We are now home again after a successful HKLAN. This was the beginning of GameCast anno 2012 and we were really looking forward to this event. Before the event we just made the switch to TwitchTV and on top of that it was also the first major event, where we could use our new - and highly improved - setup for streaming. HKLAN was without a doubt one of the best events I've attended to. Let's go back to the beginning of the event - where our journey to - and through - HKLAN.

Thursday

Thursday was a very hectic day for us. We knew, that we had to be at HKLAN in time because the semifinals for the SteelSeries League had to be played that same evening. I had some things that I had to attend to at Uni, so I wasn't home before 14:30. We then packed the car in a hurry to drive to our first stop - Aarhus. We had to pick up Jehan<3 (NO HOMO!) at 3k2's place. The next two hours we just chilled in the car - or at least Jehan and rizc did (I was driving). We arrived at the venue at around 17:00 as planned and began unpacking. The area we had to sit in was, in my opinion, a little close to other gamers, but we still managed to get everything up and running fairly quickly.

rizc eating - as usual

The next couple of hours we tested some settings in order to be ready to stream the semifinals in the SteelSeries League and then just walked around saying hello to all the lovely mates who had already arrived. Normally there aren't that many teams at lans on thursdays, because the tournaments start friday (for most LANs), but this time it seemed like everyone were there - it could be a result of the SS League being played that same evening.

Everything ran according to plan and we could go to sleep happy and excited for tomorrow's action.

Acker and rizc starting a fight in the press area!!!

Friday

This was the day of the finals for the SS League. We got up early to set everything up. I had to create some graphic stuff for the stream and make sure that everything would be running when we went live. We did most of this stuff the day before so we weren't in any kind of hurry.

We were notified that there wouldn't be any kind of SourceTV for the whole event, so we would be the only feed from the game to the world outside. Then we knew it would be a tough weekend - everyone would be watching and expecting everything to be just perfect.

The SS League finals then ended with Epsilon eSports as the winner - and 8.000DKK richer. This would turn out to be the kickstart they needed before the main tournament began later that evening. The main tournament was nothing special that day. There were so many groups that none of the games - at least the ones with the more known teams in - would be anywhere near exciting. We had some various people do some cocasting for the groupstages.

realition making sure the tournament runs smoothly - just as it did!

Beside our coverage there were also Gaming.dk who did a hell of a job. Their site was filled with articles regarding HKLAN, even before the event started and on the front page our stream was embedded - we shold have put autoplay on it! To my surprise Cadred.org also showed up for this event - even though there were only danish teams and players attending - thumbs up! Also they were so kind to embed our stream on their site - just like Gaming.dk - and making us reach a much broader audience (special thanks to Richard Lewis).

Richard "kind-of-a-big-deal" Lewis - reporting for cadred.org

Saturday

Now all the exciting matches would begin. Up untill the second round of brackets the matches weren't that great though - we streamed 3 maps in 3 different matches because one of the teams were just smashing the other. As the tournament progressed the matches got more and more even. I don't think I've ever seen that many overtimes being played at a lan - especially Copenhagen Wolves with a lot of overtimes.

For the brackets we had Marc "lokke" Halgreen from behindthesource.com in our studio to cocast together with rizc. He turned out to be more than we expected. He was a really god analyst and he was able to tell what the teams did in a way so that everyone would understand. Marc also surprised us with his great prediction skills. Before a lot of the matches he would predict the exact score of the current map. This turned out to be accurate around 80% of the time, which made us speechless at the end of every map he predicted - mad props!

behindthesource.com's little stage at HKLAN - hosting both 1on1 tournaments and CS:GO!

Later that night it was time to the almost inevitable drinking. No matter how much the danish players flame each other when playing, they can (most of the time) sit down afterwards, enjoy a beer and have a laugh together. This is what makes danish LANs - and the danish scene in general - so unique.

Overall

HKLAN#5 has been one hell of a LAN. There were almost no problems during the tournaments (except Wolves losing power 2 times) and the schedule was followed perfectly. If they return next year I'm sure that we would come back for more. The crew seemed to have everything under control and always on the spot if anyone needed help. This has been a great, but also exhausting LAN with a lot of work to be done - but we got through it and we had a great time doing it.

GameCast signing out for now - but we will return very soon with more quality coverage!