QuakeCon 2008 officially ramps up this Thursday in Dallas, Texas. Shacknews will be representin' at the big show, with Nick and Steve checking out such titles as id Software's Rage, the browser-based shooter Quake Live, Raven Software's Wolfenstein and others.

In addition to the usual round-up of playable games, the exhibition will also host tournaments for Quake Live and both the PC and Xbox 360 versions of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Among the prizes are entries into a drawing for a 2008 Chevrolet Corvette Coupe, valued at approximately $55,000.

Attendees should also check out the Shacknews-sponsored IDGA Quakecon charity poker tournament, benefiting Penny Arcade's Child's Play Charity. Buy in is $30, and prizes include a choice between a Dell laptop and a Texas Instruments TV, an entry into the aforementioned Corvette drawing and more. Hurry over to the sign-up page, get registered and bring a smile to a child or two.

We hope to see you there as we play new games, rub elbows with developers and lose money in the name of charity.

Beloved developer id Software has announced that its annual celebration of debauchery and first-person shooting known as QuakeCon will take place at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas from July 31 to August 3.

Registration for the free event's Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) area opens at 9PM ET on Wednesday, April 30 over at the QuakeCon site.

Those interested in obtaining centrally located hotel rooms can now register at the Hilton Anatole's custom QuakeCon reservation page, which offers the lower-than-normal rate of $137 a day.

While id has yet to detail any of its QuakeCon festivities, last year's event was a veritable explosion of news, including the revelation of Rage, the appearance of numerous id titles on Steam, confirmation of Quake 3 on Xbox Live Arcade, the first details of the Wolfenstein movie, and more.

Shacknews went to QuakeCon! And now, with the auditory experience of what some have called Chris Faylor has called the QuakeCast, you can feel like you went there too!

Chris Remo, Chris Faylor, and Shack owner Steve Gibson chat about id's Rage, the Wolfenstein movie, Quake Arena on PC and Mac (and probably Nintendo DS!), Counter-Strike's popularity, id Tech 5, id games on Steam, Wolfenstein 3D (it is better than Commander Keen), and Left 4 Dead.

Play now, download the episode, check it out via iTunes, RSS, or Digg, or check out the full episode breakdown. ... Read more

Update 2: It's started! Click here for up-to-the-minute coverage!

Update: Things appear to be running a little behind schedule.

Original Story: With the Shack staff covering QuakeCon in Dallas (not to mention BlizzCon in Anaheim), we'll be doing live updates of the id Software press conference and keynote address later tonight.

Set to kick off at 6pm CDT (4pm PDT), id Software is expected to show off its advanced id Tech 5 engine, with a high likelihood of the company revealing Raven Software's new Wolfenstein game as well as its own new internal project.

In a recent interview with Shacknews, id's Kevin Cloud and Steve Nix briefly commented on the studio's new game, which will not be part of any of its established universes such as Doom or Quake. "You shouldn't expect an RTS or a fighting game or something. People are going to like what they see, but it's not going to be shocking," said Nix. Cloud was slightly more specific, adding, "We're still going to be first-person shooters and in-your-face immersive action."

Check out all news from QuakeCon.

The Shack is attending id Software's QuakeCon in Dallas, Texas, bringing you coverage of the announcements being made and the games being shown. Check out our QuakeCon coverage page for Left 4 Dead HD gameplay footage, live announcement updates, screenshots, impressions, and more.

Today's delicious roundup of news bytes includes Left 4 Dead at QuakeCon, an update for City of Heroes, new DLC on the Xbox Live Marketplace, games at Comic-Con, word on the Oddworld Stranger's Wrath (Xbox) soundtrack, and a status update for Factor 5's Lair (PS3).

On the subject of Comic-Con, our own Chris Remo will be moderating a panel about episodic gaming with Penny Arcade, Telltale Games, and Hothead Games. Titled "Episodic Games and Comics--Made for Each Other," it begins Thursday at 11:30 AM in room 1AB and lasts for an hour. Telltale will be announcing new details on the recently announced Sam & Max Season Two (PC), so if you happen to be at the event, this might be worthy of your time. ... Read more

QuakeCon registration will be opening up at 9pm EST tonight at the QuakeCon website. You can create your account there now early if you want to get a bit of a jump.

This year's QuakeCon took forever to be finalized, and took place only a few weeks after being announced. Not looking to make the same mistake, the QuakeCon organization has just announced the 2007 event, and it will take place August 2-5, 2007 at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, TX. You can already reserve a room at the hotel, registration for the BYOC area will happen next March.

This year's BYOC Area will consume the entire Trinity Hall 1, with over 70,000 square feet of floor space and 2,700 player spots - over 1,000 more seats than 2006. We’ve also increased the exhibit area 5X to 25,000 square feet, enough to accommodate up to 50 exhibitors demonstrating their latest games and computer hardware. Of course, it wouldn’t be QuakeCon without our high-stakes pro gaming tournaments; and attendees can also look forward to the return and expansion of our enormously popular and one-of-a-kind "Quick Draw" tournaments, which pit randomly selected attendees against each other in high-pressure battles for serious cash. And in keeping with QuakeCon tradition, every day will be packed full of contests, conferences, announcements, and entertainment.

myQuakeCon.com is up, featuring video interviews with tournament participants and QuakeCon volunteers. The site will soon have footage showing sponsor booths, tournaments and various case mods.

Next Generation spoke with id Software's Marty Stratton during last week's QuakeCon about the future of the event. Though this event's attendance was not at the level it has reached in recent years, largely due to a fairly last minute official announcement of dates, Stratton believes that QuakeCon fills a unique niche among game industry events and is well poised to expand and take on new roles as E3 becomes a smaller affair. Though id and the event organizers have clear ideas about the proper attitudes and ideals the show represents, it seems that competing developers such as Valve or Ritual may even be able to have a presence at future QuakeCons. "We want people who support the ideals of the event, who want to support the event monetarily," said Stratton. "I think it makes sense for us, as we move forward, to have at least the mindset of being more inclusive."

“We usually get the same walk-in attendance as [Bring Your Own Computer participants],” continues Stratton. “I’d like to see us have five, six times the attendance as relative to BYOC. So if we have a 3000 person BYOC, I’d like to see us have an event with nine or twelve-thousand people come in, look at the exhibits, watch the tournaments. There’s enough going on at the event that you can come and spend two days, three days…”

Following difficulties in securing a suitable location for this year's event, Stratton stated that next year's timing and accomodations are already being considered.

The official QuakeCon website has been updated with tournament results. Techfear takes a look at the event's exhibitors and sponsors. Gamernode has a best-of video. And lastly PlanetQuake4.net has videos from John Carmack's keynote speech, id Software's Q&A session and Splash Damage's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars tools session.

The official QuakeCon website has been updated with an overview of this year's tournaments. There will be a $35,000 Quake 4 1v1 tournament, a $25,000 Quake 4 2v2 tournament, a $30,000 Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory 5v5 tournament and a vague $10,000 tournament "celebrating QUAKE's 10th birthday with a QUAKE 4 event created for the fans", with more details on that later this week.

Following months of no information regarding this year's QuakeCon event, the QuakeCon website has been updated with the 2006 official announcement. It will take place August 3-6 at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas.

With about 1,800 BYOC spots, QuakeCon 2006 will be a bit more exclusive than it has been the last couple of years, but we hope people will enjoy the more personal touch this year. QuakeCon 2006 will of course include all the great activities that it's known for, including high-stakes tournaments, workshops, exhibitors, the BYOC Area, parties, and the public's first chance to play Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

First-come, first-served online registration for the BYOC area will kick off at 9 p.m. EST on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006, at www.quakecon.org.

(Some) Shackers will be in attendance.

Telefragged busts out with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Quake 4 previews. GDHardware has a QuakeCon roundup by Redwood. PC Perspective also has summary coverage.

At QuakeCon I spent some time with Serious Sam 2, and I enjoyed it. You shoot some guys, some stuff blows up. You know, lots of guns, that sort of thing.

In the past few years, we've seen several high-profile shooters which unquestionably evoke the FPS design philosophies of old. Certainly we've had ambitiously modern and progressive titles such as Half-Life 2 and a rather tiresome glut of World War II epics, but there have also been more stripped-down titles such as Painkiller and Serious Sam. Those games tend to be the more directly-marketable type; rather than bullet points such as "Unprecedented expression and realism!" and "Confront the true horror of war!" they tend towards sentiments such as "OH MAN THERE ARE LIKE A BILLION GUYS ON THE SCREEN!!!!" and "HOLY SHIT THINGS EXPLODE!!!!"

Game Informer has an interview with Todd Hollenshead, asking the id Software CEO about the QuakeCon event, the DOOM movie, the success of DOOM 3, console development and working on a new intellectual property.

I spent some time with Wideload's zombie action game, Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse, and I enjoyed it much more than I did at GDC (which was essentially the same build later shown at E3). There were some framerate issues, but it was definitely fun.

If Wideload smooths out these odd kinks and ensures that the fairly specific gameplay doesn't get stale, they'll have a winner on their hands. In a sea of endless sequels and genre rehashes, it's always nice to see a studio bring something that's original both in content and gameplay.

So check it out.

It was already known QuakeCon attendees got to play Quake 4 multiplayer this week, and 2K Games let us know that people can also play Serious Sam 2 at the NVidia booth. You can try the singleplayer and the co-op multiplayer. If you're attending PDXLAN you can also find Serious Sam 2 playable there.

There's an article format interview with id Software's Marty Stratton, as he talks about QuakeCon 2005 which takes place in Texas next week. In related news, the complete schedule for the event is now available. Attendees can look forward to a John Carmack keynote speech, a DOOM movie panel, the usual HardOCP hardware workshop and much more.

So QuakeCon is just around the corner and that means so is the 10yr Shack anniversary party! The tour bus is already filled up for the field trip to check out the mile long JSF plant (That plane the US uses in Battlefield 2) but we've still got room for the party itself! The Shackmeet party details page has been updated with who has made it on the bus. Please shackmsg sHugamom your details for security clearance!

As many of you know, we did manage to get a bigger shackbus and therefore John rounded up more escorts for the Lockheed tour. So, as it now stands ... there will be around 50 of us on the tour and here's who you are. Again, if you're listed and still want to be on the Shacktour ... send your real name info to sHugamom. If your plans have changed and you need to cancel ... let her know that too. There are other shackers who will fill in ... but Lockheed needs this list (with your real names) from us as soon as possible.