I’m not sure if I’ve ever been challenged like this before. I’ve gone through winding puzzles in the Twilight Princess edition of Zelda. I’ve tried to bring sanity to eSports forums (some PG-13 language). And one time, I even destroyed a moon-sized monstrosity with nothing more than one torpedo and two plucky droids. Those were all minor trials compared to figuring out the XFX voting system.
Let’s go back in our story. The XFX challenge finished up a while ago. Teams competed in LAN centers across the country, and then the winning teams from those smaller tournaments played each other online. But even that was just a preliminary tournament for "XFX’s super pimped out rockstar tour bus" (their words, not mine) – which is an almost exact replica of the Madden Nation Bus, including touring around the country with the possibility of players being replaced through 1v1 challenges at each stop. That’s a better idea in a 1v1 like Madden than a 5v5 game. Sure, Kobe would beat almost all comers, but even Corey Benjamin and Sebastian Telfair look good playing one on one. The original squad is determined by fan voting – also known as adding together all your friends from MySpace, Facebook, and various forums.
When I heard that the voting was re-opened after they fixed some kind of glitch (or removed votes gained by “cheating”), I planned to see who was eligible and form some fun rosters. Maybe a “sure to get into fights” squad, a team with no CGS players, the best players regardless of their situation, etc. Just looking at a bunch of different angles.
That plan was quickly scrapped after I took one look at the voting page. Sorry Gree, Fernandez, Rich, Noel, West, David, Michael, Steve, Allen, D, and the rest of the crew. I have absolutely no idea who you are, and apparently XFX doesn't feel like doing you any favors
Some players are pretty easy to figure out. There aren’t many people named “Nowakowski” running around. But “Frank” in 5th place? Could be Costanza, for all I know. He's slightly overweight and angers easily over trivial things -- sounds like a gamer to me. The only reliable way to figure out what name goes with which player is too look at all of their accomplishment and hope they list the rosters like Joe "dubs" Wishnia did. (He also ended up changing his name to Joe Dubs, which gives him a clear advantage over everybody else, to be honest.) Kevin, in 5th place, didn’t list his rosters. I’d like to believe that’s because he’s actually Kevin Spacey and doesn’t want to be bothered. When I checked the page a few hours later, Kevin was gone, further supporting my hypothesis on his true identity.
Plus, there’s no rhyme or reason for how they were listed: some people are listed by their gaming handle, some are listed by their first name, and some by last name. This is a problem when you have two excellent players with the same last name, like Csikos and Csikos (which sounds like a Greek law firm). There’s one player simply known as J. I’d investigate further, but … hey, who the heck are you? Why are you pointing that thing in my face?!
All these people competed at the tournaments. They all had to register with at least one website. Would it really be that hard to get their full names, along with their gaming handle?
Wait, I take that back. It turns out not everybody in the voting got to play. The Gromblerz are represented with the little “VOTE FOR ME” bar next to their “awaiting photo” picture. Not only am I looking forward to seeing what Misty, Random Picture King, uses as his photo, but I think it’d be great if they got elected to the bus as a team and purposely tried to make the worst product possible. I'd suggest literally not saying one word. I’m pretty sure any show would tank if the main characters didn’t talk but couldn’t leave. After the way the XFX accepted their application then turned them away at the door after they already paid for flights and other travel expenses, it would warm my heart to see that happen.
Then there are the group pictures. Which one of these three people is Corey, exactly? And if you really want to play dumb, I think it’s admirable that Josh was secure enough in his manhood that he’d put up a picture of himself in what looks like a pink dress, while climbing the back of another man. (Obviously, we know which one is really Josh. But still, some other means of identification would be nice in the large pictures.)
But wait, there’s MORE!
Some people have votes but don’t have a “vote for me” option. What happened here? I wasn’t aware XFX was using Diebold machines. But seriously, if you’re going to have any kind of poll, shouldn’t all the options be eligible for voting? When I go to a restaurant, I expect all the items on the menu to be real offers of food. I really wanted to vote for David, Jon, John, Craig, and Dan. I think they’d make a good team, even though I don’t know who they are.
And, lastly, I think it’s safe to say they could have run the poll for a couple days, and then gotten rid of the hundred or so contestants that didn’t have any votes. I’m sure it’s nice to say that you were tied for sixty-fourth out of about two hundred people, but when sixty-fourth is last place, well … it might lose some of its luster. Most of the players are just taking up space and either don't care about the voting or wouldn't accept an offer on the bus due to work or school, anyway.
Overall, I rate their theory, preparation, and execution as a two out of ten. But, I thank them for the comedy and after the problems in the tournament (more on this in a future post) and the ridiculousness of the voting, I’m looking forward to a Tour Bus that seems destined to end up as a train wreck.
(By the way, I voted for the Williams with 130-something votes – he’s jaywizzle from GameFrog, and he’s LANDodger approved to be friendly and skilled.)
