Although more than a thousand gamers are bringing their own computers to the Mesquite Convention Center, this is no simple LAN party. Players are competing for prizes worth more than US$50,000, and to prove — at least for the moment — who is the best Quake player around.
Folks from Id Software themselves are making appearances and spearheading conferences to talk about the art and science of making computer games. Folks from other companies are there, like Raven Software and Ritual Entertainment — both companies use Quake technology in their games — along Quake publisher Activision and others. Id Software is expected to roll out new info about its forthcoming games during a press conference on Friday.
Apple isn’t just sponsoring the event, either. They’re there in force, running both open game play and official Team Tournaments on Power Mac G4s equipped graphics cards based on Nvidia’s GeForce3 graphics chip. The systems are configured with Quake 3 Team Arena and Mac OS X. On-site registration for QuakeCon is also handled by a collection of iMacs.
QuakeCon 2001 runs today through Sunday, August 12. For more details, visit the QuakeCon Web site. You can also listen in to a streaming MP3 broadcast from QuakeCon Radio too.