The ACER Challenge was run at the WZZRD gaming centre in the Netherlands where Crossfire has hosted previous events as CPC2 and CDC4. Compared to the SGL event there have been no complaints at all about ACER Challenge and has received a lot of positive feedback. So what went well at ACER and what made it so successful? Like The SGL, Crossfire have hosted a lot of events in the past, using this experience Stuart “TosspoT” Saw created and ran a smooth event with a great “professional feeling to it.”

The Tournament played host to the EWSC.NL finals and qualifiers for the ESWC Paris masters. There were 59 computers being used at the event and a total of 70 players, with the Call of Duty 4 running off 30 of them and having 45 players. The ESWC qualifier played host to some notable players including MYM]Grubby who won the WC3 tournament, as well as vo0 who failed to win the Quake qualifier losing out to IF22, meanwhile dignitas\sky took the qualification spot for Trackmania.

The Call of Duty 4 tournament ended with a tense final between KomaCrew and H2k, KomaCrew taking the game in overtime of the 3rd deciding map of District. ACER also managed to run the tournament with such efficiency that it ended 2 hours ahead of schedule, something that is unheard of in the CoD4 community. This shows real credit to the organisers of the event in creating an effective schedule, as well as supplying a venue without any problems – or at least the experience and expertise to quickly and efficiently deal with any problems that arise.

The choice of venue was also a good decision, the WZZRD LAN centre being a well designed space that has a good amount of player space as well as a handy bar in the centre of it all. The experience and knowledge of the admin team also helped to create a great tournament, operating in a format that is the preferred of the community, that being Group stages followed by a best of three double elimination playoff. ACER also supplied the event with 10 of its brand new gaming PC’s, the Aspire Predator – which was “reaching up to 800fps” in CoD4. With the next LAN from the organisers coming in the form of Easy Bash next September we have a lot to look forward to from them.

It is not a particularly difficult thing to run a successful event for esports, many good ones are around, equally have the bad come and gone. But it would seem that from previous events in a multitude of games and platforms that the most important thing in running these events is preparation from the organisers. Some of which includes taking into account location, planning a good schedule to complete the competition in and listening to the community about how to have the rules/tournament structure. Unless tournaments in all games listen to how communities want the game to be played they cannot be successful.

I know these seem like mundane aspects but it often seems we are getting too worked up about prize money and how flashy esports can be and we forget that the main thing is to let it evolve naturally and to make sure the competitive side of it operates smoothly.