Perhaps this wrap-up is a bit late, but I plead intimidation at the idea of writing a single blog to encompass the entirety of CES.  It’s simply too large, like trying to cram a water buffalo into a teacup.  There’s one particular aspect, though, that I feel I can tackle with a reasonable chance of success: that is, WSVG.

We attended CES with Dell to show off their top-end XPS machines, and Dell is a major sponsor of the World Series of Video Games, a competitive circuit I have been aware of only peripherally.  Many of the Frag Dolls traveled and competed with WSVG during the 2006 season, but I was off in my own world during much of this time, panicking about holiday game releases and other things that didn’t immediately concern these newfangled tournament shenanigans.  I thought I already knew what I had missed, like the tournament participation and the Mr. WSVG.  I didn’t realize all the other things I’d missed, like who were all these people the other girls seemed to know so well?  The number what player in which game now?  It was a glimpse of myself in 30 years when (someone else’s) grandchildren are going to try explaining pop culture references to me with a slim to anorexic absorption rate.

Knowing the team’s standing relationship with WSVG, Dell had us spend a good chunk of time in the WSVG tent playing Rainbow Six Vegas against other event attendees.  On PC.  Whoa. We had our own section with a bunch of XPS machines most gamers would commit murder for.  And, incidentally, we did get to see a “real life” CSI guy taking fingerprints from an empty display case where one of the new machines with the H2C ceramic cooling systems was supposed to reside.  It wasn’t me, by the way.

We lost two rounds of R6V the first day, which was hard to swallow, until we got accustomed to the PC controls and didn’t lose another match.  In the end we had to give away all the t-shirts and games we brought to the highest scorers on the losing team, because we certainly didn’t want to ship it all back.  That’s a salve for the injured ego.

On topic of the event, and my first impression of it, color me impressed.  Not only was the WSVG tent large in both size and attendance, and not only did they have cars to play racing games in, and not only did they have a metric ton of stuff, but they had star power… and not just us (ho ho ho).  To show off for CES they flew in top teams and players from all over the world to participate in “cage matches” throughout the show: Team 3D, Team Pandemic, Toxic, Stermy, MOB, FBI, and Daniel Morad to name a few.  We interviewed a few of them, even! Keep an eye on the media page for our interviews to go up over the next couple of days, and you’ll also be able to find them on Game Invasion if you prefer that flavor of presentation.  HD is pretty tough to argue with.

Even watching these competitions between such amazing players is dangerous for me, because these professionals make it look easy to do what they do.  Natural, even.  Then I get it into my head that maybe I’d like to do that!  Bad idea, Jinx.  You should know better.  Yes, I should.  But logic won’t stop me.  I’ve started playing Quake 4.  Uh oh.

- jinx

like a bull in a china shop smash it up into smithereens