Beyond the Rhetoric

 

Futurelooks at Fragapalooza 2009

August 10th, 2009 by Michael Kwan

Fragapalooza 2009

I took a quick trip over to Edmonton over the weekend for Fragapalooza 2009. To my knowledge, this is Canada’s largest LAN party, attracting gaming enthusiasts from all across the country. People pack up their desktop towers, LCD monitors, office chairs, sleeping bags, and cases of energy drinks so that they can gather up and play computer games with one another in person. It’s one big party, because they never close. Gaming goes well into the wee hours of the night and right into the early hours of the morning.

I’m not really a PC gamer myself, so I didn’t really get involved in the gaming action. I’m more of a video game enthusiast on the consoles, so this kind of event isn’t really geared for people like me. That said, it was still interesting to meet all these people and it was also fascinating to see how they could handle having 400+ computers running at the same time at a community centre. This year, Fragapalooza was held on the indoor soccer pitch at Dow Centennial Center in Fort Saskatchewan, a suburb of Edmonton.

It’s not in the video clip below, but I was also asked to judge the Rock Band 2 competition on Saturday night with Britl and ScottyBomb. That was more my cup of tea. Some of these guys are really good; there were two guys who played their guitar parts from behind their heads. Nuts. You can watch a family play a song from Spongebomb Squarepants too. The vocalist had his fun.

To give you a better sense of what Fragapalooza is all about, check out the video below from Futurelooks. I’m thinking Stephen will have a couple more videos in the days and weeks to come.

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    • 8 Responses to “Futurelooks at Fragapalooza 2009”

    1. Ray Ebersole says:
      August 10, 2009 at 7:27 pm

      So after all the tweets and the drive, did you catch up on your sleep?

    2. EarningStep says:
      August 11, 2009 at 6:06 pm

      wow.. nice . it look so busy there

    3. Stephen says:
      August 17, 2009 at 12:00 am

      Did anyone catch Michael’s cameo in the above video as the shady Asian Kid? :)

    4. Another Seemingly Random Set of Updates for Stephen Fung | Stephen Fung DOT NET says:
      September 10, 2009 at 1:05 pm

      [...] event took place this past August in sleepy Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. Jason Landals, Eric Garay, Michael Kwan and myself made the trek out to the middle of nowhere to spread good cheer by handing out prizes [...]

    5. Grammar 101: Lose, Loose, Loss « Beyond the Rhetoric says:
      September 29, 2009 at 11:52 am

      [...] idea for today’s post was suggested by a reader of Beyond the Rhetoric. Michael Hollands of Fragapalooza asked if I could do a post explaining the difference between lose and loose, since he finds that so [...]