A Day in Paris: Visual Gaming Finals

Yesterday I got invited by Microsoft France to Paris, to the Wax Club, to see the French Visual Gaming Finals.

My teammate, ZogStriP, participated in the High School competition there, so it was very exciting!

It was also a very good experience to learn French ;) And to get to know Paris, where the people are really crazy in traffic. Apparently, stop signs are just for decoration… Green or red, it all means the same :p

They played the games before and played the replay files on big screen, which were also recorded by a French television station. The station is on satellite and is called GameOne, I don’t know yet when they will broadcast it. I’ll have to find someone who can digitally record it, because they interviewed me as well :p

So, the High School competition: there were 2 pools, one with 3 games and one with 6. Our toughest competitor was Z², who lost by a very small margin each time.

In the end, our DLL won the High School competition! Resulting in a PDA for my teammate (I’m too old for High School ;p).

But here is where something special happened, he gave me the PDA!

He recently became MVS in France and just received one as well. Isn’t it a nice gesture? Microsoft France made a very good choice making him MVS, he really deserves it with this kind of attitude, a real team player. (So, for all French companies reading my blog, go to his blog and check it out, he would be a great asset for your company!)

After this, it was time for the Open Division.

There, our bot had a hard time. We lost the quarter finals by 1 point, due to a bug causing the AI to stop :/ So, chances for 1st and 2nd were gone. Finally we ended up in fourth place, because the same bug occurred again in the next game, which is really a shame.

One thing is sure, being 4th already is good, especially in France, the country of Visual Gaming, now we only have to fix this bug :p The prize for fourth place: a fingerprint reader and I also got interviewed, in English :p This is really a nice example of “dissolving boundaries” :)

And to finish, here’s a picture of ZogStriP and me (ZogStriP right, me left):

To ZogStriP: Thanks!