Pacific Northwest Killer Instinct Group
If you’ve been reading the content posted here on www.ultra-combo.com for the last few months, you’ll have undoubtedly notice that most articles, though written by myself, always contain verbiage to suggest that anyone on the team could be writing the pieces. Well today, I am breaking from that habit, and going to write to you about a little experience I had recently.
See the above pic? That was taken at Gameworks here in Seattle, one random Tuesday night. A little caveat about my background: I am completely new to all things FGC-related. I seriously had no idea this was going on. What exactly is going on, you ask? Well every week dozens of people pile in to Seattle’s Gameworks, and bring with them various consoles & games, looking to spend the night thrashing their FGC brethren. In short – it’s a LAN party, and it happens every week.
Rewind to a bit earlier that day, and I found myself browsing through the KI reddit (yes, there is one: here) and I came across a thread looking for Seattle-area KI players to attend a local event. I’m no cartographer, but I was pretty sure that I lived close enough to this event to make an appearance. I posted in the thread that I would come through, and that was that. Fast forward to 6pm that night, and I found myself walking in to a world previously unbeknownst to me.
As I wandered in I saw people playing a multitude of games, and it blew my mind that so many folks were out here each and every week hanging with like-minded individuals…and I had no clue it was happening. Ignorance aside, I finally came across the couple of gents, Dylan and Mark, that you see in the photo above. “I’ll be the guy in the kitten hat.” I remember those words clearly (more on why later) from the message I received on reddit instructing me where to find thm. I sat down, and to save a you some time I’ll keep it simple: beatdowns were handed out over the next 5 hours.
We played well in to the night, enjoying one another’s company, and having a blast no matter the outcome of our matches. No salt to be found. Just general KI camaraderie. Trollishly Purposefully, I left out who I was, and what I do for the KI team as we played. Part of my job as Community Manager is to not only interact with the people who play our game, but also listen to their feedback. Interestingly enough, it’s easier to listen to folks and get their pure, unfiltered feedback when they don’t know you work for the thing they’re eagerly discussing. It was also handy that the night all this was happening, the Shadow Jago trailer had released. Hearing the excitement spewing from fans is always the best part of my job, and this night was no different. Actually one of the best parts of the night was when Mark came up to me and mentioned that “KI just tweeted that there would be a live stream happening Thursday.” Feigning ignorance is easy..and hilarious. “Oh, really,” I responded. Little did Mark know, I wrote that article sitting no more than 5 feet from him. Ha.
As the night wound down, and people started to pack up, I knew I had to make things right. There were a few other people that popped in to play KI, but these two were there the whole night – running the show. Literally. In our last talks of Shadow Jago, I heard both of them mention that they were looking forward to purchasing Shadow Jago once he became available. I found my opportunity to strike. We talked about exchanging Twitter handles, because apparently that’s what the kids do nowadays to keep in touch. Fair enough. I told both of them to check their DM’s real fast, because ya boy had slid in them. What they didn’t know is that their was a nice. new Shadow Jago code waiting for them, sent from the Killer Instinct account.
The faces…the faces they made once it all clicked. Golden. Well worth the secrecy. Needless to say, we chatted for a few more minutes, and I made sure they walked away with one of those fancy-schamncy KI shirts, too. All-in-all a good night.
By this point you may be asking yourself why there’s an editorial piece about a random set of folks, attending a random event, at a random place, on some random night. Simply put – we love to see and hear about these events, and we want them to be successful. Shameless plug incoming.
FORUMS! If you haven’t yet visited our forums, we urge you to do so. Of course you’ll find all manner of KI people there, but more importantly we have an entire section dedicated to the Tournament scene. Use that section to let us, and any other potential attendee know what’s going on, and how they can participate. I happened to stumble across these guys on reddit, but it was wonderful to see one of our own community members encouraging these folks to drop a line in the forums. (Shoutout to you, FinchoMatic, for the assist.) I managed to find a wonderful group of folks to play some KI with, and we hope you do too. So pop by and see if there is something happening in your area.
Oh, are you in Seattle? You should totally come by and play…TONIGHT! Of course I’ll have to throw a plug to the PNW KI Group on Facebook. Details are in there, but I urge you to join.
Dylan, Mark… Thanks for rocking and being an awesome part of such a wonderful community. Can’t thank you enough.
I’ve said enough. Back to your regularly scheduled KI news.
-Rukari
Discuss: http://forums.www.ultra-combo.com/t/pacific-northwest-killer-instinct-group/3973