I didn't see a topic started on this yet, so...

http://www.minerlan.com

Who's going?

I'm actually thinking about it. at least 2 of the 4 listed games interest me. (DoTA & TMNF)

I am nearly positive that I am going.

I can hardly wait

What happened to having some console tournaments?

Most of the prizes are going to be door prizes - we're not going to be providing consoles, so we don't want to run a tournament on them. We will be running 2 rooms with projectors solely for consoles though

I've been waiting for a while but I'm actually disappointed. DotA is the only decent game on the list. No CS/CSS? That is a required LAN game. Horrible prizes for placing top.

Are people dumb? Just because there is no tournament doesn't mean you can't play a game. Also CS attracts douchebags so I decided not to have a tourney for it hoping they wouldn't come. The goal of the weekend is to have fun not to win money. Go to a pro tournament if you want to do that.

Also, for anyone who wants to plan minerLAN next year, make sure you join ACM and have someone nominate you for the Treasurer spot.

Questions, comments, hate mail, e-mail me: jrkxc9 AT mst DOT edu (I am in charge). Also, no the tourneys are not going to change.

Yeah, we thought about this a bit. We wanted to run tournaments that wouldn't involve 1-2 people kicking everyone else's ass. With CSS we usually end up getting 2-3 good 3 man teams and they just dominate the bracket. With Armegatron, who knows wtf will happen? And since we took the focus off of the huge games, we've put half of our prizes into door prizes. Also this year we've got a little less $$ to put into prizes (Last year we did something like $1000, this year it's more like $600).

We're going to be more helpful with getting matches set up for non-tournament games this time around - so there will still be some good CSS action... but it'll just be for honor/glory/being the best.

All that said, do you have any other suggestions for this/future iterations of MinerLAN?

Well I never played a single game on the tourny list, but I will probably be there.

Benm? I thought the $1000 in prizes on the last MinerLAN didn't get given out bc of that power failure. That was over $1000 right? Someone also said that you guys would be giving that stuff out at this MinerLAN as door prizes since all the tourneys were canceled.

supposedly all the money was spend on pizza but somehow I doubt that. Either the money "disappeared" or fatasses each ate 10 large pizzas on their own. I remember getting no more than 3 slices.
And last semester nothing was given out, basically $15 well wasted.

You honestly have no clue what you are talking about. Last semester only cost 5 bucks and no prizes were given out because no tournaments were run. In spring '08 there was a ton of prizes given out.

Also the money did not "disappear". It got re-appropriated to give out prizes for the AI tournaments as well as fund special ACM projects such as the soda machine and arcade cabinet.

Also fwiw I am optimistic that the arcade cabinet will debut in cs213 the week after spring break. Get excited. We only have to put the bezel around the monitor and secure the plexiglass screen on the front.

Sorry Worseley, I meant last spring. Last semester we had $800 for prizes from Lockheed Martin - we're going to be using that this semester, and we're using some of that for tshirts/advertising/nametags and other expenses. The only way we can offer large amounts of prizes is through donations/sponsorships and since the economy tanked we've been having trouble finding extra money for this semester. Keep in mind that we also run an AI programming competition and sponsorship money gets shared with it also.

For MinerLAN we usually spend more on food/drinks/snacks than we take in from registration fees. When we run t-shirts, it's even more off balance. We also have to pay to use the VCC room (which sucks) - we're paying $160 for it this semester and we paid $50 for it last semester.

So like Jeff said, $5 per person. That equates to 1 dominoes pizza per person, but you have to take into account the drinks, cups, plates, chips, room rental, advertising, etc... it all adds up, and quickly too. I wasn't very involved with last semester's event because I was gone for the day of the event so I can't comment directly on how much pizza was ordered.

That clears up allot, sucks that things turned out that way but this was never about the Prizes. Depending on how things go you can expect to see me here too.