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BatMUD attending Assembly 2004

BatMUD will be attending the Assembly 2004 event, at Hartwall Arena in Helsinki during August 5th - 8th. Assembly is the largest annual demoparty, which gathers thousands of young computer enthusiasts. If you happen to be at the party site, feel free to drop by our stand next to the Game Compo area.

Update: Gore's Assembly report

It's early Sunday morning, 5 am, and I'm sitting above dozens of blinking and flashing lights, listening to a myriad of techno beats that echo through the massive hall like in a gigantic rave party. Yet the floor below is not crowded by dancers, instead it's filled with row after row of computers. For this is Assembly, the largest (and most respected) demoparty in the world, which gathers some 5000 visitors which range from oldschool geezers who still make the c-64 do wonders, to the quake/counterstrike players. What they
all have in common is a burning passion for computers.

BatMUD decided to plunge into this rather unorthodox crowd, both to increase our visibility on the Finnish Internet-scene and to test our new brand (for example, you have by now seen our new website layout). I can with confidence claim that we've succeeded on both counts - not only did we rig up a massive banner that dwarves anything else in the party area (except the main screen where the competitions are shown), but along the corridors of the Hartwall Arena dwell hundreds of partygoers in their fresh new BatMUD shirts and the demand has been quite overwhelming, and I doubt that any partygoer will return home without having seen or heard of BatMUD.

Thus far we've granted a couple of interviews for TV, one for radio and reporters from some magazines have been spotted with their cameras around our stand. All publicity is good publicity, or something like that. It's no secret that it is challenging to market a textbased game to generations that have grown accustomed to their first-person shoot'em-ups and diablo two's, but I believe that we have gotten our message out. In the end, what we lack in graphics and user interface, we make up in diversity and improved ways of communicating, thus causing a much more social environment than what other multiuser games can offer.

In addition to the marketing aspect of Assembly, it's also been nice to see so many of our players show up at our stand and hang out with us. Unfortunately we didn't quite foresee this happening, so the area we reserved for our stand turned out to be way too small to host the dozen of mudders that wanted to play from the spot. I can only hope that the congestion around the BatMUD stand didn't scare off any shy potential mudders.

Before I rush off to catch a few hours of sleep ahead of us dismantling our gear, I would take a moment to thank the wizards and players that have helped us with the Assembly arrangements. Exceptionally big kudos go to Nalle "one man, one desire", Huppu (despite his annoying plopping) and Glaurung the white ninja for being one kick-ass newbie helper to the fresh players we have lured into the spiral of mudaddiction.

Our pictures of the Assembly event are available here.

Some links:

http://www.bat.org/albums/album89/aae.thumb.jpg Blurry view of the main party arena

http://www.bat.org/albums/album90/abd.thumb.jpg Sonera girls wearing OUR shirts

http://www.bat.org/albums/album90/aaq.thumb.jpg A view of our stand

http://www.bat.org/albums/album90/aav.thumb.jpg Some of the mudders in a group picture

http://www.bat.org/albums/album88/aak.thumb.jpg Glaurung the white ninja

http://www.bat.org/albums/album88/aan.thumb.jpg Female beauties wearing our colors