PCGS Memories from the past

Wedge — 06/19/2020 8:14 PM

Playing Quake 2 at Meltdown. – February 2000 (Maybe 2001?)

This is the biggest game. Right after pizza was delivered. This was the feature game of the weekend. After this we’d probably splinter off and all play different games with smaller groups of friends. This game was the one many of us had been looking forward to all year long.

“Everyone have their games all patched and sound is working? Zilter, did you get your IPX driver fixed? Alright! It’s game time! Blue team all wave your hands. Learn where your teammates are.” There’s like 30-40 gamers in the room. Not everyone is involved in this particular game. “Red team raise… woah… calm down people. I like your enthusiasm! Tolwyn, start the countdown.”

There’s a ton of yelling and cheering. Here we go!

Meltdown was a special game, though. On this day we took our full year of data and we created the most even teams we could come up with—according to all the recorded statistics of every player involved on Valiant, our public server where we recorded them every Thursday night.

This was a statistically designed “balanced” team. I crunched the numbers for a whole year to create these rosters. Unfortunately, you can try your hardest to create even teams, but Tolwyn was still Tolwyn.

It’s just really hard to create a balanced team when [he is] on one side of the equation. We tried to offset them with the best duo of the rest, RedOmen and Bubba Duck. Along with many very strong players eager to take down the mighty Tolwyn.

Wedge and Delbert, brothers who loved to face off against each other. Maddog opposing a family friend in Grizzle. Zilter, a local DJ and Slader, the local ISP support team (the entire team). There are close friends, cousins, co-workers, and neighbors.

Everyone knew each other well. It’s Saturday night and we are sitting in the same room at the Elks Lodge. We have row upon row of scavenged tables and chairs we brought from home. The night before we kept popping circuits all over the building. We’re pulling electricity from the stage, the theater upstairs, the locker rooms downstairs, and the racket-ball courts somewhere else in the building.

We finally have a balance of power and everyone has been gaming hard since Friday night. Most of us are super drunk (The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks biggest room is a bar and it’s open!). It’s February, so the door to the outside is propped open and there is probably snow drifting in because all these computers and 17″-21″ CRT monitors make the room seriously hot.