Quakecon 2010 BYOC: Nerd Rage and No Porn

The BYOC at Quakecon is legendary – hundreds of computers in a single giant room. Dim the lights, crank up the AC, and settle in for hours upon hours of mindless game playing.

This year’s BYOC is notably different from years past thanks to the new registration rule. Time was, they’d open the BYOC for registration, and guarantee spots to registrants on a first-come-first-served basis until all available seats were gone. Anyone else would have to wait in a stand-by line until all of the pre-registers either showed up or event organizers were  reasonably sure they weren’t coming. It being the Internet, people would snag spots for bragging rights, never intending to show up.

This year, all comers register on the spot. As someone who spent six hours in the standby line in 2009, I can attest that this system is like using broadband for the first time. I only waited in line for an hour, and the whole procession moved as smooth as my morning ritual after stocking up on fiber.

However, the BYOC is plagued by some technical issues. Internet access died for a number of hours on Thursday afternoon, which plays havoc with all the services needing access like Steam and Battle.net. This limited me to playing Freecell for a few hours, as I couldn’t even get Steam into Offline Mode without connecting first (which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me but oh well).

Even when “connected,” the internet is as slow as free wifi at a Motel 6, so playing Starcraft II online is out. Luckily they have a dedicated line for Quake Live, and though I saw several players getting their frag on, the game always told me I had invalid files.

But none of those issues compare to the greatest nerd injustice of all. There is no DC hub in the BYOC this year. For the unfamiliar, DC (direct connect) hubs allow users to share their media libraries, which are then searchable by other users who can download their shared media at whim. Some come to Quakecon explicitly to download as much as they can, boasting of pirating terabytes of movies and music.

It’s likely that Zennimax doesn’t want to be related to an event incorporating large-scale theft or the transfer of illegal pornography, two things that undoubtedly occur at every Quakecon. Political reasons aside, this caused a massive level of discontent in some attendees. A group behind me even threatened a “boycott,” despite the fact that they were already there, and the event is free so who cares.

Clamping down on BYOC behavior isn’t a shock – it’s surprising that it was allowed to continue as it was for so  long. While the event is certainly more family-friendly – I have yet to see a lady performing licentious acts on a horse – it has slightly changed the culture of the BYOC. At least there are still guys that bring in a giantic monitor and use it for nothing but IRC.

Oh and the idiotic whooping is back. Occasionally a member will make an upwards-inflected shout and other gamers, like monkeys or some other sub-human intelligence animal, will mindlessly repeat. An anonymous attendee even stepped up the level of annoying ambient noise by bringing a vuvuzela. All I can say is “God bless noise-canceling headphones.”