A Month of Gaming Live!
Well, we've officially begun our journey together. One month ago, we launched our vanguard under the moniker of "Gaming Live!" and now's a good time to reflect and share what we've seen and heard from the community.
First, let's acknowledge that we've actually made it through the first month...High Five my dude! An incredible amount of time and effort goes into each Gaming Live! event, from finding a host, to transporting our equipment, and then tearing it all down at the end of the evening, one thing is clear to me and that there is no shortage of work to be done even at this early stage. It is through these efforts that we are able to bring this return to form back to gaming and to you. All of our partners, friends, and volunteers have all shared this load and sacrificed much to make Gaming Live! an awesome event that continues to grow each week. I'd just like to personally take the time to say thank you to all involved, no matter to what degree, thank you!
Virtual Reality
We've met a great deal of our community for the first time thanks to VR. Some of you were excited, some were skeptical, and some were even scared, but after their first VR session we found a common response. Everyone had an extremely positive experience with our approach to VR. What makes Reforged different is pretty simple, we don't just throw you in the deep end (except in The Blu). By acclimating first timers to a Virtual environment for just a few minutes we've found that our VR community has been able to enjoy their experience while minimizing the need to break immersion. This has led many of you to return for another adventure and even brought a pal back with you! In turn, we've continued to adding new and more complex VR games for our now experienced VR players to dive into. We are very grateful for your enthusiasm for the platform and will continue to make strides to keep improving our VR experience.
Console
What began with just a handful of the best Wii U titles has now started to take shape with the addition of an NES Classic and PS4 as well as our first 4k TV! While these additions are great, they are also entirely necessary and we aren't even close to finished. Soon, we'll be adding in Xbox One S and the Nintendo Switch (provided we can actually find one), and a PS4 Pro to fully round out our lineup. Our console players have had so much fun smashing, racing, and reminiscing! We are also going to be launching our first console tournament at the end of March. The details on that will be coming out shortly, but in the meantime i'll give you a hint. You will soon hate blue turtle shells even more than you may already.
Mobile
We are extremely enthusiastic about the launch of the Nintendo Switch. The idea of being able to pack a console gaming into a mobile device is one that we are totally on-board with! When I finally get a day off one of these days, i'm going to play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild in bed until the battery dies on me. Believe you me, I am counting down the days until this can become a reality for me.
We are also looking to continue to build out our Hearthstone community and are working to organize our first tournament in the next few months. We did a prototype back in January that had very little promotion time behind it but was still able to fill a table and couches with HS players. We'd like to take that idea and build upon it to allow our local players to refine their skills and ultimately
give them an opportunity to qualify for the Hearthstone World Championship. This will take time, effort, and commitment but this will be great for not only the Hearthstone community but also the growing E-Sports community as well.
E-Sports
You are either very familiar with this concept or have no idea what it means at all. We've seen a mixture of both, but a few more on the unfamiliar side. What we've also seen is people being very receptive to the idea of E-Sports on not only a professional level, but even more so at the collegiate
level with tournaments such as Heroes of the Dorm. As such, we've begun broadcasting either the Heroes of the Storm Global Championship (HGC) or Heroes of the Dorm tournaments via projection outside of our venues on an suitable surface we can find. This has led a great many of curious onlookers to come check out not only E-Sports but also Gaming Live! as well. This is certainly our most ambitious and far reaching effort to bring E-Sports to the masses yet, but there is more in the pipe that coming to ensure that people understand that E-Sports has arrived!
Thank you!
It has been so awesome meeting and gaming with all of you and we are only 1 month in! We would just like to say thank you to everyone that has joined our community and know that it means a great deal to us for you to choose to game with us. We truly believe in our vision and our philosophy, and while it is simple, it also resonates with all of us. Change the way you game.
