The PCGamer Showdown event Is approaching, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to sit down and speak to Tim Edwards, Deputy Editor for PC Gamer. This event Is going to be one of the UK's biggest eSports events there Is, along side the i-Series. The eSports community are very excited about the Showdown event, with a grand total of £35,000 to be won in cash!

The event Is to kick off on the 27th September, how has the planning process been so far?
 
Hair raising. Terrifying. We’ve got a great partner in Multiplay, and they’re obviously experienced in building and running LANs, so we’re not to worried about that side of it. The harder part has been the marketing and getting the word out – but that’s starting to change.

I think the really cool thing about this event is that alongside the LAN, we’re giving people the opportunity to play some incredible games well before they’re released, like Dawn of War 2 and Left 4 Dead. Co-ordinating the announcements of those games has been the tough bit – no-one wants to announce they’re coming until every t has been crossed and every I dotted – but we have to be marketing the event as early as possible.

But it’s been loads of fun. We’re PC Gamers. Part of the planning of this has been – if you had to throw an amazing PC Gaming party – what would you do? Being in the position to say “we should totally do that – and then making it happen, has been amazing.

PC Gamer Showdown has supplied a considerable prize pot for the tournaments, do you see this as a important aspect for eSport events?
 
We wouldn’t expect the best e-sports teams to turn up if we didn’t provide the pot. But I hope that we’ll get a good proportion of gamers coming not just to compete, but to play on the LAN purely for fun. I know that myself and the other PCG writers are nowhere near good enough to compete at the e-sports level. So we’d like some competition more at our level ;)

How have the Online Qualifiers been so far?

Good, actually. I’ve been hanging around the IRC channel (#pcgs) and spectating some games – CoD 4 and WiC so far. It’s been awesome to watch. I have to say, the Multiplay admins are very, very good at this. We couldn’t be doing this without them. I can’t wait for the TF2 tournament to kick off,  though – it’s my favourite game.

We are seeing a lot of the major eSports teams attending PCGamer Showdown, has the reaction to the event been as you suspected? 
 
I’m pleased that we’re getting sign-ups. I’d have expected a lot of gamers to be slightly baffled as to why we’re doing this, but it’s brilliant that people want to be involved. I can’t wait to meet everyone.

How do you plan on supplying online coverage of the event, for those who cannot attend the event?
 
We’re still working on it. I want to get some of the major e-sports sites into the event so they can report live. We really want to do live streaming, but we haven’t worked out how, yet.  

The PCGamer Showndown event has attracted a lot of positive attention, will there be more events to come with PCGamer?
 
I really, really hope so. PC Gamer US now has a regular Showdown event (they’re running one at exactly the same time as ours, actually), and it’s been a real success for them. If we can make this one a success, there’s absolutely no reason why we can’t do more.

How will you be spending your time while at the event?
 
Panicking at the thought of everything going wrong. I’ll be seated in the LAN area, and aim to play TF2 until my eyes start bleeding. When they do, I’ll move on to Left 4 Dead.  

Is there any fun features planned for the event?
 
YES. We’re working on a panel quiz game-show comedy extravaganza thing. Like Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Have I Got News For You, but with games. Ross, my editor, will be hosting the quiz, with writers from the magazine as team captains. We’ll be bringing in developers to answer questions, and make fools of themselves.

Please come and watch. It will be embarrasing for everyone.

A conga line seems inevitable, too.

We’ll also have a goodie bag, and there’s going to be something very cool inside. We’re doing a special edition of PC Gamer magazine that’s going to be given out free to everyone who attends the BYOC LAN. What we want to do is a special cover with everyone’s name and clan tag on. I think it’ll be a lovely souvenir. There’s one issue with doing this, and I should be clear about this – we have a deadline to get this cover to the printers, and we’ll need all the names by the 1st September. If anyone signs up after that, they’ll still get the mag, but their name won’t be on the cover.

Thank you for taking the time to sit down and speak to me Tim, I am sure I will see you at the event and best of luck on behalf of Team Infused.

No problem. Definitely say hi, if you see me at any point – it’ll be great to chat. And if you need anything else from us, just yell.

Cheers!