Meetups’ is to try and create social environments where gamers can get together in traditionally non-typical situations. Please keep an eye on www.BrisbaneGamersMeetup.com for the next event, and anyone in Melbourne keep an eye on www.MelbourneGamersMeetup.com for an announcement shortly!

A final shout out to the people that helped make this happen. Yahtzee and Elspeth for being the only ones to help me setup initially and put up the marquees, Lauren for all your running around and helping to setup, DJ KAT for providing the equipment - the tunes - and the support, Matt for cooking the BBQ, Joaby for the PS3 (I *think* I should be thanking you), ZNMS for buying Mario Kart Wii, and my housemate JC for putting up with the mess the next day!!