Newegg's Entry into Cybergaming

PASADENA: April 24,25 2004. Lanfest 2K4 is Newegg's gaming event where players come to win great prizes and prove their worth as cyber-athletes. Lanfest 2K4 made space for 200 Bring-Your-Own-Computer (BYOC) spots as well as 40 tournament PC's where the actual competition will take place. The 40 tournament PC's are located in a closed room, where only the media can spectate.

As you will see later on in this article, the tournament PC's are sweet, and are uniformly equipped in terms of software and hardware, in order to even the playing field.

Welcome to Newegg's Lanfest 2k4 in Pasadena

Looking down at Lanfest 2k4 registration area

The event covers two days of competition. The winners from the first day come back on Sunday to compete for the prizes. Prizes include Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz and motherboard combos, Logitech Z680 and Sound blaster Audigy 2 Card combos, and Fuji
Finepix A210 digital cameras - totaling about $15,000 in all! There were three games that were used in competition:

UT 2004 - A competition of 40 players fighting it out in 1 on 1 mode.
Call of Duty - Teams of 5 people play for the prize in elimination rounds.
Battlefield 1942 - Squads of 10 people per team

Upon arriving on the scene on Saturday, the first day, I was quite impressed at all the 'fuss' happening in the venue. There was a central stage where they setup a DJ and his music gear, along with giant ear-thumping speakers. All about the main hallway are the booths of the sponsors of the event, such as Gigabyte, Intel, ABIT, Viewsonic, OCZ and others. This is where people are trickling through to chat, check out the sponsors' products and such.

On one side of the main hallway is the BYOC area. It is a massive room filled with 12-14 rows of wooden tables where the contestants who come can jack-into the network, and have exhibition games as they warm up before they are called up to compete. This is what they stated on the official Lanfest 2K4 website:

While you’re not competing in the tournament, sharpen your skills and hone your strategies in our Bring Your Own Computer area with 200 seats featuring a rockin' network backbone that will support 36 hours of straight game play. Bring your PC and plug in!!!