A weekend of Devastation

If you're a competitive gamer and someone asks you to name a big video game tournament, Evo, Final Round and Seasons Beatings probably come to mind. These competitions draw in throngs of competitors from across the globe to test their skills, witness heart pounding battles, crushing victories and disastrous defeats. Victors often disappear within a mob of deafening cheers, raised arms and pumping fists, while the defeated wrap the cords around their game controllers and saunter home. Now, Devastation has risen up to join the echelons of well-respected gaming tournaments.

If you stepped through the Phoenix Convention Center third floor ballroom doors between Oct. 7 – 9, 2011, a large white banner that read “DEVASTATION” splattered in black lettering hung high above the registration table, greeted you. Items up for raffle, including tournament edition arcade fighting sticks, gaming keyboards, and Gears of War-themed headsets, waited to be claimed. Swirling spotlights focused on the center stage that would hold cosplay and Rock Paper Scissors contests. Dozens of glowing LCD TVs sat on long tables and flickered with life and arcade cabinets lined the side walls, all warbling their own electronic languages. The rumblings steadily grew louder as more and more competitors arrived – Devastation '11 had begun.

Like many things, Devastation started small. In 2005, the emergence of the Seventh Generation of consoles and online gaming threatened to snuff out arcades, confine gamers to their parents' basements and extinguish video game tournaments in Arizona forever. Robb Chiarini decided that he'd brave the naysayers and revive the fun, love and social atmosphere that once surrounded competitive gaming and started to organize his own video game tournament. Thus, Devastation was born.

“That very first year, I ran it out of my house. I had a game room set up and I built these gianormous arcade sticks,” Chiarini said. “I thought 'hey, this is fun!' even though we played for 24 hours straight, people were tired, and I overextended myself for a single-day tournament. I had a blast and I see where I did some things wrong but I think it was great fun for everybody.”

About 70 people came from Arizona, New Mexico, California, Colorado, and Texas during the first event, and as the years passed, Devastation steadily grew larger. The 2009 competition at the Phoenix Convention Center drew in just less than 1,000 attendees, snatched more than 160,000 online viewers spanning 80 countries, and clawed its way to becoming one of the largest and most reputable events of its kind in the world.

“I want people to have fun [at Devastation], have a good time and make them feel like they are a part of the event,” Chiarini said. “I've gone to other events where they basically just say, 'hey Number 133, go ahead, you're up on Stage 2. Once you're dead, then go away'.”

Devastation '11 boasted tournaments in a large variety of different games, including: Gears of War 3, Dance Central, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and Tekken 6 to name a few.

All was not well, however, and Devastation '11 had its share of problems. The most apparent was the confusion among the organizers that stemmed from the variety of video game tournaments. Some tournament pools started much later than scheduled, which caused some competitors to drop out due to time constraints. Audio and video problems with the online streamed matches also popped up and some TVs blacked out during gameplay.

Jeremy “Black Mamba” Florence started seriously competing in video game tournaments after he won fifth place on Dead or Alive 4 at Evo 2006. He entered Devastation beginning in 2009 and was disappointed with the organizational issues that plagued this year's event. Despite his misgivings, Florence still considers Devastation to be one of the better tournaments he's been to.

“The venue is definitely one of the best venues you're going to get in a gaming tournament. It's big and spacious. They have a ton of games to play, so you're not going to be bored the whole time you're here,” Florence said.

At the back of the ballroom, dozens of chairs sat, facing a movie theater-sized screen where spectators could observe web streamed matches. David “UltraDavid” Graham, along with several guest commentators, described every heart-stopping round and bone crunching strike. Some high-caliber gamers, including WCG Ultimate Gamer Season 2 champion, Kat “Mystik” Gunn, showed to compete at the event. Other big names in the competitive gaming scene, such as Alex Valle, Mike Ross, Justin Wong, Ricky Ortiz, Peter “ComboFiend” Rosas, Abdullatif "Latif" Alhmili, and Ryan "Filipino Champ" Ramirez, came to wage war on the digital battlefield.

So, you say that you can stomp all your friends at Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, have the highest Gears of War 3 kill streak on Xbox Live, and dominate every opponent on Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, at all your local video game tournaments? Great job! Does this mean you're ready to take on and defeat professional gamers like Justin Wong at events such as Devastation? Pro gamers can sometimes spend up to 60 hours a week honing their combo execution, headshots and kill streaks.

Tons of practice and fast reflexes are only part of the equation, however. Competition's equally mental and physical. Do you think that your nerves will hold up to the pressure when the spotlight's on you, everyone's watching and tension saturates the air?

Gunn's no stranger to such challenges that come with the territory of being both a female and competitive gamer. Girl gamers often face animosity and hostility when playing online and video game tournaments are typically male-dominated events. Undeterred by these obstacles, however, Gunn began her competitive gaming career with in 2006, participating through Major League Gaming and emerged as one of the top dozen U.S. Halo players. She's also a national Dead or Alive 4 champion and went on to win the second season of the video game reality show, WCG Ultimate Gamer Season 2.

Since winning Ultimate Gamer, Gunn's been focusing more on creating and training pro gaming teams through her company, Antelope Valley Gamers. Regardless of your level of experience, she believes that when it comes to showing up in that moment and your tournament life's on the line, it's vital to not forget to enjoy yourself.

“I try to remember to have fun. I think that's the biggest problem is that when you get so serious about a game, it takes out a lot of the fun.” Gunn said. “If you lose, it's hard to get over it, because you lost, somebody was better than you. That's pretty devastating to your ego. I think you just got to remember, 'OK, remember what I did wrong, try to improve and just try to move on as hard as it is and focus on having fun.'”

Despite its hiccups, one thing Devastation '11 definitely didn't skimp on was fun. Whether you're just starting out competing, a tournament veteran, male, female or just wanted to get the highest score on Pac-man, Devastation had something for everyone. Well worth the lack of sleep and mounds of empty energy drink cans. Now, go crack open another bottle of Mountain Dew and get back to training!

Gamers decipher a years old AIDS mystery

It now seems that it's no longer a requirement to have a Ph.D in order to accomplish a major scientific breakthrough, you just need to be good at video games.

In an unprecedented feat, gamers used an online video game called Foldit to unravel the mystery of a key protein in the development of AIDS that's baffled scientists for more than a decade. The goal was to successfully create a 3D image of the structure of a retroviral protease, an enzyme from an AIDS-like virus that plays a key role in how it spreads.

Scientists fruitlessly wrestled with this problem for years, and in a Hail Mary play, gave groups of Foldit users three weeks to fashion an accurate model. After the allotted time, researchers compared the best submissions to the enzyme's crystallographic X-ray and found that one of the teams correctly created its structure in just 10 days.

Studying every angle of a protein via a 3D image is vital for Pharmacologists in understanding diseases and developing drugs to combat them. Constructing these representations is what Foldit's for.

Created in 2008 by University of Washington researchers, Foldit uses a video game-like setting and provides players with a set of online tools to compete with each other at decoding complex amino acid chains, which make up proteins. More stable structures are awarded higher points. The community has grown to more than 236,000 players since it started, and many of the gamers involved with the experiment had no background in biochemistry at all.

"People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at," Fold.it's lead designer and developer Seth Cooper said in a press release. "Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans."

The weekly journal, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, published these findings in its Sept. 18 issue, lauding the players and researchers for their efforts.

The war on AIDS isn't over yet, but if gamers could crack an AIDS puzzle in less than three weeks, then give them about three months and we'll have warp drive and interstellar travel.

The things we've gamed with

There's no doubt that video game companies want to use new technology to improve gaming experience in new and exciting ways. Some ideas show promise, such as Sony's upcoming virtual reality headset, while others do little more than raise eyebrows, like the Wii Vitality that was announced at E3 2009. The video game industry's definitely no stranger to seeing new ideas popping up here and there. Below are just a few of the more unusual devices ever conceived within the developers' labs.

Sega Activator:

So you think that Nintendo was first to step foot into the interactive gaming frontier? It turns out that way before people were waggling their Wiimotes, Sega delved into the realm of motion controlling with the Sega Activator for the Genesis. The idea centered around snapping eight panels together in an octagonal ring on the floor, stand in the middle and use body motion to control your character on screen. The only exercise gamers reported getting was with the frustration of trying to get the unresponsive controls to work. Side effects include sore limbs, headaches, vomiting, dizziness, flailing around like an idiot and the urge to smash the Activator’s panels over the nearest biological life form. Consult your psychiatrist before use.

Nintendo Power Glove:

The Nintendo Power Glove is by far one of the strangest accessories the Big N has ever cooked up. Released for the Nintendo Entertainment System, slip the Power Glove onto your hand and program the code for the game you're playing on its control panel. Then, once you place the sensors on your TV and you’re ready to rock 'n roll on all your favorite games from Punch Out! to Legend of Zelda! All you have to do then is punch the air, squeeze your hand, wave or flick your fingers to direct your character on screen, and no, scratching yourself with the Power Glove does not grant invincibility. Problem was that the controls responded as well as a deaf man at a heavy metal concert. As antagonist Lucas Barton boasted in the 1989 movie, The Wizard, “I love the Power Glove. It’s so bad!” Yeah, it’s bad alright.

Atari Jaguar controller:

When it comes to your standard gaming controller, you have your Playstation 3 one, the Xbox 360 one, the Nintendo Wii one...and then you have the Atari Jaguar controller. Yes, this sleek, aerodynamic controller comes in a square design that’s so big, you could fit your Pepsi on the useless multi-numbered keypad. The controller certainly didn’t help sell more Jaguar systems, and one could speculate it as one of the reasons why it got tossed into gaming oblivion. Definitely one of Atari’s biggest fails since E.T. on the Atari 2600.

Glucoboy:

It turns out that Nintendo had concerns about their gamers’ health way before Wii Fit hit U.S. shores. Enter Glucoboy, a child blood glucose meter originally designed to attach to the Gameboy Advance. All you need to do is prick your finger and you’ll receive a highly accurate blood glucose reading in about 10 seconds. That’s not all: the Glucoboy comes with two full video games, a mini-arcade and the ability to have your test results converted into Glucose Reward Points (GRPs), which can be used to unlock games or used as in-game currency. Considering the new health direction Nintendo is going one is left wondering when the Wii MRI will hit store shelves.

Konami Laser Scope:

If you happen to own an NES and feel like playing Duck Hunt but think that wielding the Nintendo Zapper is for chumps, check out Konami’s Laser Scope. This optical targeting plastic gray headset allows you to blast away your onscreen enemies by screaming “Fire!” into the mouthpiece. “Plus, with Laser Scope all of the awesome game sound goes right to your own ears. Not your Mom’s or Dad’s.” As if repeatedly spurting loud sounds into the mouthpiece is going to annoy them much less than the sounds of aliens exploding on the TV screen. Even though this piece of NES hardware reportedly worked well, it's doubtful that many would want to be caught with one strapped around their head.

So how about you? What are some of the oddest gaming accessories that you’ve had the chance to come across in your gaming experience?