PDA

View Full Version : The Ludika event, or what we do in belgium to do pub for paintball...



Pand0ra
07-31-2002, 08:15 AM
Hello guys,

I wanted to show you that even in Belgium we do things to make our beloved sport more know by everyone :).
Sorry, its a bit long, and I'm not sure the spelling is the best out there.


A few months ago (in April), we organised what we call the Ludika event. It was the first event ever made which puts together a lan, role playing games and paintball.
The aim what to show to everyone what are those different activities, and to make them known better.

For this first edition, we got the biggest Hall of the "Hall des Foires de Liège", in Belgium. This gave us enough room to put those things together:

Virtual Area
Lan party for 600 players
Lot of differents competitions, like Counter Strike, Day of Defeat, Quake 3, Age of Empire, ...
Presence of the official team of Microsoft
Presence of the world champion team at Day of defeat

Dream Area
Demonstrations on tables of Warhammer 40k, Battles, Mordheim, ....
Demonstrations/competitions of Magic, Star Wars, ...
Evolution of the role playing games over the years.
Murder party during the three days of the show.

And...
Action Area!!

Sup'Air ball field build inside the Hall, right near the entrance in fact.
Exhibitions of "professional" players (featuring Endurance and Max Brothers teams)
Almost free renting of equipement for the visitors, to allow them to see what paintball really is.
Lazer game


The result was quite impressive for a first edition.

Over the three days, we did more than 400 rentals. I guess we got over 6000 visitors over the 2,5 days the event was open to the public.
In fact at one moment poeples had to wait more than 3 hours to play a few games!
We were running at full capacity on Saturday and Sunday, so high we had to cancel a lot of demonstrations just to allow poeple to play, and ran out of CO2 and Air on Sunday (and we had a lot of bottles...).

We saw poeple leave during the day, just to come back a few hours later with friends. They didn't care they had to pay 2 times the entrance lol.
We even saw poeple come 5 times in a row (which now plays in a team and will start the Belgian league in September hehe).

From a media point of view, let's say the impact was, hum, tremendous :) . Higher than a lot of Millennium events I guess.

Hang on, we got:
The three main TV channels in Belgium broadcasted the show during prime time. We even got the visit of a local tv channel from Liège. 4 Channels which broadcast paintball during prime time, it's not too bad, no? ;)
24 articles in newspapers (yes, 24!!!)
A local radio was on site during the whole event. They did a lot of interviews, broadcasted live over their network.
Live retransmission of the event over the web site of Ludika.

Of course, with such a level of pub, we start to see now a big increase of players on the differents fields in Belgium. We got also a few new teams in the Belgian league, just because they tried paintball at Ludika.

The funny thing is we put together the paintball part in less than a week. We didn't have the time to do what we really wanted, but we learned a lot of things.

Next year we'll use a whole hall just for the paintball!!. This'll allow us to setup at least a full 5vs5 field, or maybe a 7vs7.
We already plan to do a competition during the event (maybe in the frame of the Belgian league). It'll be really funny to play in front of 2,3 or four thousands poeple hehe.
We'll also setup another field just for the rental players, and ask some companies if they want to be there.

A lot of good things are comming in Belgium, trust me :)

If you want to see a few pics of the event, you can go there: http://195.207.63.134/salon.asp
It's in french, but pics are pics, even in french ;)

pito189
07-31-2002, 08:31 AM
Sounds like an awesome event. Glad it went so well for you guys. What is a murder party?:confused:

Pand0ra
07-31-2002, 08:46 AM
A kind of role playing game where you've to find who's the culprit, from clues you find during the event.

pito189
07-31-2002, 09:22 AM
Kinda sounds like clue over here in the US. Clue is a board game, this sounds more interactive.

Mossman
07-31-2002, 09:50 AM
Dude, thats ridiculous. You are immortal, i love when normalish people do extraordinary things. Congrats on your success, I've got a really good family friend who lives in belgium, maybe I'll send her down so she'll be hooked next time we come to the states and we can play.

alkafluence
07-31-2002, 10:49 AM
Originally posted by Pand0ra

If you want to see a few pics of the event, you can go there: http://195.207.63.134/salon.asp
It's in french, but pics are pics, even in french ;)

You can always use the fish (http://babelfish.altavista.com/) to translate it into English or the appropriate language. Make sure to set the option "french to X" and just punch in the URL that Pand0ra originally gave.

kevdupuis
07-31-2002, 11:42 AM
That's what I call packed. Wall to wall events, nonstop. I did't use my my translator,( I tend to forget how rusty my grasp of the french language is).

Pand0ra
07-31-2002, 06:54 PM
A pic of the paintball area.

Pand0ra
07-31-2002, 06:55 PM
And just for the fun, the hall empty (it's a bit dark, sorry).

govnamac
07-31-2002, 06:56 PM
Wish I could have gone. I was in Belgium last April. It was an amazing weekend.

magking1971
07-31-2002, 07:02 PM
Looks like all the fun is in Belgium!:) :) :)
and that is one BIG hall!!!!!