1000-Player FPS Event Pits Press Against Gaming Industry

The creator of Counter-Strike, the creator of ShadowGun and many more notable people will be participating in the 1000-player FPS Guinness event taking place this Sunday.

MuchDifferent reports that over 10,000 people have expressed their interest in playing Man vs. Machine this weekend. As previously reported, this will be a one-time event where 1,000 players will battle together on a single map in an attempt to set a world record. The war will begin on Sunday at 16:00 CET / 10:00 EST.

As the game's name indicates, players will be divided up into two teams. In this case, MuchDifferent has decided to place members of the (evil) game industry on Team Machine and members of the press and other outfits on Team Man. Both teams will also consist of those who purchased a ticket via the Engineers Without Borders - Stockholm organization’s website (all earnings go straight to the organization).

Included on Team Man will be Gaz Deaves, Gaming Editor of Guinness World Records, Mike Brown from Wired Magazine, and Alex Iosup, an assistant professor at the Delft University of Technology. On Team Machine will be the creator of Counter-Strike Minh Le, the creator of ShadowGun Marek Rabas and Reakktor Media CEO Cyrus Preuss.

Man vs. Machine is an FPS based on the Unity engine that can support up to 1000 simultaneous players on a single map. The purpose of this game is to demo the capabilities of the PikkoServer load balancing product. By using the software, game developers can supposedly build any kind of high-player density MMO game that can handle up to 1000 players on one specific map across eight cell servers. It also supports eleven actions per second (10 movements plus 1 fire), a total bandwidth downstream per player of 420 kbit/s and more.

Those who want to participate during Sunday's event can purchase a "ticket" by making a 200 sek (about 23 Euro, $30 USD) donation. Once the funds are received, the Engineers Without Borders organization will send a link to the actual game forty minutes prior to the event. Donations must be made before 15:45 CET / 9:45 EST. For more information, head here.