RB + Video Games + UFC

It probably doesn't come as a surprise to anyone, but many of us here at RustyBrick enjoy video games. Well, that may be an understatement. There are a few of us that REALLY enjoy video games, myself included. We also happen to be very competitive. So when you put all these things together a lot can happen. Inter-office trash talking, video game Fridays, co-operative teams, and competitive events.

When I joined RustyBrick in February of 2007, I quickly brought video game Fridays with me. It was a tradition that I had started at the company I used to work at in Maryland (we also had lots of IT BBQs, I need to get that tradition transferred as well...) and once I found some interest in video games here I tried to get things going. While we never really reached the level of video game Fridays that I had in Maryland (we would consistently stay and play from 4pm to midnight or later...) the video games expanded out of the office to Xbox Live, and has been much more intense.

We started out playing a lot of first person shooter type games, like Call of Duty 2 etc, and fighting games like Fight Night Round 3. I was dominant in both of these games at the beginning, but that changed quickly as a certain co worker of mine put in a few hundred online matches in Fight Night and quickly turned the tables... but I digress. As things got more and more competitive we found ourselves playing more co-operative games, such as NHL 09, where we all compete on the same team.

A few of my fellow co-workers and I also share a pretty large interest in the UFC so when THQ came out with the first next generation UFC game, UFC 2009 Undisputed we dove in head first and begin beating each other silly. Our competitive natures took over, and since we of course wanted bragging rights, and we are programmers after all, we decided to write an Event generator and Stat Tracking System.

Our first obstacle to overcome was the fact that was only 3 of us that were going to be playing this game at the level that we knew it would take to be competitive, and it is fairly hard to have traditional tournaments (bracket style etc...) with only 3 people. So we had to come up with a new system. Let me briefly explain the system with a few screen shots and you can see how much we enjoy video games :)

So instead of a tournament system we decided to set up a system that lets each user control fighters, randomly selected. When your fighter wins, he moves closer to a title shot, if they lose; you lose the fighter and get a randomly selected replacement. The system works really well and is a lot of fun, here is a look at the tracking system:

(Click on any image for a larger view)

1. Drawing Fighters. All the fighters in the game are randomly shuffled around, the user order is shuffled, and fighters are given out where there are any holes, 2 fighters per weight class.

2. Here is the roster screen. You can see who controls each fighter, and who is currently holding the belt in each weight class. You will also notice the event names on the side, named in true UFC fashion.

3. Here is the ranking screen. You can see what fighter is holding each belt and who the number 1 contender is. If there was another event scheduled you would see everyone's upcoming fights as well.

4. Here is a shot of the results page. You can see who was fighting, who won, and how they won. There is also a predictions link that uses the fighters stats in the game to guess which fighter will win and how.

5. Lastly, the screen that is the source of most of the bragging rights, the user vs. user report. Here you can see your record vs. another user, break downs of all the weight classes and fighters, and how often you beat your opponent via KO or submission.

So as you can see we may take things a little over the top here at RustyBrick, but wouldn't you want that kind of dedication going into your website ;)

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