Night Time Freeplay and Utilisation Of The Entire Room

[Mellow]

I'm not sure how easy this would be to pull off, but at Iseries, you can literally use their facilities all night. If you were mental you could literally turn up and play CSS for 92 hours straight. Perhaps XL could offer people the chance to stay in the place as long as they like? So after tournaments finish for the night, free play could take place for the rest of the evening.

Another idea I had was do something similar to Iseries again for freeplay. In that, half the room are the tournament stations, and the other half of the room is the bring your own Xbox section for freeplay. Each person would pay for an allocated space where they'd set up their 360/monitor. This would be completely optional to do. And then you could scrim players and teams in your free time. This section could easily be kept open all night and the some of the money generated from the rental of the sections could pay for security guards to man the area. Would allow the insomniacs the chance to play all they want, as well as allowing teams to freeplay as much as they want.

I know XL isn't keen on bringing your own equipment from home but a lot of the top teams actually bring their 360s with them for some last minute hotel practice anyway so they have them at the event. In fact, XL could maybe even provide some of the old Monitors they had from H2 to save people bringing Monitors as well as 360s. All in all, this would alleviate some of the Freeplay issues, as well as the boredem from waiting around for hours for matches etc, and would be a new revenue source for XL to increase prizes while utilising a half full room.

People's thoughts?

[Inferno Fear]

Yea good idea, I Series is a wicked event mainly for the BYOC system :P. Meega LAN does this in germany for xbox aswell dont they ?

[Mellow]

Yeah, they require you to take your on 360 also. It's not convenient for everyone though, that's why I feel this system might work well. I reckon the best system would to set up a help desk to the entrance of the cornered off BYOC area. They'd deal with people going in and out and checking everyone's bags etc, as well as making sure everyone is checked in properly with matching security labels etc. I reckon it'd be a popular system between some teams. I doubt there'd be the chance to even have thefts either because the area would be secured and there'd be security etc. Easily done.

[Inferno Fear]

Yea, at i34 with the separate area and security guards and extra passes worked really well

[KONSPIRACY]

Please do not compare XL to iseries as it is a completely different platform and we have very different arrangements/possibilities with the venues.

First of all...

Night play: quite simply the venue do not allow overnight events. This was the same as the NEC and is not possible so forget it.

BYOX: we are looking at ways of providing BYOX areas however its not as simple as it sounds. Without going into the ridiculous costs it would involve for additional venue space, I can confirm that the power distribution in the "exhibition" area at XL5 is not suitable for additional stations so BYOX in this area would not be logistically viable.

We would like to do both of these however they simply are not possible at this time.

[luckR]

iSeries is amazing, im not saying the XL isnt, but iSeries is so much more open etc due to the amount of sponsors they have, and these are no ordinary sponsors. Theres Intel for example and they are billion pound company

[Spindryer]

Exactly, the money that iSeries has to play with is incredible and XL really can only work if the gamers are behind it. I'm sure Kon has images of XL being in the position to offer so much more than we offer now but until the sponsors come knocking with some cash it ain't happening. Unless people want to start paying more for there tickets?

[KONSPIRACY]

Please also bear in my mind that the iseries alone has been going for over 10 years and have hosted over 30 events based on PCs which naturally attract higher sponsorship and marketing potential. Considering we have got almost 25% of their attendance with only 5 events, I think its fair to say that XL is progressing faster than any other LAN event.

[luckR]

I think Kon should a pay a visit to dragons den :P

[EmotionSMz]

Lol that would be awesome.

[luckR]

emotion your a geordie ! your my hero, im from south shields, where you knocking about?

[Mellow]

Everyone knows this but it's not how new XL is that's holding XL back but the 360 itself and its limitations. The lack of peripheral support and upgradable components etc. This is where most PC sponsors exist.

[StompingFreak]

Yeah, they require you to take your on 360 also. It's not convenient for everyone though, that's why I feel this system might work well. I reckon the best system would to set up a help desk to the entrance of the cornered off BYOC area. They'd deal with people going in and out and checking everyone's bags etc, as well as making sure everyone is checked in properly with matching security labels etc. I reckon it'd be a popular system between some teams. I doubt there'd be the chance to even have thefts either because the area would be secured and there'd be security etc. Easily done.

Mellow, have to ever tryed running the door at XL?? Its a nightmare. To have to check bags etc means staff would have to stay up alnight. Sorry for putting a downer on a good idea but, Each person would have to sign that they allow bag checks, unless there was reasonble suit to check for stolen items, over past events items have gone missing, but without any proof, i.e eye witness/es you cant just check someones personal belongings. Also after working all day at the event i like to get a beer and 3/4 hours sleep(im old).

Also the crag pack may not allow a alnighter.

[Mellow]

Mellow, have to ever tryed running the door at XL?? Its a nightmare. To have to check bags etc means staff would have to stay up alnight. Sorry for putting a downer on a good idea but, Each person would have to sign that they allow bag checks, unless there was reasonble suit to check for stolen items, over past events items have gone missing, but without any proof, i.e eye witness/es you cant just check someones personal belongings. Also after working all day at the event i like to get a beer and 3/4 hours sleep(im old).

Also the crag pack may not allow a alnighter.

This is a pointless discussion now as obviously the idea can't go ahead. However, I'd have proposed that night time staff are actually hired as proper security guards. It would take a while to go through the whole thing but to be fair, Iseries (don't wanna keep going on about Iseries) and almost every other BYOC PC LAN do it with far, far more attendees and don't have many issues. I can imagine things could go missing, but then again there'd be ways around it. Checking bags, security camera installation. So on. I agree, it'd be utter madness for a voluntary member of staff to man the doors are night.

But anyway, this obviously isn't a possibility. Maybe something for the future though.