Thanks for all the fish

[Phanman]

Hey everyone. It is hard for me to believe that Geekfest has come and gone for a 7th time, but here I am sitting at my desk at work typing this post.

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for coming and making our trip what it is. I want to say a big thanks to Vince and Erik for doing most of the cooking. Thanks to Jeff, Kyle, Dada, Travis and Adam for assisting in the cooking duties this year. Thanks to Derek for being the new guy and thanks to Fox for almost being the guy.

I hope everyone had a great time because I know I did. This year felt different to me and I don't know if it was that way for other people. I feel like we played a lot less games this year but maybe we just played more variety and less of everything overall. I don't really know.

I do know that we'll be having at least one mid-year event in Doki-Lan so keep tuning in for that. I imagine it will be around June or July. We'll start our preliminary planning for next year's Geekfest then to see if we'll be having another one. We're already in the planning stages for stuff to do post-Geekfest, meaning what we'll do once we can't do a week long event anymore.

In the meantime, everyone should hang out on the IRC channel #deezn on irc.gamesurge.net in order to just chat and hopefully play some games together. It would be nice to play with everyone during the year and not just for one week a year.

[Jack Q Deezn]

I had a great time as well.  I agree it felt different.  I think it was because we had such a variety of games going on, and not the super intense all out FPS's going.  Even so, I had so much fun.  Steve and I were talking, and we thought if we partake in a 8th annual we should plan a game each night.  Like ET one night, TF2 another, just to get everyone together.  I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the week, just maybe something to think about next time.

[Fox]

I had a blast. Geekfest is the one week a year we can just get away from everything (especially work), and truly make the most out of a vacation. I'm always glad to be a part of it every year I come.

It seems this year, the main criticism is that we didn't have enough full all-participant gaming events. There was plenty of group gaming - we had a crapload of board and card games, we had plenty of Rock Band playing, we had plenty of DOTA and TD games - and that was awesome. I really enjoyed the amount of gaming we did.

However, one of the things that I loved best about previous Geekfests was when we got everyone playing in one game, like ET or Counter Strike. Even with poorly balanced teams, these large games prove to be the highlight of the entire event. You get your very memorable events, like the train or beach pushes, or the same-team dynamite defusal, from these big games. The big games that involve everyone are the ones that we can all share as a group, something we can all come back and relate to every year.

It doesn't need to entirely be like that though. For instance, I really enjoyed wanting to be The Guy all week, getting both support and hilarity from everyone watching, and it made me really happy that, even after everyone saw how ridiculously ludicrous and punishing the game was, people still picked up the game from me and at least gave it a shot. On a whole, though, I spent a LOT of time playing that, and got a lot further than I think I ever should have, given the fact that we had so much potential for large-scale gaming.

Completely my opinion, but I think there needs to be more balance between down-time (which we do need, since this is a vacation and all), and large events. I'm not sure whether it would be beneficial or harmful to the whole dynamic of Geekfest to organize large-scale gaming events like that (hell, I'd even like to see a 14-player board game or something similar one year, rather than just PC games), but I do think we were missing out this year on what could have been done.

I do realize that we had some problems, particularly with Steam and our internetwebber connections, and it would've been difficult to get particular games going (like TF2, due to updates). There is stuff like that that we absolutely can't get around. However, we had the potential for alternative games - Quake Wars, Quake 3, and the various other shitloads of games that people have. We could've easily filled in with any of those other games.

Again, I don't want it to sound like I'm railing on Geekfest, because I would give up anything to continue to come year after year. I'm just big on criticism, and if anything, I think this was about the only thing that needed improvement this year besides the internet, which we don't really have a lot of control over. We got an awesome house with awesome storm shutters AND blinds, which was unexpectedly awesome, we got a larger, more diverse menu this time with nice additions and fruit, we had great consistency on attendees this year (people not leaving in the middle of the week), and as a whole, I'd love to do it again. Can't wait for next year.

[Phanman]

I hope everyone had fun despite the fact that there was less large scale gaming than in the past. In the past that sort of happened without much effort and I think this year more people were wanting just enjoying playing games since we all have less time to play them.

I agree with Fox and Erik that we can make a little bit more effort to have at least 1 large scale event every night if we do indeed have an eighth Geekfest.

I really enjoyed seeing everyone and relaxing anyways and I hope people still want to come next year if they can.

[Penis Maze]

Well put guys, I concur.  That being said, thanks for having me once again, I had a blast.  Looking forward to more regular games with you guys and hopefully another week at the beach in January.

[<Voltron>]

Like everybody else, I had a great time. In the future I would also like to see more dedicated playing of certain games, but I enjoyed everything I played while I was down there. As for things feeling a little different for some people, part of that might be that most of us have known each other for several years and we all are more comfortable as a group. There was a lot more "hanging out" than hard core FPS'ing like it was at the earliest Geekfests. Nothing wrong with that as I think we all have become pretty good friends. I hope see you all on TF2, QuakeWars, DotA and the like. Hopefully we can start planning to play games online more regularly.

[munson]

Hey!  We're all home now after a stay-over in DC.   By the way, we ate at a restaurant there called Zaytanya which I highly recommend to anyone in the area.  Order the "Pipe Dream" and Tilton or Tavor cheese dish.  They'll blow you away.

I just wanted to again extend my thanks to everyone who made this thing happen.

I would like to thank Curt in particular for organizing the whole thing along with Vince and Erik for their contributions and for once again cooking some of the most heart-stopping meals ever conceived by man.  Thanks to Jeff, too, for that curry on Asian food night! 

Thanks to everyone else as well.  Everyone contributes in their own way and this event couldn't even happen if we didn't get the attendance numbers we do every year.  Thanks guys!

I look forward to next year and gaming with you guys online via the IRC channel in between!

- Kyle

P.S. -- Dada did say that she enjoyed herself and thought all of you were really nice!

[munson]

Just wanted to comment a little on the differences people are talking about between this years geekfest and previous geekfests.  I just finished writing my cookie cutter thank you letter and read over the posts afterward.

I agree that geekfest felt a little different this year, although I can't say I really felt disappointed.  I agree with what Ford is saying and that the dynamic has changed a little this year due to us all having known each other for a long time and I think that had an impact on how the week played out.

I know that I'm a little biased when it comes to FPS's, but I felt we neglected them this year in terms of variety.  I love TF2, I love ET, and Quake Wars was pretty fun and got better when I learned the nuances of the maps, but aside from that there really wasn't much else going on.  I would have enjoyed a night of Quake 3 (which was pretty much tradition until this year), Unreal Tournament (any year), Battlefield 2, Counterstrike, even something crazy like Doom coop games or something just to keep it fun and fresh.

On the strategy side I must say I can see myself enjoying the Warcraft III DOTA mod, but I also thought it might have been cool to see more variety there, too.  Games such as C&C, Red Alert, AOE games, older Warcraft2, anything really would have been great.

Anyway, as I originally stated I had a great time this year and really didn't feel let down.  When I'm down there I don't have to play games every minute of the day.  Sometimes I'm in the mood and sometimes I'm not.  It's more than just a lan, it's a proper vacation too.  Everyone needs downtime.  But that's how we all are, I'm sure, and that's why these events are very dynamic. 

I feel like I got to play video games when I wanted to, and had downtime when I wanted it.  There was usually at least one team-game per night, and Oblivion was a great diversion the rest of the time when others were involved in the table-top games.  I really can't complain.  I needed to spend time with my girlfriend as well so the lack of team gaming during the day worked in my favor anyway.

I like the idea of setting up a list of main events for every night, however the only issue with that is that some nights we may feel like playing a different game as a group instead of what may have been planned.  This may not end up being an issue because it's an untested plan and I'm merely speculating, however it's something that should be considered if we attempt that.  I'm sure there's a simple solution such as just setting 7 main event items for the week and just voting on which one to play each night instead of having a set schedule.

Also, I think for the future it is important to get a good idea of what games we expect to play beforehand and take care of the distribution of those games on Day 1.  This way there can be games played above and beyond that, however we would have a base set of games that don't have to be configured on the spot if we decide to play them.  I think part of the psychological reason behind why we neglected to branch out into other games is that by the point in the week where we were recycling games we had already played, we were all already bit lazy and didn't want to deal with the massive setup processes involved in getting a new game distributed and up and running.

That's all for now   Gotta go to sleep!

[Phanman]

Well I think we wouldn't necessarily pre-determine the game to play so much as we would set a time each night that we would aim to play. So we could decide the game to play any time but we would just know when we would play something. I don't know, we have a whole year to figure something out.

Hard to believe but there is just too much to play and not enough time to really play it all in a whole week.