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 Posted 6/1/2009 11:54:00 AM |
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He can make it happen.
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Well, after losing my life to the Xbox 360 console in May I have finally recovered enough sleep to share my thoughts on the event. All I can say is that this the most intense month of competition that I can ever remember experiencing.
First and foremost hats off to GamePad for coming out of the gate with a bang and holding onto their lead all month long. They had some very strong players at the top (we will address the individuals in a minute) and it was obvious that they caught on early to what it would take to win the competition. Overall they bagged almost 75,000 in actual Gamerscore which translated to over an amazing 650,000 GG Points. You guys were awesome!
eBash Terre Haute, GameYard and eBash Evansville were all extremely strong in 2nd, 3rd and 4th unlocking around 50,000 in actual gamerscore per store. I guarantee you that at least 5 players from each of those stores lost some sleep playing games late night hoping to hear that awesome "Achievement Unlocked" sound to keep them going. The next group of three also put some sizable time into playing this month with DIZeLAN, Camp Defiance and eBash Bloomington ranging from 5000 to almost 10,000 actual gamerscore.
Individually Kaens (GamePad) was in a league of his own. A little searching through other achievement websites shows that his main LIVE tag, Kaens, is something of a trophy in itself. His ggCircuit tag, Kaens GP, racked up almost 35,000 actual gamerscore in one month. I haven't seen any other references but surely that is some kind of record for most gamerscore in a single month. Over 400,000 GG Points from a single player really helped carry GamePad to victory!
I played the living crap out of games this month thinking I could catch up to Kaens but obviously I was nowhere close to even make him look back at my pathetic < half of his GG Point total. Even though I knew I couldn't catch him I believed in fighting out until the last weekend and only the last night I gave up and decided to sit by the campfire instead of playing games.
GameYard Mizz (GameYard) started off with some amazing feats of gamerscore action but it looked like he just realized that the battle wasn't worth the fighting with a week left in the competition. After the three of us at the top the next two players, Hafee (eBash Evansville) and BoltOblivion (GamePad) stood by themselves around 70,000 GG Points. The remaining 5 players in the top 10 were very close together and all unlocked at least 5000 actual gamerscore and had just about a 50,000 GG Point average between them all. Congrats to dabxpyre (GameYard), STB (eBash Terre Haute), Psycoblast (eBash Terre Haute), assfat (GameYard) and idriveavwgti (GamePad) for playing the best 2 and 3 man positions for their game centers.
Looking at the competition itself it became apparent very early on that with only about 100 gamers competing the "weighted" scoring system of ggCircuit would play a HUGE part in the competition. I am not sure about the other centers/players but I found myself looking through the top achievements and going after games to try and boost my score while also lowering the competition's score. Since I work directly with Jmac, electricD7 and the now internally infamous PP knowing the amount of work it took to get the scores updated was the only reason I had the patience to wait for the daily updates. We are now working to automate the process even further to try and get updates maybe 2-3 times each day hopefully.
The HUGE problem we ran into was the fact that we couldn't get our hands on some of those games. I am guessing that some of the top guys have modded Xbox systems (which was not against the rules in the beta competition simply because I didn't think about it) with the number of LIVE games they had played and also some obscure titles. Without being able to find some of those games at our local gamestores or rental places and not having GameFly accounts really seemed to kill our chances.
I think that the GG Points system is incredible and going forward things will even themselves out tremendously as we add more players to the system. However during this Beta Challenge bagging 25,000+ GG Points in a single game was easy because so many games had not even been played yet at all. All players who participated in this Beta will have a HUGE advantage when we move into our next round of events because they will know the way the system works.
Speaking of future events we are planning to split the gamerscore competitions into Open and Pro events and also run 48 hour and 1 week events in addition to month long events. The new competitions should be open for registration this week. Our first 48 hour challenge will be June 20th and 21st so mark your calendars (and get your game reservations ready).
I would love to hear from both the players and game centers on what they thought of this month's competition. Both things that you liked and didn't like and any ideas on how you think we can make it better. Overall I was super happy with the system and all of the great participation from the centers and players.
THANK YOU: Goes out to Jmac first of all for spending AT LEAST an hour each day babysitting the data and update system ON TOP of all of his normal work he does with ggCircuit on the website and forums. ElectricD7 for his help with some programming solutions and tracking down PP for his wizardry on the programming side. Thanks to all of the game centers that participated and especially to all of the players that dedicated so much time to unlocking achievements in May. You guys just helped build the foundation of something big.
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| Posted 6/1/2009 12:16:58 PM |
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On behalf of the GameYard, thank you for putting this together. We had an absolute blast, and I think the majority of players here were checking the ggCircuit scoreboard first thing every morning. I signed us up at the last minute and was taken completely by surprise by the response -- signing up 20 people for an event that had no advertising and no promotion, and I turned away a few people the last couple of days because it was past registration. The gamerscore concept seems to have struck a nerve here, and I look forward to participating in the future events.
Also, congratulations to GamePad and Kaens GP -- we tried to hang with you the first couple of weeks, but DANG! After a while it felt like we had gotten into a Halo3 social slayer match vs the Ogre twins (ouch). We had several nights where 3 or 4 of us would stay late chasing achievements, only to log in in the morning and see that GamePad was pulling further ahead.
I like the idea of the shorter events going forward, as many members of my team faded at the end and were pretty burned out on the achievement chasing.
Again, thank you for putting this together, and also for all the work behind the scenes getting the scoreboard up and running.
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| Posted 6/1/2009 1:04:04 PM |
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This was definitely and intense and fun competition. I unlocked achievements on games that I previously haven't unlocked on my original Tagg! Haha.. it was definitely fun and caused me to lose lots of sleep. For a while there I was worried that Kaens and I were the only ones doing work for our center.. but thankfully (half way through) everyone at Gamepad Stepped it up and helped us pull through.
My hat is off to Kaen for working close with me on the event and keeping me on my toes.
Good games guys, see you next gamer score challenge! 
Oh and Commish, I think the GG Points shouldn't be dumbed down due to gameplay done before the actual event begins.. gives centers more options and more games to play to improve score? Just a thought. Also, mind shooting me an e-mail once the next gamerscore event starts? 
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| Posted 6/1/2009 1:53:40 PM |
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I've been waiting days to reply. I'm in a very tough position. Why? On one hand, I realize that I'm representing GamePad & more specifically Matt so I don't want to do anything to embarrass him or his business. On the other hand, I feel like I've been constantly attacked here and being a person of very strong moral beliefs I feel the need to defend myself. Honestly, I feel that all of the strife is because we don't know each other and it's a matter of being in a competition as we're introduced which automatically puts us at odds. So let me give a (bound to be not so brief) bio of myself so you know where I'm coming from.
First I've been playing video games for at least 25 years. Now I'm sure many people here in the challenge can say the same thing but I'm obsessive about it, always have been. So when I say I've been 'playing' them for that long, I really mean I've been living them that long. Personal nugget: recently I reunited with my step father from when I was about 10 (now 36) and you know what he said about me, "That boy, all he ever did was play those video games, that's what I remember most". But no one cares about that, let's just talk 360. My son & I waited in line on launch day for 12+ hours and were in our local paper. Starting that night I was obsessed with gamerscore. A little less than 2 years later when I hit 100k, I backed off burnt out from my push, but I never stopped gaming. Thus my score has slowly drifted up to where it is now - 177k (really should be 181k, but that's another story).
If you did a little more google searching on my name you'd find that I'm one of the more 'famous' activists against cheating. That stance led me to create a gamesaverless list over at MGC.net, which got me noticed both here & overseas. I was profiled in a UK magazine (in their score whore section) and they would list all future Score Whore's ranking on my list in their magazine. Which was nice, except I got a lot of random friend invites that would see my name in there. Around the same time, I was told about a debate about my list over at xbox360achievements.org's forums. They recently were under 'new management' so to speak and I became very active on the site as a poster/moderator/contributor and now that's where most people know me from.
Fast forward to a month ago. I'm driving home from work and get a phone call from my buddy Matt. If you forgot already, he's the owner of Gamepad and I've known him for probably 15+ years now because his brother is my best friend. He begins to tell me about this gamerscore challenge that he's involved in and he wants me to help represent the store. Now I've done many gamescore challenges, both at x360a.org and I'm always in one over at 360voice.com, so I wasn't all that interested. I begin to explain to him how I'm at a ridiculous disadvantage because I've already played everything, yada yada, and he tells me that it's not a problem, many people are starting fresh tags just for the competition and it's completely within the rules. He adds there is serious cash on the line, he's going to fill the team out that weekend, and I commit to looking at the site & rules when I get home. I read the rules, created my team & new tag and couldn't wait to get started. I'm a long time member of trueachievements.com so I was already familiar with the weighting of the achievements.
That brings us up to where I need to defend myself and maybe explain some things. As I previously posted, prior to the leaderboard being up I was playing blind. Originally we were told it would most likely be up after the first weekend, and so I just goofed off playing arcade titles (scoring 2k+ on them btw). As the week progressed and having no idea what other people were doing, what games they played, what scores they were putting up, so as a result I just threw down as many real points as I could. Thus all the sports titles, Avatar (great cartoon btw), etc. Who knows what they'll be worth when the system is revealed, but they'll be worth at least what I earned on them.
During this time is when I started to really worry. Why? Not about the competition, but about things I was hearing from people in the store as I tried to recruit them. As I approached regulars with things like, "Come on man, easy money, I'll do all the work!", I was repeatedly warned that "they" have a history of changing the rules in the middle of the competition to give them advantage. Now I'm not saying that in any type of accusatory way, but you have to understand that was always in the back of my mind. So when we're a 1/3rd of the way through the competition and no leaderboard, when we're all competing on a system we don't even know how it's calculated, and lastly when the competition has been posted in multiple places on the site that it ends on the 30th and it's not over it's hard to put out of my mind.
So go back to how I stated you don't know me, well I don't know you guys either so it works both ways. I've given the benefit of the doubt to everyone here and not said anything, holding my tongue several times.
1. Jappy's dissing our team's choice of games. I did reply to that, but it was tame compared to what I was feeling and what my friends wanted me to post. Note: my friends are more casual gamers and live vicariously through me and support me 100% and naturally want me to go off on people.
2. Being told I look like a jerk. How's that? I wasn't the one that had posted the date in several places. And you meant to update it to the 31st? Seriously, when my 12 year old tells me crap like that I tell him, "yeah well I don't care what you MEANT to do, that's not what you did". So if our lead was so insurmountable and a day doesn't matter, why not stick to your posted rules? Personally I think that this is the type of thing that made people in the store, whom I could not convince to join btw, to have a negative opinion or think your events are run unprofessionally.
3. Even after the nice things said above, the backhanded comment about a modded 360. I've never modded a darn thing in my life. I have four 360s in my home (two of which are Japanese) and over 200 retail games as well as every single arcade title ever released. I was loaning my games out to teammates for crying out loud!
So those are the things I have had issues with, and honestly I don't think anything was malicious (cept maybe Jappy's). I hate to leave on that note, but I need to head home and pick up my son. I will post my thoughts on the actual competition, as well as pics of my games, when I get home. If anyone has any questions about how I did anything I did during the competition, I'll be happy to tell you now that the competition is over.
 
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| Posted 6/1/2009 2:53:09 PM |
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In Kaens Defense, he has every game.. he brought in games for us to play because the Lan Center did not have them. 
..and as for calling someone a Jerk for keeping up with the rules, uncool and unprofessional. If you want people to keep participating in your events, you gotta follow through with what your doing and have very little mistakes. I run tournaments for Super Smash Bros. at my local Lan Centers and know how it impacts the community.
Hopefully you guys step it up and we won't have these "mistakes" as often. Other than that, it was fun, and thanks for the experience.
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| Posted 6/1/2009 3:09:54 PM |
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He can make it happen.
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Hehe... that doesn't surprise me that somehow people always view something is being done against them in video gaming competitions (referring to the fact that people in GamePad told you that we change the rules to favor "our" centers). Just look at gamers in general, which I have played with also for at least 25 years. There is always an excuse. Do you know how many times I have heard from players that the other team is "bridging, modding, hacking, they have aimbots, wire hacks, etc." every single day? For some reason that is the nature of video game players and that is one reason I created this circuit to try and bring more of the "gg" into gaming.
There are many different things going on behind the scenes with me personally and any association of me with any game centers. In many cases I am much more strict towards the game centers that I know the best. Kind of like a son playing with his dad as the coach. A really good dad will be even harder on his son to make sure that no one says that he is being impartial and also because he wants to push his son to be better.
I apologize for wording the comment about appearing like jerks incorrectly. Notice I said you guys appeared like jerks, I didn't call you jerks, but that is still no excuse for wording things that way and I am truly sorry. I was trying to mention it in a constructive way as sort of a "Hey you guys pretty much dominated everyone you probably should just let it go". At the time I didn't want to go into technical details because it was irrelevant to the competition. I can take a moment to go through the details now:
The code we wrote for the May Gamerscore challenge pulls all achievements for the month of May. I screwed up when I wrote the rules and just had a brain fart that there were 31 days in May, not 30. Had this been a close competition and prizes were on the line obviously I would have manually calculated the scores or we would have changed a bunch of coding to only include May 1 - 30th data. However in the end there was nothing even remotely close to worrying about in the score so we decided to let it run the remainder of the month like it was programmed.
Not only that we have found that Microsoft actually does some weird date changing with achievements. We pull them from xbox.com and there are cases that when they pull them the date is listed as the current date, then a day or two later Microsoft changes the date on the achievement back a day. I am guessing it is some kind of time-zone correction they are doing. This is one of the things I wanted to talk with you about Kaens because of your experience with achievements to find out what exactly is happening in those cases. Some of the 5/30 achievements came across as 5/31 when we grabbed the data, only to "roll back" to 5/30 later that day.
Also don't take the modding comment in the wrong way either. I have had modded machines myself in the past strictly because of my hatred for game company's customer service when it comes to replacing damaged discs. I wasn't saying that anyone in particular had modded machines but that was my initial thought when seeing the obscure games being played by multiple players.
I was more trying to indicate that I want to come up with a way to level certain portions of the competition to games that are readily available to everyone. Having a Japanese Xbox and games for it would be the same sort of thing that I want to control ***IN SOME CASES***. I think that having those is cool as hell and in an open format I say anything goes outside of downloading and pirating games. My vision of this is that we gain support from a bunch of different publishers and I don't want that to be tainted if there is any hint of piracy. I am sure tons of people are going to get even more excited about some of the things people like you know about Kaens.
When it comes to the comments players made about their opinions on the quality of the games being played I am sure that you HAVE to hear that crap all of the time. I mean scoring almost 35,000 gamerscore in a month has to be close to some kind of record. Most serious gamerscore players would not make a brand new account and dedicate an entire month to that tag. I saw that you were in another competition with your "Kaens" tag and were sitting at 0 for the month with a couple of noob tags. It made me happy that you dedicated so much time to our unknown competition. I hope you feel proud of what you did because it was pretty amazing.
The new competitions should be open for registration this week and I would love for some of you top gamerscore people to jump in and not only continue to participate but help us shape the system and in some cases moderate and officiate if possible.
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| Posted 6/1/2009 4:44:13 PM |
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The left column is all DVDs (except bottom two which is all PS2) while the right column is my xbox 360 games. The top row is all Japanese games, the next five rows down are US retail games, except for My Horse & Me 2 which is PAL but region free. Where you see empty green cases are ones I have loaned out to friends. I track these 'rentals' on my iPhone using an app called Circulator. People borrow the DVDs as well which is why you see large gaps as I'll just loan them multiple seasons of stuff.
As for people always coming up with excuses, yup I definitely know that's true. Personally I hate sports games, and I include racing games as sports games, so it was particularly painful to replay all of those. My favorite genre is RPG and like FPS but only the single player, so neither of those options really give me a chance to compete competitively. Even when I play MMOs (3200+ hours on EQ1) I mostly stuck to myself even when I get pushed into being guild leader.
As for getting crap about my gamerscore? Oh hell yeah! Here's a random conversation I had just yesterday...
MarbleDAREN: Some people say I have no life outside my XBOX 360, but seeing your gamerscore makes me feel better about myself.
Me: Your friends are probably right
MarbleDAREN: probably
I don't know how people expect me to respond to that stuff, usually I just block communications. But this guy wasn't all belligerent like a lot of them so I replied and that was that.
Anyhow, I'll be honest I'm super super tired right now since today was my first day back at work from vacation last week. And as you know I was up all night playing games and it totally screwed up my sleep schedule but work will fix that quickly. I do intend to post some feedback on the actual competition, but honestly I'm sorry I'm just too tired right now. I do want to thank Bolt & Willie (here 2 achieve) for all the hard work they did too. Willie joined halfway through and still managed to put up a bunch of points. Everyone else on the team as well, although I am disappointed in my son... little punk was too busy watching Harry Potter instead of doing Vampire Rain with me! So sure I put up the bulk of the points, but without a team I would have ended up like Lebron.
Obviously I want to thank the hosts of the event too for putting it on, but I'll say that again when I post my feedback on the system.
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| Posted 6/1/2009 7:15:30 PM |
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| Hey guys, I was really happy to see that that our LAN center won, kaens and bolt definitely had a helping hand in the victory. I started off a little slow, but I really started working in the last two weeks. I hope we have more of these in the future.
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| Posted 6/8/2009 11:44:12 AM |
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Oh, I'm back and not holding my tongue.
I didn't give up the ghost, I got burned out on gaming straight up.
1. I would like to congratulate Kaens for winning the competion. He is the man. He played every night. BUT!!!! Dude enough with your mightier than thou attitude. Here are some exaples from you.
I. Nobody else will play hannah Montana, cause your afraid to bruise your ego's.
Really cause I played it just to spite you.
II. I work for a very well known computer company that I'm sure you've heard of.
Dude, Seriously Nobody cares where any of us work.
III. If you google me, You see I'm a famous blah blah blah
Way to go, I'm famous in my mind too.
IV. I was in the newspaper for waiting in line.
I was in a paper for playing xbox 65 hours in a row for charity, Guess what Nobody cares.
I'm just saying that you might want to work on the way you talk about yourself
2. Thanks for thinking that I have a modded xbox 360. I don't modify my system. I abuse Gamestops return policy.
3. Let's see how many people start an account and earn 10,000 points on the noise and start off like that.
4. I don't want to seem like I don't like Kaens. He has earned my respect.
5. My center can back me up in saying that there was me and 4 other guys who worked on it and That kinda pissed me off. That was the reason I decided to do something more productive like hire a personel trainer, get a girlfriend and get promoted.
6. I wish nerds knew how to play sports games. That's for the people on my team.
Much respect and Great job for everyone at the GG Circuit Site that made this thing so good.
Great Job Gamepad, Ebash, and my teammates at the Gameyard
Momma Says they were my Magic Shoes, Momma said they'd take me anywhere. Then again Momma use to beat me with a rubber hose and call me a retard - Monty
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| Posted 6/9/2009 6:26:28 PM |
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I didn't give up the ghost, I got burned out on gaming straight up.
I totally can understand that one. People don't realize how much 'work' it is to force yourself to play games, most likely crappy games, every night like that until they try it.
1. I would like to congratulate Kaens for winning the competion. He is the man. He played every night. BUT!!!! Dude enough with your mightier than thou attitude. Here are some exaples from you.
Thank you.
I. Nobody else will play hannah Montana, cause your afraid to bruise your ego's.
Really cause I played it just to spite you.
Well two things, I said that to challenge people to do it so you weren't really spiting me and two, come on dude, that's not your real tag so its not like you have to hear crap about it
II. I work for a very well known computer company that I'm sure you've heard of.
Dude, Seriously Nobody cares where any of us work.
I agree, which is why I didn't say where I work. I believe when I said that (and I'm going from memory bc even I don't want to reread my long winded ramblings) it was in reference to the trouble the site was having getting up. I was saying it in sympathy. If I was being a pee pee I would have said, "I run part of AOL's mail, none of the 200million accounts can send mail if I'm not doing my job so it taking two weeks to get a database with 60 users up is ridiculous". That's being an asshat and I was just trying to say I can understand the challenges they were dealing with since that's my profession. Trust me if I was still delivering pizzas (my previous and favorite job) I wouldn't have said anything because it doesn't apply.
III. If you google me, You see I'm a famous blah blah blah
Way to go, I'm famous in my mind too.
I believe I said internet famous or at least had air quotes around famous. Clearly being known on some gaming websites is hardly famous.
IV. I was in the newspaper for waiting in line.
I was in a paper for playing xbox 65 hours in a row for charity, Guess what Nobody cares.
Yeah, true nobody cares, and I'm not even sure why I said that but I do remember saying it. I'm sure I was just pointing out that I've been a dedicated gamer or maybe I was mentioning it because of my son, who is also in the competition. Having seen all kinds of cheating over the years I wanted to make sure that people from the other game centers know I do in fact have a son that plays games and it wasn't just like an extra tag I had and I was playing both.
Btw, 65 hours? That's pretty good bragging rights if you ask me. I think I've probably only done maybe 50 at the most, 36 multiple times, but all those were playing MMOs. I always fall asleep trying to play console that long because it's just too comfortable in my bed or chair.
I'm just saying that you might want to work on the way you talk about yourself
Probably true, but again I'm sure if we were at same store/area we'd be cool and you wouldn't take anything I'm saying for chest puffing or patting myself on the back. It's the internet man.
2. Thanks for thinking that I have a modded xbox 360. I don't modify my system. I abuse Gamestops return policy.
I assume this is where you stop directing things at me I personally believe the modded system comment was directed squarely at me because I played PAL & NTSC-J games.
3. Let's see how many people start an account and earn 10,000 points on the noise and start off like that.
Agreed, it's kinda of an unenforceable rule.
4. I don't want to seem like I don't like Kaens. He has earned my respect.
Ditto man. First two weeks you were the only person I looked at and the only one I talked about. I knew you had said you were going to drop about 20k so I expected you to fade then, and once the leaderboards were up we could see who was playing the system and who was grinding points.
5. My center can back me up in saying that there was me and 4 other guys who worked on it and That kinda pissed me off. That was the reason I decided to do something more productive like hire a personel trainer, get a girlfriend and get promoted.
I don't know what that's in reference too, just leaving it in here cause I'm curious. I could definitely use a personal trainer, but don't have the time or the money to do that. I have a girlfriend now for nearly two years running, and don't even get me started about promotion. That's a very tenuous issue for me right now where I'm ready to start looking for another job.
6. I wish nerds knew how to play sports games. That's for the people on my team.
From what I could tell, if you played the newer hockey or baseball ones they would have been worth good points, but I personally I hate sports titles so that was torture for me. I do have a friend that plays only two games, Madden & Live and he plays both of them every single night. I could never do that, but we all have our things.
Much respect and Great job for everyone at the GG Circuit Site that made this thing so good.
Great Job Gamepad, Ebash, and my teammates at the Gameyard
I agree, thanks to everyone who put organized it, put in the hard work on the site and database, and to all the competition. I don't mean that in some smart donkey butt way, I feel like I was definitely pushed. The way this system works you can score a lot of points very quickly as a team and I never felt our lead was unreachable. I think that I played every night all the way through proves that I wasn't comfortable ever!
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