Game Centers and Players Deny Halo Winter Series
It is sad to announce we are shutting down the Halo 3 ODST Winter series before it even gets started. With only 8 game centers and ONLY 1 TEAM registered there is not enough to run the league and that will leave open brackets for the Invitational Tournament. It seems as if MW2 > Halo 3 these days based on the interest in our two leagues.

Game centers will be refunded their fees for this event.

If any Halo players complain and whine feel free to contact MLG and see if they will bring events to your local game center.


ggCircuit Get-Well-Gamers Charity Gamerscore Competition
ggCircuit (www.ggcircuit.com) is excited to announce a gamerscore competition to benefit Get Well Gamers (www.get-well-gamers.org). All proceeds from this event will go directly to Get Well Gamers and help with their effort to bring video games and systems to children’s hospitals across the U.S.

This 21 day competition is based on Microsoft Achievement Points built into every Xbox 360 game. Players may join as individuals or form their own teams of 4. To score points the competitors will just play any of the eligible games from their homes and try their best to unlock up to 1000 achievement points in each game.

The challenge has been met head-on by the Major League Gaming (www.mlgpro.com/teams/) professional team AmazYn (www.facebook.com/zyngaming) who will be participating and will also match the first $500 in raised funds. AmazYn team president Kendall Smith (arctYc) wants to make sure that as gaming competitions continue to grow that the players remember those less fortunate.

“AmazYn is very excited to support Get Well Gamers and ggCircuit in this great cause” Smith explained. “As a team we are very fortunate to be able to travel and compete at the top level of gaming. We want to help spread our love of gaming to those kids who are less fortunate and need fun and entertaining ways to speed their recovery in children’s hospitals all over the United States.”

The competition will start on Monday January 11th and end on Sunday January 31st. Any interested players or teams may register now at www.ggcircuit.com but players and teams may also sign up and join the competition anytime once the scoring has started.

ggCircuit president and Commissioner Zack Johnson expects this event to grow into an annual or bi-annual event each year. “Competitive gaming needs to mature into something beyond just being the best Halo or Gears player” he adamantly suggests. “Games are continually changing and the ability to be good at multiple games will develop a much more marketable professional league. Putting this new concept on stage for such a great organization like Get Well Gamers gives me great joy and excitement for 2010.”

ggCircuit plans on this being the first of many gamerscore competitions and perhaps even trophy (the reward system for Playstation 3) competitions this year. Events for the year are continually released and updated at their website: www.ggcircuit.com.

About Get Well Gamers
The Get-Well Gamers Foundation was founded in 2001 with the goal of bringing video game systems and games to children's hospitals. Video games are an effective and proven pain management tool and provide needed entertainment during long hospital stays.
The Foundation currently serves dozens of children's hospitals across the U.S. in an ever-expanding donation network that has already brought much-needed entertainment to hundreds of thousands of children each year. For more information visit their website at www.getwellgamers.org or contact them at wlessard@prwithbrains.com.

About ggCircuit
ggCircuit was formed in 2008 in an effort to organize tournament events for Video Game Centers throughout the US. In 2009 ggCircuit held over 30 events for more than 2000 gamers while handing out over $10,000 in prizes. For more information about ggCircuit visit their website at www.ggCircuit.com or info@ggcircuit.com.


Get Well Gamers Gamerscore Contest
We are excited to kick of 2010 with a great partnership helping Get Well Gamers (http://www.get-well-gamers.org) bring video game systems and games to children's hospitals. Many businesses and organizations are partnering with us to provide prizes and match donations to help reach our goal of raising $2500.

MLG Pro (http://www.mlgpro.com/teams/index) team AmazYn (http://www.facebook.com/zyngaming) will be participating and matching the first $500 of entry fees with a donation to Get Well Gamers.

This gamerscore competition will run from January 11th at 12:01 AM until January 31st at 11:59 PM. You may join as a group of 4 to form your own team. You may also join as a single player and you will be placed on a team with 3 other players. Teams will earn points by unlocking achievements on Xbox 360. Only points earned during the competition dates will count towards your team score.

The cost is only $40 for a team of four to join ($10 for a single player) and 100% of all entry fees will go to Get Well Gamers.


Modern Warfare 2 Rules and Gametypes posted
The maps, rules and game settings have been updated for the $1000 Semi-Pro tournament on December 5th. No more excuses! Start practicing now and take your team and game center to the top of the nation!


New FREE August Events Added: UFC and Madden 10
Free? Yep! That is not a typo. You can show up at one of our participating game centers to play in a completely free Madden 10 or UFC 2009 Undisputed tournaments later this month.

Visit our events page for complete details and to get registered today!


May Gamerscore Summary Posted
The Commish has posted his summary of the May Gamerscore Challenge over in the forums. Thanks to all the players and centers that participated. Head over and post your feedback and give a shout out to the top centers and players for May!

http://www.ggcircuit.com/forums/Topic1058-41-1.aspx


Gamerscore competition data available
Our first batch of Gamerscore data is available on the site. To access the data please click on the Gamerscore event graphic on the left hand side and then click on the link "View Gamerscore Standings" within the event detail.

Remember, this is a beta competition and we will be learning more about the data as we move through the month. The current plan is that we will update this data once a day as it is a very intensive process.

We will also be writing a Gamerscore FAQ in the forums within the next couple of hours to help answer discrepancies that you might see in the data. Thank you for your patience, IT'S FINALLY HERE!!! GET TO GAMING!

You can also access the Gamerscore data here:

http://www.ggcircuit.com/gamerscore/gscore.aspx?e=32


$1000 Game Center Challenge and New Competition
Obviously tournaments are always being debated and competitive gaming in general always seems to be questionable for the future. However I firmly believe in the competitive aspects of gaming and I have been hard at work to come up with "outside the box" ideas for the future of competitive gaming.

Let me start off by apologizing to those of you PC players and centers for my focus on the Xbox. However that is where much of my passion lies and that is also where the tools are in place for me to try some of these things. The cool thing is that with Games for Windows LIVE (although we hate some of the set-up) I think some of you can participate also.

As many of you have read in my past blogs and through my manifesto posts here I firmly believe that true "Pro" gamers need to be defined by their expertise in multiple games and in their ability to master new games quickly. I have been working on trying to come up with a way to utlize the Xbox 360 Achievement system for years and finally I believe I have a program which I believe will work moving foward but I need some help testing.

I have to give credit to Rich at TrueAchievements.com who really opened my eyes to the possibility of what we are about to do here and starting my brain down the resulting creative path.

The major downfalls to taking Xbox Achievements as they stand as a "rating" system of a gamer's skill is the difference between games. 1000 points in Avatar can be achieved in less than 30 minutes. However 1750 points in Gears of War 2 is MUCH harder (if not impossible) and takes many, many, many more hours of gaming. Just looking at the score or achievement itself is not a good representation of the gamer's skill in the game.

However when comparing the achievements themselves to the percentage of participating gamers who have actually obtained the achievement REALLY takes things to an entirely different level. A dynamic point system that can be created with my own formula results in scoring relational to the difficulty of the actual achievement. So if all of the participating gamers have the same achievement it will be worth face value. Conversely when only one gamer has an achievement then those points are worth much more than the face value of the gamerscore itself.

One thing I have also worried about in competition is creating a level playing field, which is very hard to do in tournaments with host advantage and games over the Internet. Cheaters (those who use file saves when talking about gamerscore) can be monitored very easily thanks to the date/time stamp on the achievements and Microsoft is actually very active themselves in hunting down these folks and policing the gamerscore database.

Up until recently when the Xbox game library has grown so huge this also wasn't that easy of a thing to do because gamers do not generally want to play games they don't enjoy. I remember in 2006 when the 360 came out I challenged a guy that I could get 10,000 gamerscore before he got to level 40 in WoW from scratch (back then getting to level 40 in WoW was actually difficult). I got smoked. I was trying to force my way through some really crappy games just because there were not hardly any games released. Now there are almost 600,000 gamerscore points available between LIVE downloads, map pack add-ons and hundreds-and-hundreds of games.

Which brings me to my request for game centers and gamers to help me through a testing period.

I need supportive and forward thinking players and game centers who can field 5-10 gamers to represent their center in a "challenge" of sorts during a beta period. I am VERY flexible during this time because I want to maximize participation and I am really looking for feedback from all of you game centers. So the actual number of players per center and the number of weeks we will test can vary based on your input. The less gamers needed the easier for more centers to participate however without a decent number the beta test won't be as accurate. Same thing with the time period, we don't want it to be too short and burn people out quickly but we also don't want it to be too long and have people lose interest.

So how about 10 gamers maximum from each game center and a 3 week period in May? These can be employees of the game centers also and I would encourage this because they will help motivate everyone.

The 3 eBash centers are going to run this regardless but I plan on making this available through ggCircuit to all game centers so I would love participation and feedback from the beginning from all of you.

There is no cost to participate, this is just a test of my system to be able to get some real data out there.

I feel that a "prize" of some kind is necessary so I am going to put up a prize for the winning gamer center in the form of store credit for their gamers who played. That is going to be the prize structure of the system anyway so that will also allow me to get feedback from you guys to the prize system as well. What about $1000 credit to the winning center which would translate to $100 credit at your store per player if you have 10 players on your game center team?

Head over to the forums and give me some feedback:

http://www.ggcircuit.com/forums/Topic934-2-1.aspx


New gg Circuit Events Create New Interest
We are coming off of a great weekend of events. This past weekend, March 14th and 15th held two new types of events and were a huge success.

The Halo FFA event brought in 60 players from 5 different centers all battling each other through FFA for rankings. Once rankings were set players were then mixed together for impromptu teams through a bracket. For results of the event, follow this link:

http://www.ggcircuit.com/brackets/halo3-14-09/bracketsframe.htm



On Sunday March 15th, gg Circuit held it's first Street Fighter 4 tournament with 5 different centers. Local brackets were held in the early afternoon and the finals were held in the evening. We also had a gg Circuit first where the final match was streamed online for all centers to watch. Follow the link below for the tournament results:

http://www.ggcircuit.com/showbracket.aspx?e=27


The War Game has begun
Check out our brackets for the War Game circuit starting today. Teams from six different centers across the country have already started their local brackets and the championship bracket will also be played today Feb 21, 2009.

Follow the brackets here:

http://www.ggcircuit.com/showbracket.aspx?e=24


GOW 2 Tourney Bracket Available.
The Gears of War 2 Tournament has begun for 1/24. The first day of events has seven participating centers each with multiple teams. We will continuously be updating the brackets for today's events. The winners of each center will return tomorrow for the championship bracket and a $1500 prize pool. Fee free to check out our brackets for this event below.

View GOW2 Tournament Bracket


Two New Centers Added This Week!
ggCircuit continues to grow and expand throughout new regions of the country. We are VERY excited to announce the addition of two new video game centers:

South Dakota - Galaxy LAN Center in Sioux Falls
Minnesota - BragGameRights in Duluth

Galaxy LAN Center joins us for this weekend's Gears of War 2 $1500 Semi-Pro Tournament and BragGameRights joins us starting with next month's big 4v4 Halo 3 Tournament. You can visit Galaxy LAN center online at www.galaxylan.net and BragGameRights is simply www.braggamerights.com

We have received interested from almost 100 game centers around the nation (and some even from other countries!) but we are only focusing on video game centers who can run quality events. If you or someone you know owns a game center that would like to participate in ggCircuit events please send an email to info@ggcircuit.com to get the interview process started.


Madden Brackets Available
Our first Madden Semi-Pro event is happening on January 18th. Teams from across the country will be fighting it out on the virtual gridiron. Check out our onlne brackets through the link below:

http://www.ggcircuit.com/brackets/madden1-18-09/championshipframe.htm


New website updates
Take a look at some of the new things that we have updated to the gg Circuit site. We are working hard to bring you a great website and to include you, the players, into our web experience. Take a look at the following forum post...

http://www.ggcircuit.com/forums/Topic509-9-1.aspx


Site downtime 1/16/2009
Our site will be down tomorrow 1/16/2009 at 8am to do some site improvements and maintenance. We will be back up and running as soon as possible. Our forums will be available during the downtime. Thanks for your patience.


Semi-Pro Halo 3 Tournament Championship Brackets
The championship brackets for tomorrow's Halo 3 Semi-Pro 2v2 finals is slowly filling up during today's local play. Players all the way from Virginia to Arizona and in between have come together on Saturday to fight their way through the best local players and get the chance to play for $750 in cash prizes on Sunday.

16 of the top Halo 3 players will battle it out through a double elimination bracket starting at 1:00 PM EST. To follow the action watch our online brackets here:

http://www.ggcircuit.com/brackets/halo1-3-09/championship/championshipframe.htm


Halo 3 Semi-Pro Tournament Brackets LIVE
The brackets have started in quite a few game centers for today's local events. By the end of the day we will see 16 teams emerge as the top from around the nation to compete in tomorrow's championship brackets.

If you would like to watch the brackets live today you may do so by visiting:

http://www.ggcircuit.com/showbracket.aspx?e=13



Activision Events Pulled
We are disappointed that our legal department has advised us to postpone the Activision events we had scheduled for January because of licensing issues. Microsoft Studios and EA seem to be much more accepting of events surrounding their games so we are good to go with Halo 3, Madden 09 and Gears 2.

We are looking at adding the Rockband series to replace Guitar Hero as one of the titles for our 2009 circuit. We will look at other titles to replace the Call of Duty series also. Watch our site and give us some feedback in the forums so that we can offer the top titles that our game centers and players want to see in 2009!


January ggCircuit Semi-Pro Events Now Open for Registration!
The 2009 season kicks off with 5 big events which are taking place in January all over the country at ggcircuit game centers. Players will be competing in Halo 3, Call of Duty World at War, Guitar Hero 2, Madden 09 and Gears of War 2 for more than $4000 in cash prizes.

Also as the start of the 2009 season kicks off players will be earning points for the year and battling for Pro or Semi-Pro status to earn a trip to the invitational only events in the fall. Remember if your local video game center is not a member of ggcircuit have them contact us ASAP to get involved. It is free for game centers to join and each event only has a small fee for the game centers to allow their players to participate.

Don't hesitate to head over to the events page and get registered for the January events ASAP. Each center has pretty strict limits to the number of players and teams so don't wait until the last moment and lose your spot. This is your chance to play against the top competition from all over the nation in a controlled enviroment.


Pro, Semi-Pro and Open Division Details Announced
The details for the 2009 ggCircuit divisions are available in our forums. The in-depth article by our Commissioner dives into the reasons behind the divisions and how exactly they will work. This is a big part of our 2009 season and all players should make it a priority to read through the article and understand how things will work in 2009.

Also the Commissioner will be posting a new video blog about the divisions this afternoon for those of you who want to check it out on his YouTube page found here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/eBashBoZack


ggCircuit 2009 Events Announced!
Today we are excited to announce the games that will kick off the 2009 ggCircuit season starting in January. The dates and details will be announced shortly and registration should be open before Christmas. What a nice present wrapped up and under your Christmas Tree that features:

Gears of War 2: Pro, Semi-Pro, Open
Halo 3: Pro, Semi-Pro, Open
Call of Duty World at War: Semi-Pro
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare: Open
Madden 09: Pro, Semi-Pro, Open
Guitar Hero II: Semi-Pro
Guitar Hero III: Pro
Guitar Hero World Tour: Open

The biggest question on everyone's mind is going to probably surround the new class system. Don't worry we will be following up this news release with another in the next few days detailing out the class system also.

The only other possible question you might ask is how much are the payouts going to be? We don't want you to get too excited before Christmas and think you can open your presents early but we are just going to throw something out there for you. If you don't like it you can throw it right back. We are planning on paying out over $25,000 in just the Gears 2 events during the year. Wow.


$2000 Gears Championship Brackets Available
The championship brackets for today's matches are online and ready for today's 2:00 PM EST first round of matches. Teams will start showing up at their game centers around noon or 1:00 PM EST to get warmed up and ready for their first match which starts promptly at 2:00 PM EST.

Time will go quickly so watch this site and the brackets to follow your favorite team's progress. Will we see the 2008 Gears MLG Champions take the preseason title for Geras of War 2 here at ggcircuit? Perhaps a new team will emerge as the champion in this first big event of the newest game in the Gears franchise? We will soon know!

Championship Brackets Here


Watch the GOW 2 tournament unfold...
Keep track of the results of todays $2000 Gears of War 2 Circuit Preview Tournament right here at gg Circuit. We will be posting match by match winners through each center's tournament bracket. View the link list below to keep track of the first day of the competition:

ComputerArena
eBash Bloomington,IN
eBash Evansville,IN
eBash Terre Haute,IN
GameFrog
GamePad
The Gamerz Club
The Game Yard


$2000 Gears 2 Tournament Reminders
For all of you who are attending this weekend's Gears of War 2 tournament there are a few thing we want to clarify before tomorrow to make sure things go as smoothly as possible.

- All Players and Teams MUST be registered on this (www.ggcircuit.com) website. If you attend an event tomorrow you CANNOT play without having your full registration details entered here on the site. This information is crucial for us to send out the payments next week to everyone. If you do not have your legal name, address, phone number and email we cannot contact you or send you prize money.

- When your local event starts tomorrow brackets will be located HERE on this site for the double elimination tournament. The top team in the winner's bracket and the top team of the loser's bracket are the two teams who advance to Sunday. All teams and players will be earning points this weekend which will determine the Gears of War preseason rankings for 2009. Those rankings will get you and your team a higher seed to start next year's circuit.

- All Teams Check with your Local Center for Saturday start times. Each of the local game centers have different starting times and set-ups for Saturday's matches. At the end of the day Saturday 2 teams from each center will advance to Sunday. If you miss the starting time of your local event on Saturday then you are out of luck. All contact information for the centers can be found on the "Contact Us" page.

- Only the first 16 teams paid at each center will be playing tomorrow. We expect a couple of the game centers to sell out so there are going to be disappointed teams at the door tomorrow morning. If you are traveling to the center make sure you are not wasting your time and pay before you go to guarantee your spot.

- Payout for Sunday is $2000 as promised. This will be divided up as $1000 for first, $600 second, $300 third and $100 fourth. Payments will be sent out Monday via Paypal for instant payment or via written check for those of you not in the digital age. It is important to note that for tax purposes each team member will receive their portion of the winnings individually. We cannot send out one payment for the entire team.

Head to the forums for the latest updates and to look for scrims tonight as many teams will be online and at the local game centers to practice for tomorrow.


Gears Tournament hits 8 game centers in the US!
Welcome to GamePad in Fredericksburg, Virginia and Computer Arena just outside of Atlanta in Roswell, Georgia. With those two additions we have hit 8 game centers and each new game center added at this point increases the payout amount.

The guaranteed amount of $2000 will split up between the championship teams on Sunday based on the final standings of the double elimination championship bracket. More centers are considering joining us and each one contributes another $250 to the prize pool. 4 more centers would jump the pool to $3000!

Keep in mind that we will not oversubscribe an area of the country so game centers near our existing partners will not be considered. If your game center is more than 3 hours away from a participating center then drop us an email and we will consider your location for entry into the tournament on December 13th and 14th.


East Coast Represented, Welcome GameFrog!
GameFrog announced today that their Charlotte location will be joining us for the $2000 Gears 2 tournament next month. They are now active in the system and players can begin registering and creating their teams for the store.

To be eligible a game center needs to have a minimum of 16 XBox 360 stations to host up to 8 teams at their local events on Saturday December 13th. If your center has more Xbox systems they can host even more teams! The top 2 teams from each game center that Saturday will advance to Sunday's national finals over XBox LIVE to crown the champion and set the pre-season ranking points for the 2009 circuit.


Centers Joining Daily, More Coming Soon
ggCircuit is just getting started and we are already adding more video game centers almost daily to our upcoming events. Not every video game center will participate for each event so make sure to check your registration carefully when picking the location you will attend.

If you attend a video game center in your area and want them to get involved just have them contact us at info@ggcircuit.com. We can get your local center up-and-running quickly and you can have a chance at winning amazing prizes.


ggCircuit.com is now LIVE!!!
We are excited to finally launch our site and announce our upcoming events. The Gears 2 tournament on December 13th and 14th will be a great preview of the events to come in 2009. If you are new here it is free to register and join us in the forums.

If you experience any problems during these first few weeks please email us at info@ggcircuit.com or use the form on the contact page.