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Dallas - July 31 to Aug. 3, gamers and publishers descended on Dallas for the thirteenth QuakeCon, one of the most successful gaming conventions in the country.

Originally an outgrowth of an IRC chat, QuakeCon started in 1996 as a collection of Quake enthusiasts who wanted to get together for a big LAN party and was known as a bring-your-own-computer (BYOC) event.

Now, QuakeCon has over seven thousand attendees and even though the BYOC and tournament is a much smaller part relative to the whole show, it still wouldn’t even fit in the original hotel (a Best Western in Garland, Texas) where QuakeCon started.

This year we traveled to the Hilton Anatole, this time in the city of Dallas proper, to see what one of the most successful community-managed gaming conventions had to offer.

QuakeCon has sunk its teeth into the gaming community in general and even the industry itself, a number of developers and vendors were also in attendance, showing off their new software, giving away swag and generally trying to impress the attendees and anyone who’s a gamer knows that gamers can be both easily excitable and insultingly apathetic.

There was also a raffle for a Corvette with entry registration. Scroll down for the exciting results of the raffle.

Id Software obvious had a large presence, showing off Quake Live, a browser based, more accessible version of the classic franchise, John Carmack and Todd Hollenshead said the aim was to “deliver the exitement and energy of first-person multiplayer action to a broad audience.”

To us, it sounds like they’re heading in a similar direction to a certain well-known hardware company who seems to have the wider audience thing sort of covered.

Browser based is what intrigues us as the requirements would naturally be relatively hefty for a network or really light on the graphics, either way we can see this being sort of a pain for office managers worldwide.

The as-yet untitled next DOOM game was also featured, but if there was anything more than a brief mention and a poster, we missed it, but know that it exists.

MainGear PC was showing off its custom-build gaming rigs’ graphical and processing prowess by having eight monitors splitting the information from a flight simulator game. The right six displayed first person, while the other two showed more information and an alternate view.

It’s impressive but why wouldn’t you just buy a large, high-end flatscreen that would surely be cheaper? Clearly some people think’s neat enough to try out, although it was unclear if it was just a proof-of-concept or actually for sale, the booth staffer was too swamped showing people what’s where to answer any questions specifically.

Activision was pimping Guitar Hero: Aerosmith as well as a new gameplay video for the next Wolfenstein game, which, whilst pretty, didn’t get our hearts pumping as much as we’d like. One of the Activision staffers mentioned that they’re fully aware nostalgia itself won’t sell a game, so for they’re sake, we hope there’s a lot more surprises in store for the final release of the game.

Also at the Activision booth was TipperQueen, AKA Kelly Law-Yone, who was there representing Charisma+2, a gamer modeling group. Law-Yone also blogs for Dell and is a member of Team Pandemic.

In between emasculating challengers we managed to have her to answer a few questions:

“Honestly, this is the first time I’ve been to QuakeCon,” she said, “it’s fun competing against other people, if they dare to challenge Wedge [from PMS Clan] or me.”

From what we could see, there was no shortage of comers and people walked away just as quickly, dejected and shown up.

“I really liked how they didn’t just give away swag like some of the other shows I’ve been to,” Law-Yone said, “They did really weird things like hopping on one leg or instead of simon says, it was Alienware says. That was pretty neat.”

There was also a charity poker tournament, something involving live music and LAN gaming called “Quake Jam” and even a pajama party. We did not attend the pajama party.

One of the more interesting side-exhibits was the movie ‘Frag,’ a documentary about the professional gaming and the supposedly corrupt underbelly of money, partying, drugs, and apparently death.

‘Frag’ premiered at the AFI Dallas International Film Festival earlier this year. Check it out if you can find it.

QuakeCon was an enjoyable experience, it’s certainly different than those conventions and shows put on by the industry, despite its sponsors list, QuakeCon is staffed by volunteer gamers. The servers did hiccup pretty badly at one point, causing groans and whines from the BYOC crowd but otherwise went off very well.

We look forward to next year.