Hi everyone! I have some news from the good folks at AADL.
We have at this moment 79 registered “Districts” (i.e. libraries) – 59 in North America, 9 in Europe, and 11 in Australia. Just the USA participation alone is more than twice the number in last year’s Super Smash Bros. tournament! Mostly public libraries, and mostly in smaller towns, but a few University libraries.
(I’m also thrilled to see Australia so well represented – per capita, we’re doing even better than the USA! Not that it’s a contest… but if it were we would totally be winning 😛 And it’s great to see so many of the European libraries getting on board as well. I hope you can use this as a springboard to get your local library associations on board too!)
Over the next week, each District will hold whatever qualifying events they choose to select the two players to represent their library, and the 2 selected Tributes from each of these libraries all over the world will be pitted against each other inside Minecraft arenas! Then, the International Minecraft Hunger Games regional semifinals, begin Saturday afternoon, November 15th.
Victors will advance to Regional Finals, and each regional Victor will then face off in an International Final Match!
Just pause for a second and appreciate what an achievement that is for libraries – because of what an opportunity that is for our communities. Most competitive computer gaming on this sort of scale is highly commercialised – and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it does heavily limit the opportunities for people to participate.
But here we have an international – no, intercontinental – eSports contest whose only barriers to entry are, just as they are for libraries generally, interest and motivation. AADL deserves a great deal of thanks and credit for making that possible, but the libraries who have taken up the opportunity should pride themselves on doing so.
I look forward to reporting the outcome of this fabulous event!