After arduous months of preparation, a series of national regional tours for 8 games, thousands of participants and a grueling 2 day setup, all the hard work and teamwork will ultimately be realized in only 2 days… all roads will lead to the World Trade Center as we, Level Up, give the Pinoy gamers the biggest and best gaming event yet – Level Up LIVE 2009: United We Play.

And the reason for the success of this event is of course, the thousands of LU players who came to celebrate an annual gaming tradition. We are forever grateful to the community.

Not to be outdone by last year’s great opening number, we set out to go for an original idea (in a gaming event at least) – the flash mob dance. Thanks to the hundreds of gamers who voluntarily participated in only 2 days of rehearsals and also, special thanks to the choreographers (led by the energetic Prince) and of course, to the efforts of Adonna Tan, Level Up’s Marketing Services Manager, we pulled off the almost impossible… 200++ gamers (including LU employees, GMs,CMs and even managers) dancing in unison. There are a lot of youtube videos out there as of the moment. I promise to publish the official one (from our coverage cams) once editing is done. Again, thanks to the gamers for being mum and quiet about this “secret project”… well done indeed!

Meanwhile, here’s my Day 1 (Saturday) diary in photos…

LIVE 2009 DAY 1 (Sat, November 7, 2009)

Early morning of Saturday, myself and the LU organizing team, together with the tourney head judges, our ICT team, the GMs and our Events team led by supergirl Joie Borja, were still in WTC trying to fix some technical problems. With teamwork and some quick thinking, we were able to come up with solutions and contingencies. Due to this, I was forced to push the FlyFF tournament to Sunday instead of Saturday to allow us time to solve some issues with the tournament server. The challenge was to STILL finish on time on Sunday now that it had 5 tournaments lined up instead of 4…. well… we LU peeps love a challenge!

Around 2am, I ventured out together with some members of the LU team to distribute pancit to the loooooong line of early birds outside the WTC gate, some of which were there as early as Thursday! OMG!

We headed back to the hotel around 3am and got some shuteye… everyone anxious and excited about the morning’s turnout.

By 7am, the teams were already at the venue doing some last minute tweaks, checks and adjustments. The dancers secretly entered through the backstage and took their positions, the marshals went to their posts and everyone did what was assigned to him or her.

Turnout was great! The lines outside were long and we opened the gates at around 8am. The side-event booths were already abuzz with activity while I was busy talking with the director regarding the program and the script.

The opening number went smoothly. GM Cassiel (Bubbles, CM of Gand Chase) sang the national anthem (nice voice!) and when it was our turn to get up on stage, Pam Puen, my lovely co-host, was always a natural… as I stuttered with some adlibs. We introduced the Gameboss, Ben Colayco for his great speech and then proceeded with the parade of teams. GM Silvermaine then gave the Oath of Sportsmanship and then the dancers opened up the main show. The segue to the flash mob was as they have practiced – I had goosebumps watching the 200++ gamers dancing na sabay sabay… ahh… great to see everything fall into place. Great show!

I felt that once the other hosts handed the reins to the commentators, much of the day would run smoothly. As is usual, we juggled between fiddling and adjusting the schedule and watching our new raffle system unveiled by our great Raffle Master – JP Montejo, our Head of Product Management. Great job, JP! I owe you big time.

Once the tournaments began, the Head Judges ran the show. This gave me some idle time to go around and take photos at the Guild Booths…

Meanwhile, take a look at our commentators – most of whom are LU employee volunteers. Jolly good show peeps! Nice work.

After the CK tournament, it was time to finally announce our newest FPS game – KOS, our CEO, Jane Walker together with good friend and YNK CEO, Jun Lee, explained the game to the crowd. KOS was launched with a gunbattle, snipers, rapeling and explosives. Great show!

We “themed” the entire PC area with a military look – sandbags, barbed wire and all. Special thanks also goes to Alex Mena and Marx for heading the registrations and facilitating the mini-tournaments in that area. Nice job, guys!

Look below! Even the PNP cops are actually intrigued by the game. Maybe they can play to sharpen their marksmanship hehehe.

Team Influenza, Philippine reps to RWC 2009 were also there for some media interviews and photo ops. Team Pilipinas took first-runner up honors in RWC 2009. See my report on that here.

Meanwhile, here are more shots as I went around the event…

During the Rohan Blood Wars segment, GM Krieger announced that the much-awaited Giants patch will be launched this November 16! Nice one, GM Kreiger! You the man!

Day 1 was done at around 8pm and it was time to head back to the hotel. I grabbed a couple of beers to relax… another hectic day ahead of me and the entire team awaits…

… but that’s another story…

’til next post…

GM T