Barcraft is an event where gamers gather at a bar/pub/restaurant for a social viewing of games such as StarCraft, rather than the typical bar sports fare of rugby and football.
Running alongside rAge 2011 at the Dros in Northriding, Johannesburg, the first SA BarCraft event took place on Saturday, 1 October.
The Bad
Being the first event, there were bound to be some issues that cropped up, and like clockwork they did.
Having only one hour to setup before the event thanks to the Rugby matches that aired late on Saturday afternoon, the actual BarCraft streaming started roughly 15 minutes late.
Rather than a live stream of StarCraft matches, customers were greeted with a pre-downloaded video of some or other Starcraft league.
This was abruptly cut off when the laptop running the video ran out of battery power, with the charger sitting 7kms away.
15 minutes of downtime later, the laptop charger arrived and the video continued.
The audio system in place at the Dros was terrible; there really isn’t another way to describe it.
Too loud, too boomy (despite Vitriolic gaming’s best efforts to improve sound quality) and too vague; very little of what the commentators said could be heard by customers main area of the Dros.
Totally beyond Vitriolic gaming’s control was the service at the Dros. Forgetting orders, just not pitching up with drinks for over 30 minutes, waiting nearly 1.5 hours for food to arrive, and cold food served.
The Good
The turnout for BarCraft was good – there were at least 40 gamers who arrived for the first event which was well advertised among the rAge LANners.
It was interesting to have Starcraft matches in the background rather than rugby, and Vitriolic’s idea of drawing new markets to bars was spot on the money. Many who attended would not have if Starcraft wasn’t streaming.
Organiser interview
We caught up with Pieter “Cyrus” Venter and JC “Marauder” Cloete, the organisers of BarCraft, and posed some questions.
When asked about challenges they faced when setting up the BarCraft event, Venter explained, “We had to find a bar near rAge that was willing to host an unknown event. We also only had one hour to setup because of the Rugby game that was on earlier, so it was quite a rush.”
The other challenge Barcraft faced was explaining the concept to the public and increasing awareness among gamers who might attend, said Venter.
We enquired about why the event featured a pre-recorded video rather than a live stream. Venter spoke about the various difficulties a live stream presented.
The first was the time zone issue, where US and Korean games would stream live either during the middle of the day or in the early hours of the morning, which isn’t really ideal for the local gaming community.
“The other issue is bandwidth,” continued Venter. He explained that the ADSL present in most bars is not fast enough for streaming events. The other alternative would be making use of mobile broadband in the form of Cell C or Vodacom, but coverage and cost is also an issue.
Did Vitriolic gaming consider Barcraft a success? “Yes considering this was the first attempt, obviously things weren’t perfect but we can learn from this and improve, so that hopefully future BarCraft events are even better,” Venter concluded.
SA’s first BarCraft – impressions << Comments and views
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