T-minus two weeks until Scion Esports HALO INFINITE LAN
We’re two weeks out from the Scion Esports 10th Anniversary Celebration featuring Halo Infinite. Here’s another update to catch you up to speed if you’re just finding out about it and give you the most important final checks you can be making to ensure that your team is ready to compete.
The Get-You-Up-To-Speed stuff:
We’re hosting a Halo Infinite LAN Tournament at the Lake Charles Civic Center on January 29th and 30th. The first day will be round robin pool play, to establish seeding for the second day, which is a double elimination bracket. It only costs $10/player (actually $40/team even if you have subs) and 100% of the entry fee goes to fund the prize pool. The total prize pool will be about $3200… it depends on exactly how many teams register. The full details on game types, maps, in-game settings, etc. can be found on our Halo Esports Wiki page, but in general, we’re copy/pasting the rule set from HCS 2022 which you can review in depth here, specifically the important stuff is Sections VII - XIV . At the time of this writing we have 30+ teams so far and the hype is building fast. There will also be free-play consoles, and several side events including Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, FIFA 22 and Madden NFL 22 and hopefully a little Halo FFA if we can pull that together. We have hired some top-tier Halo broadcast talent including HCS veterans Clutch, Shyway, and Ynot. Local favorites Taze, CaptainAtsoca, and MadameKarnage round out the team. There will be live music as well, provided by The Cowboys Of Porridge on Saturday and Justin Martindale & The Back Stabbers on Sunday. The event is free to attend if you’re a spectator, and we put on a good show so you definitely want to come if you’re within driving distance. If you’re not we’re going to be streaming the whole time on our Twitch channel. Keep reading for instructions on how to register your team if you have not done so already.
The absolute most important things you need to do right now if your team is already registered:
Get your Team Information Google Form filled out.
If we don't get your Team Information forms soon, we won't have time to prepare as much content as we'd like to ensure that your team looks as professional as possible during our live event. Please get it filled out as soon as possible... even if it's incomplete, you can always update the form as many times as you like or send us the remaining information via email later. Thanks in advance. The best experience for everyone will be if you sign in with your Google account to fill out the form, you can then make use of all the features of the form including editing it later and uploading your logo and other image files directly to us using this link:
https://forms.gle/sbVaVtvBncxLz11L9
If you don't have a Google account and are unwilling to create one for this purpose, you can use this version of the form and email any image files you want to provide (high resolution team logo, player headshots, publicity photos of your team, etc.) to esports@lakecharlestoyota.com.
https://forms.gle/n1153mQWJHwwcAHW8
Get your whole team on Challonge and Discord.
Each of your team members need to have a Challonge account and have joined your team. Once you create a team on Challonge it has it’s own dashboard, so you can confirm that all your people have joined. You don’t have to have them on there before you register, but you do have to have them on there before the event starts. If you have subs/coaches, they need to be on your Challonge team as well.
You also need to all join our Discord by going to discord.gg/scionesports. Our Discord is the best place to engage with the community and the organizers before during and after the event, and to ask questions about the event. If your Discord account is linked to your Challonge account, you and your teammates will also receive notifications with details of when and where your matches are scheduled, helping to make sure you never show up late for a match.
Make 100% sure you are in-game friends with all your teammates (including subs) before you come to the live event.
This event is going to go fast. We have a lot of games to squeeze in. We need you all to be quick and efficient at getting into games. Depending on your station, you or your opposing team captain may be creating the game lobby yourself, or there may be an observer creating the lobby. Either way, the creator will invite the team captain, then the team captain needs to invite the team, or already have them joined up and ready in his/her fireteam. It wouldn’t hurt to go ahead and friend any team captains from other teams that you know, that will just make it go that much smoother on game day.
The absolute most important thing you need to do right now if your team isn’t registered yet:
Get your team registered.
You don’t even have to have 100% commitment of who’s going to be on your team, you just have to be confident that you’re going to have one. To register now, visit our Challonge event page here. There are tutorials in previous blog entries about how to create an account on challonge and create or join a team, and how to register for the tournament if you aren’t familiar with Challonge. You register your team for Halo as well as yourself for the various side events from the Challonge event. We will be closing registration at 11:59PM Wednesday January 26th, so the pools and schedules can be posted on Friday for everyone to review, but it’s looking more and more likely that we won’t even reach that deadline before filling up, so if you wait too long, registering as an alternate and hoping somebody no-shows might be the only chance you hvae. There will be no day-of signups for Halo, but you will be able to hop into the side events day-of if there is space. It’s $40 to register your Halo team, but when you sign up, don’t forget to select the free “Early Bird” version of the entry ticket… We were originally going to charge more based on how much you procrastinated, but we decided that was no way to celebrate our 10th anniversary, so we made the free option available right up until the event starts.
The absolute most important thing you need to do right now if you’re just coming to watch:
Share this blog post or the promo video or anything else about this event on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tictok, etc.
We are committed to doing everything we can to keep the Halo esports community thriving this time around. We think 343 has put together a great game and Esports Engine is going to run a great ecosystem at the higher levels. We’ll do our part at the grassroots level, but we need your help to get the word out. The more people that come out to watch this event live, and watch it on the stream, the more of our resources we’ll be able to invest in Halo in the future.
Other relevant stuff you might need to know:
If you don’t have a team but would like to play, or if you have an incomplete team and are looking for another player or two @MadameKarnage is maintaining a spreadsheet of free agents and incomplete teams and trying to match-make as best as she can. We can’t promise we’ll be able to find a home for everybody, but we’ll do whatever we can to accommodate the forming of teams.
You have to own a copy of the game to play. It is free, it’s not that big of a deal to own it. But you cannot share accounts, you cannot create your account on site. Before you come to the event you have to “own” at a minimum, the free version of Halo Infinite Multiplayer on your Microsoft/Xbox Live account. If you bought the game on Steam, you should have linked your Steam account already. You don’t have to “purchase” a bunch of different versions of the game to play it on different platforms, it’s all tied to one game account that follows you no matter what platform you’re playing on. Just make sure you are comfortable with logging in on different platforms before you come.
You will not know what hardware you’re playing on until the games are assigned. We recommend you bring your own mouse+keyboard, controller, and/or headset to make the transition between platforms as smooth as possible. As long as your settings are the way you like them in Halo at your house, they’ll follow you to this event and from station to station just fine. It wouldn’t hurt to memorize your field of view, keybinds, sensitivities, etc. or bring a cheat sheet, just in case. Any peripherals you bring must be wired USB only, no wireless peripherals will be allowed. No software will be able to be installed on any of the hardware, your peripherals must work plug-n-play to be able to use them. If your peripherals don’t work when it’s time for your game to start, we’ll provide you a generic mouse+keyboard or controller.
Group assignments on the Challonge event page are temporary, they will be randomized and finalized once registration is closed. You can keep checking out the Challonge page to see who all is playing, but you can’t put any stake in who is in your group until Friday.
If you’re coming from out of town, there are a lot of hotels in Lake Charles, but many are still repairing damage from Hurricane Laura. We recommend you book your stay as soon as possible. There is a cluster of hotels right along the north service road of Interstate 210, between the Nelson Road and Lake Street exits. There’s a lot of shopping and restaurants nearby, and the Golden Nugget and L’auberge Du Lac Casino Resorts are very close as well. This area is a less than 10 simple drive to the venue. Here is a Google Maps link to the Holly Hill Road Roundabout, which is kind of in the middle of the hotel cluster we’re talking about. Any of the places around here are great to stay. If you’re a high roller, you can stay at the hotel tower at the Golden Nugget… the rooms aren’t that much more expensive, and you might run into our Halo Celebrity casters there.
Thanks for joining us for the Scion Esports 10th Anniversary Celebration. We’re excited to have you. There is a list of additional FAQs on the event site if you still have questions after reading this whole blog post. Please don’t hesitate to contact us on Twitter, Discord, or email if you have any questions.