Naught Dog and Sony came together and put on an event in a cinematic fashion. Those of us lucky enough to attend were not disappointed. The opportunity to see and hear Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on such a grand scale was fitting for this blockbuster of a series.
Registration began at 5:30 with the event was scheduled to begin at 6 and no one wants to have hungry gamers, so a buffet was set up for the attendees. A literal cornicopia of mini-burgers, mini-hot dogs, fried chicken, salad, cookies, cake, cheesecake, and drinks. Naughty Dog and Sony went all out to make sure their fans bellies were satisfied.
All attendees with tickets were automatically entered into the multiplayer tournament, and with 80 players, it was the center of attention for most of the night. The grand prize was five copies of “Uncharted 2: Among Thieves” the Fortune Hunter’s Edition, and it looked great.
While waiting for the tournament to begin, we were shown several behind the scene videos on the big-screen and shown several of the latest PS3 advertisements (played through a PS3 of course).
The theater was full but not packed to the point of standing room only, which really was a good thing. An early announcement by the emcee set the tone for the entire night when he announced that every ticketed attendee in the room would be leaving with a swag bag that included a t-shirt and their very own copy of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. The room went crazy.
The PlayStation Blog was present, and Jeff Rubenstein was even entered into the tournament. That didn’t seem fair since he had already had at least a week to play the game, but he did say that anything he won would be given away on the blog. Like myself, he walked away empty handed. His team faced off against my team in the 2nd round and they defeated us easily.
The tournament itself consisted of 16 five person teams with a single elimination format. Every one who played was given a second chance ticket in case someone didn’t show up for their round, and quite a few of us got that second chance. For me it just meant another loss, but it was still fun.
In between rounds of the tournament we were treated to some never before seen levels of the game by one of the developers who played through the game on the big screen.
Once you received your swag bag, and posters, the developers from Naughty Dog were nice enough to autograph anything you brought to them. The event was a huge success and hopefully this ushers in a new trend for video game marketing. I will be looking forward to the next one.
