The Arcade 2022 - Debrief

In the first week of November, Lisbon was a very different place.

The Herd descended and took control of an enormous building for a whole week packed with events, workshops, panels and the first ever fully web3 gaming tournament.

The Arcade was another level.

It was of course an occasion to relax, talk and discover our partners: Metafight, Cometh, Sport Faction, Immortal, Cross The Ages, Bubblemaps, Shrapnel, Influence, The Bornless, Solid NFT.

So many big names operating under the same roof… It was the craziest week of any web3 hub.

Panels, Workshops & Events

Web3 VS Reality

Luc Jodet from XAnge, Lyne Stambouli from EverRose, David Bezo from Immortal and Pierre from Metafight discussed with John Karp (organiser of the Non Fungible Conference) about the current and future possibilities of web3 integrations into reality (and vice versa).

Investments, existing games, sports, museums… What is the next step for merging the realities?

Blockchain Game design & Evolving job roles within the industry

With Ting from Cross The Ages, Francis from Shrapnel, Shash from The Bornless and Yingzi from Metaverse Summit, we decided to spend an hour to understand where the industry is currently heading, and where it should potentially go.

From tokenomics integration to new gameplay possibilities, UI to UX, most of the major topics were covered during this amazing panel.

Spotting good / bad games with Bubblemaps & DAOTopia

Not everyone has the time to do a full Due Diligence check on every potential game project, and even if they do it is not always that easy to DYOR. So Bubblemaps and DAOTopia gathered together to present you the basics of how to check the legitimacy of web3 projects.

NFT Collections, Tokens., Twitter Influencers… Everything can (and must) be checked.

NFC Show with John Karp

One of the highlights of the week was the incredibly entertaining NFC Show with Julien Bouteloup & Jérome De Tychey, hosted by John Karp. This little room was packed out and the atmosphere was electric as the crowds gathered to see these two OG builders and friends answering questions and firing shots at each other for an hour.

The Tournament

The first irl web3 tournament? Yes sir.

For 3 days we hosted two epic FPS tournaments (along with the help of Community Gaming who provided the brackets)

16 teams gathered to compete for the cash prizes worth over $3500.

It was also an occasion to welcome one of the most web3 involved Pro teams: MVP Guild and their friends from RDS. All of this was live streamed on Twitch and hosted by BlackPool team members & friends: Hardisk came for a few hours on stream, and guests from Cross The Ages, Community Gaming, Metafight also came along to help roast our players.

EV.IO

This 2v2 competition went from good to great to absolutely insane during the finals with incredible moves from Lowkii and Adet0x (special mention for the 5 headshots in a row move). All the replays are visible on Twitch and Youtube with highlights on their way soon ;)

The Bornless

The very special format of The Bornless was the perfect occasion to gather 8 players at the same time in one room.

Players can relate, it was even more enjoyable to throw some nice jabs to the other teams during a team fight than just doing it from behind your computer at home.

The story goes that BlackPool qualified a team for the Finals and even got 3rd place on the podium…
Same with ev.io, everything is available to watch back on Twitch & Youtube!

Immortal Events

Immortal FFA Tournament

Immortal hosted a league for three days with a private leaderboard, a $1750 cash prize and the occasion to meet one of the youngest and most promising Lisbon players.

A Round-Robin competition (each player battles one time with every other player), only Blitz no additional time (3 minutes), with the same choice of Immortal chess pieces for everyone. The points were only from the Immortal quests, not on the victory/loss ratio.

It was more than intense to play and watch.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

Dina’s 1V8

During the Immortal evening, GM Dina Belenkaya hosted a 1V8 simultaneous battle on The Arcade rooftop and… won all 8 games.

From amateurs to excellent players, she stomped all her enemies during this event.

Closing Ceremony by Cross The Ages

After all the excitement, this intense week was brought to a close by Sami Chlagou from Cross The Ages.

The crowds gathered for one last time as we awarded the beautifully crafted Solid NFT trophies to the victorious champions from each of the three competitions as well as awarding the various prizes provided by Sport Faction.

As the night drew to a close on the Arcade rooftop, we bid a fond boa noite to Lisbon and returned to Herdquarters to begin planning the next instalment.

It was a week full of emotions, for the team, for the partners & for the friends. Seeing the players enjoying the tournament, the partners talking with each other while drinking some nice (custom) cocktails, the friends of The Herd eating some pizza and discussing on the rooftop… We had a feeling of accomplishment and gathering that, we hope, you shared with us all!