The 'Shroom:Issue LXXVIII/Awards Prizes Organization

Awards Prizes Organization by

OK so I didn't have a whole lot to do with the proceedings for the awards nor with the organisation for the Team Fortress 2 tournament I participated in (being the only awards event I happened to participate in), but the reason I'm writing is because me and – who has mysteriously disappeared so was unable to also contribute anything to this – were the primary organisers for the awards prizes. As you can see, there were a heap of prizes this year, far more than last year. Admittedly, this was because me and Stooby got a bit carried away with the Steam Summer sales; all those beautiful games for such low prices, and we figured that we had so many more people participating this year that it would be worth overstocking rather than risk understocking.

Of course, the biggest flaw in our plan was that not many people here have or care about Steam. We do, for sure! We're massive PC gamer nuts, and Steam is the most convenient outlet for purchasing games at a cheap price. Purchasing Virtual Console gifts or whatever is a massive pain due to region locking and a kind of confusing point exchange rate, plus I was having difficulties connecting to the Virtual Console which robbed me of my prize-acquiring privileges. To that end, we only had four Nintendo-related prizes this year, which was disappointing to many people who weren't able to or weren't interested in Steam. Hopefully next year my internet will be friendly enough to allow me to get some VC gifts for the PAL region. I think Australian games play over in Europe; I know it at least works vice versa, unless Nintendo is just that behind the times now.

One thing that shocked me was how popular the Steam trading cards were. Me and Stooben only organised a few of them since we weren't sure how they'd go down, but wow they were snatched up quickly. I don't know if that's just because of the initial novelty of them since they're still a new addition to Steam, or if people really do genuinely find the cards to be a worthy investment, but either way we'll have to focus more attention on those next year for those that don't really have any interest in the games on Steam. I'm also thinking that the emoticons would've been more popular had they been in full sets like the trading cards, so I'll probably look into that next year as well.

To conclude adequately since this is the most boring thing in the whole wide world for people to read; we have too many leftover prizes due to too many Steam games. Oh well, less shopping to be done next year. More Nintendo prizes, more Steam trading cards and emoticon sets, and… yeah, that's the agenda for next year. Now go away and read something interesting.