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Project:
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IAOD Gaming Exposition & TFL Winter Fragfest 2004 Report |
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Author:
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Hi-TEK
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Date:
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December 29th, 2004
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Introduction:
Christmas came early for the Toronto gaming community as the TFL kicked off it's year end IAOD Gaming Exposition
and Winter Fragfest on December 17th-19th, 2004. The event would build on the success of previous venues such as
the CompuSmart LAN Party, LANGM CPL Canada, Netropass TFL Summer Fragfest, Labatt X-Fest II and TFL Pure II.
The IAOD Gaming Exposition and Winter Fragfest promoted a fun filled 3-day weekend held at the
International Academy of Design & Technology in downtown Toronto. The TFL
partnering with CompuSmart upped the ante and arranged over $50,000 worth of prizes to be given away in a series
of raffles, competitions and tournaments. MODTHEBOX was invited down to participate in the event along with a few
other sponsors which included ABIT, Bawls, Cooler Master, Dare Foods, dorkArmy, D-Link, GB Micro, Intel, Lexmark,
Microsoft, Mutant Mods, Patriot Memory, Startech, UbiSoft and Z-Board.
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The weekend started off with very cold Canadian weather tipping the scales at -22°C. MTB would be attending the
second and third days of the event on Saturday Dec 18th and Sunday Dec 19th. We managed to make our way down to
International Academy of Design & Technology facility at 9:30am in order to set up our booth and meet with TFL
CEO Tony Lim regarding the scheduling of the events to run that afternoon. The IAOD Gaming Exposition and Winter
Fragfest was held on the 8th floor of the historic CBC Building. Our goal for the day would be to run the BYOC Case
Modding Competition as well as offer a few surprise giveaways from a few MTB's site sponsors.
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Upon entering the IAOD Gaming Exposition and Winter Fragfest, the event was in full swing with a much larger
crowd located in the BYOC area. A series of tables and chairs were stacked up on either side of the room with Ethernet
cabling available for gamers to hook into the TFL network. Attendance in this area was very good with a number of
gamers participating in BYOC contests or playing local games with friends. I noticed that Counter Strike, Far Cry,
Doom 3 and Half Life 2 seemed to be the most popular games played in this area.
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While many LAN events tend to be male dominated, I was pleased to see a number of females in attendance. A
local group dubbed the "Canadian Divas" were on hand to participate in the Counter Strike Competition.
Towards the front of the BYOC was the pit area for the event admins to keep an eye TFL network. This area had
tons of Ethernet cabling coming out of a series of D-Link Gigabit switches as well as several tournament
gaming servers hosting the Counter Strike competitions.
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On Saturday Dec 18th, Mantis and I started scouring the BYOC for participants entered in the MTB Modding
Contest. One of the first rigs that caught our eye was the "Hive Mind" from Jamie "Dakal" Huton. This case
was a labour of love and took up to 8 months to complete. The "Hive Mind" was themed after the popular
Borg style ships from the Star Trek series. During a conversation with Jamie, we learned that the composition
of the case was not comprised of parts from model kits. Each piece on the "Hive Mind" was cut from standard
cardboard and assembled one piece at a time. The entire case was sprayed with glossy black paint and
complimented with UV reactant components and lighting for the case interior.
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