Report From Texas:QuakeCon Wrap-up

PLANO, TX - It sits there on the table, 40 pounds of steel, the Quake symbol - that rusty-copper-nail-piercing-thin-crescent-moon icon - made real, cast in metal.

It's the QuakeCon 97 tournament trophy, waiting for someone to claim it.

"The guys from ION Storm were talking some trash at the start of this convention," said Monte "Grayson" Martinez, 29. "But," he added, doing some trash-talking of his own, "We spanked 'em down."

It tempers his boasting a bit when you discover that a) he's one of the three people at QuakeCon still in contention come Sunday morning - if anyone has a right to talk trash at this point in the tourney, it is he. And, b) he's friends with the folks from ION Storm - he and his buddies were crashing this weekend at a house owned by an ION Storm employee. If you can't talk trash about your friends, who can you talk trash about?

That's the kind of vibe that permeated QuakeCon - a hint of competitiveness to be sure, but by and large friendliness, with any trash-talking being of the good natured, between friends variety. Sure, you'll hear an occasional insult - or signs such as the notebook page with "Quakecon Cafe: Humiliation Served Daily" scribbled on it, tacked to the convention announcement board - but most of that is reserved for the matches themselves. When people are talking face-to-face, rather than duking it out over the network, the feeling can be positively heartwarming.

"The thing is, most people here have met other people here over the Net and have formed friendships," said Stevie "KillCreek" Case, 20. "And we come here to meet those friends in person. This is our own little world."

Case had been in the tournament, but she was so busy hanging out with some of those friends that she missed one of her tourney times and was bumped from the running. She doesn't seem too disappointed, though. "It's so rare to be able to get 16 people on a LAN playing Quake. We've all been doing a lot of that this weekend. Plus there have been a lot of one-on-one matches." She hasn't lacked for opportunities to play the game this weekend.

Quake has been good to KillCreek. "A guy brought his 12-year-old daughter up to me," she said. "He said, 'My daughter plays Quake and we call her KillCreek 2. She was wondering if she could have your autograph.' That was so exciting to me - we're finally getting female role models in the gaming world."

KillCreek's reputation in the gaming world has landed her two endorsements - from Spacetec (the makers of the SpaceOrb gamepad peripheral) and from the Adrenaline Vault gaming site. "Those endorsements paid for my college tuition," she said. She just completed three years at the University of Kansas, but is transferring in the fall to the University of Texas at Dallas. "I just wanted to get down here as fast as I could. I wanted to be closer to the Quake community."

Kornelia is one of those who already has a reputation in the Quake community. And Kornelia is her real first name; her last name is Hungarian - "You couldn't pronounce it," she said. She earned her bragging rights at this year's Computer Game Developers Conference Quake tournament, the first one she ever entered, which she won.

And what about that rumor that she has never lost a game of Quake? She laughed. "Of course I have lost."

She did pretty well in the QuakeCon tourney too, though she wasn't among the top three finishers. It seemed that this was the weekend for other people to make their reputations.

Folks like Grayson and Forego and Rix. Grayson and Tim "Forego" Baker knew each other before QuakeCon. They work together and drove down to QuakeCon from Denver with a whole contingent of folks from Katana Software. Their main purpose for coming was to demo Paradigm, the Quake Total Conversion they are working on back home.

Paradigm takes Quake to outer space and puts the player inside a space ship for gameplay that is perhaps most reminiscent of Descent. (They hope to release Paradigm by October.) For the two of them to last to the final rounds of the tournament was an added bonus. As was the fact that they got to spank quite a few people down along the way.

But not Dan "Rix" Hammans. He and his buddy Hex Dragon drove down from Ames, Iowa for the convention.

"I came to QuakeCon 96," Rix said. "And I got my butt kicked."

But after winning a tournament in Iowa the weekend before this one, Rix figured he stood a pretty good chance of coming out on top in 1997. But, he said, "You've gotta know your maps to do well in Quake. And I was unfamiliar with the level they were using for this tournament" - Qcon1 for those keeping score at home.

"It took me a few matches to learn the level. Forego put all sorts of shots on me that I couldn't return because I didn't know the map. If I'd had to play Forego on the first day, he would have smacked me down," Rix said.

But Rix didn't face Forego on the first day of the tourney, he faced him on the last. And Rix emerged victorious from his match with Forego.

"I didn't know Grayson's style of play. But then I discovered that he liked to plant himself in one place near the Red Armor and wait by a teleporter for you to come through. So, I stopped using the teleporters and when I saw him, I shot at his feet so he couldn't get away."

Grayson, too, fell to Rix.

Rix labeled Forego and Grayson the two toughest opponents he faced in the tourney. But, when all was said and done and the smoke cleared, he was undefeated in this year's tournament. The 40-pound Quake trophy was his.

Now he had another thing to worry about.

"On the way down here from Iowa, every time we hit a bump, the bottom of Hex's car would scrape the car's wheels. I'm worried about what an extra 40 pounds is going to do to his car on the trip home."

QuakeCon 97 Tournament Results:1. Rix2. Forego3. Grayson4. AceJas5. Walter6. Yossman7. Club8. Kornelia9. Indubious10. Duke of Earl11. Derenth12. T-Man