The Airlock

THE BATTLE IN SEATTLE!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Fri, 10 May 2013 16:22:00 +0000

In just these past two weeks, we've had multiple groups of players from around the country fly out just to get some BattleTech and Red Planet pod time and share in The Airlock's unique evenings of food and fun! If you're
in the area and haven't come down yet, you're just plain missing out!

On Friday, Team Denver joined us for gaming and grilling that stretched into the wee hours of the night and even to the next morning! We want to give a huge shout out and thank you to our Denver, Colorado friends Pharaoh, Sumo, Anubis, Chinra, RedGrave, PlainsRider, Koreth and HarborBomber for traveling all the way here to hang out and play games with us.

Everyone who is anyone... On Saturday nights, The Airlock is definitely the place to be. At one point during the evening there were over 50 people of all ages playing in the pods, arcades, pinball and the consoles and classics in the War Room and hanging out around the big screen TVs and the BBQ area. Thanks to everyone that showed up!

One for the Ages: The main event on Saturday night was the Wacky Randoms Tournament that Team Denver had requested. This format has always been a fun and unpredictable contest that makes it fun for pilots of all skill levels. With some friendly online trash-talk going back and forth for months prior to Team Denver's arrival, it was all-hands on deck for this tourney. In addition to The Airlock regulars and Team Denver, it was great to see a bunch of new players join in on the event. With a whopping 32 participating players of experts, veterans and beginners, we ran two rounds, consisting of four matches each with the top scoring player in each match qualifying for the final. All mechs, maps and conditions were randomized for each match. To add a further element of wacky, each participant also received a chip that they could play before any match to re-randomize their mech or someone else's.

While the last qualifying round was being played, it was noticed that four Airlock regulars and three Denver pilots had qualified. The suggestion was put forward and quickly seconded that should a fourth Denver pilot qualify, the final match could be switched from an individual free-for-all to an epic team battle as a way to cap the friendly rivalry that had been brewing. The sole condition was for all the final match pilots to agree to the change. HarborBomber qualified to take the final spot and after a brief discussion, there was unanimous consent to proceed with the team battle. It would be one for the ages. The Airlock Home Team's Elite: Wyoh, NobCob, Justice and KwikPain vs. Team Denver's Top Guns: Sumo, Anubis, HarborBomber and Pharaoh. The format would still be random mechs, map and conditions and each pilot would receive an additional re-roll chip to play. As an added incentive to this battle, Zax offered up four prime steaks for grilling to the winning team.

Justice immediately randomed into his own custom Highlander and Pharaoh rolled a Fafnir Bane-3. Both are monster mechs capable of enormous damage amplified by the players piloting them. Chips were immediately played to re-roll them. With everyone else satisfied with the mix of moderate medium and heavy mechs that had been rolled, the remaining chips focused on Pharaoh's mech with Team Denver playing theirs to roll his up and Seattle to roll it down. It see-sawed before settling on a stock Deimos. KwikPain held the final unplayed chip and debated whether to re-roll HarborBomber's Atlas variant or Pharaoh's Deimos, before deciding on the Deimos. This was the critical gamble as Pharaoh ultimately ended up with a Fafnir Carrier, a large, slow mech with artillery strikes that vastly limited Pharaoh's damage output capacity.

With the faster overall speed, Team Airlock opted to cross the Ghost Highway map towards Team Denver's drop zone; a risky strategy as it allowed the potential for Team Denver to concentrate their forces and split up Team Airlock's. However, Team Airlock focused their fire, managing to hold a steady ~1k lead for most of the match. But in the final few minutes, that lead disappeared as Team Denver rallied to close the gap. Within a breath, the team scores would then flip position every couple of seconds. Accompanying every kill and death were shouts of elation and groans of anguish from the ~40 people of all ages surrounding the TVs watching the battle live.

With only the crowd's increasingly frantic reaction of the match to gauge each team's performance, the pilots could sense the closeness of the scores and the urgency to win in the clutch. Justice was getting lit up and sensing that one kill could make all the difference, pulled a full retreat. With the crowd roars reaching a climax, Team Denver could tell the difference was razor-thin as well and focused all of their attention on chasing Justice down. This allowed the rest of Team Seattle to get every last shot in on his pursuers to score those critical closing points.

When the dust settled, Team Airlock emerged from the pods victorious, winning by a slim margin of only 675 points. Bragging rights, perfectly grilled steak and corn-on-the-cob dinners in the temperate evening weather were theirs. Congratulations to both teams on a battle well-fought. A piece of it is immortalized in the video clip below, with 40 people watching the match, this video catches the final minute of the tournament (warning: some profanity in the crowd, but who can blame them?):

Afterwards, it was time for food and more friendly gaming action into the late late hours. A big thank you to HarborBomber, Zax, BlackMantis and JB for supplying most of the vittles to feed the hungry hordes and Grillmaster KwikPain for firing all the food to perfection and serving up the burgers, brats, sausages and hot dogs with all the fixin's.

We know everyone had a good time this weekend and we expect more great nights of gaming and grilling. We look forward to seeing all of you and your friends again soon!

Field Trippin'! Team Airlock is going on a field trip to watch the Mariners take on the Minnesota Twins on Sunday, July 28th. A bus has been arranged to drive our group to and from Safeco Field. For ticket and transportation it will be $35/person. The game starts at 1:10 PM, so if you're riding with the group, please show up at The Airlock before noon. After the game, we'll return to The Airlock where there will be more gaming and grilling. This will be a great day for everyone to go hang out in a different setting. Bring your friends and family! For more details and to buy tickets, contact The Airlock or ask EDGEKOOLZ or uglyman the next time you stop by.

Tournament Raffles and Prizes! Speaking of the Great American Pastime, The Airlock is set to give away Mariners home game tickets as prizes for our upcoming friendly tournaments! You receive an entry into a raffle just for participating! The first ticket prizes will be given out after the tournament on Saturday, May 25th for the vs. NY Yankees game scheduled for Sunday, June 9th @ 1:10PM. Subsequent tournaments and prize information will be posted as they are determined.

Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show: June 7-9 at the Tacoma Convention Center. Over 350 pinball and arcades on display and set to free play! It's an exciting time as arcades are making a comeback! A number of Airlock regulars are going, so let us know if you're interested so we can arrange carpools and meet-ups.

Game Highlight of the Week: The original two player Mario Bros. is now online! Play cooperatively or competitively in this 1983 classic that features Mario and Luigi before they became Super! This machine still needs some work, that will be coming soon, but MDK fixed the monitor, so now the game is playable, thanks to him for the help!

Have Sun, Will Grill.

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Thu, 02 May 2013 17:25:00 +0000

Thanks to everyone who showed up this past weekend to make it another great few days full of Martian Football, food and fun. Congratulations are in order to our winning Red Planet tournament team consisting of Gurn, Jibbler and our California friends Deadeye and Thunderbear!

With the sun finally shining, we were able to bust out the grill and set fire to some meat and veggies and we will be doing so again this weekend as Team Denver will be up on Friday and Saturday. They’ve been talking a lot of smack about us online, so we need our best BattleTech players to show up to defend the honor of the Airlock!

We will likely bring out the BBQ in the evenings, so bring grub to share and we’ll have another fun weekend of gaming and grilling!

Game highlights this week: NBA Maximum Hangtime is fully operational. This machine is in fantastic condition and the game plays great! It can accommodate four players simultaneously and it saves your stats! Maybe you’ve won the Super Bowl at NFL Blitz, but do you have enough game to master the Jam?

Also, classic Asteroids is now online in the War Room. Can you prove your ship-shooter skills or will you concede defeat to this simple vector game from 1979?

Good times just got better!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:49:00 +0000

The Airlock has been busy these past weeks as word about our expansion continues to spread! We've been patching and painting the walls, adding sound dampening and putting up more gaming decor and ambient lighting to improve the experience! We appreciate all the people coming out to get their game on and we thank all of you for your continued support. We have an active schedule of events and several out-of-town friends visiting over the coming weeks and we invite everyone to come check out our most recent improvements and additions!

MORE, MORE, MORE: We're pleased to announce that we have yet EVEN MORE GAMES! Yes, that's right, this week, the Airlock has added even more toys to the collection. More arcades are now ready for play in the main hall with more coming online over the coming weeks! Also check out Classics Alley in the War Room featuring stand-up and cocktail table arcades like Mario Bros, Donkey Kong and Mr Do's Castle! We've also added more Xbox 360 titles and brought in Mad Catz arcade fighting joysticks for Fight Night!

INJUSTICE RELEASE TOURNAMENT: Next Wednesday, April 17 there will be an Xbox 360 tournament for the soon-to-be-released Injustice: Gods Among Us fighting game! Grand prize is a retail copy of this brand new game! Due to limited space, you must pre-register for the tournament. Click here for tournament details and registration.

LEAGUE PLAY: We are starting up a new BattleTech Duelists league and are having a tournament on Saturday, April 20 to start the rankings. Rules and format are still being worked out, but we encourage players of all skill-levels to try out. More details will be posted as they are determined, but feel free to sign-up and inquire at the front desk during your next visit.

RED PLANET REVENGE: On April 26, our friends Deadeye and Thunderbear will be visiting from California for another super gaming weekend! We will be playing mostly Red Planet during their visit including a Martian Football tournament on Saturday, the 27th. We are again offering a special Airlock pass for this event: $80 gets you tournament entry and unlimited play from Thursday through Sunday! This is your chance to claim a spot on the Mars tournament board!

DENVER CHALLENGE: It's all about BattleTech the following weekend! From May 3-4, we will be visited by our friends from Denver, CO. Craig "Pharaoh" Evans and Ronal "HarborBomber" Taniwaki got beat by our best the last time they visited back at the Airlock so they are bringing some friends this time to fight their battles for them. Looking like a HUGE crew from Denver this time, don't miss this weekend! They love our wacky game modes and have requested a Randoms Tournament on Saturday, so we have to represent and continue to show them how and why we win at the Airlock.

BBQ SEASON: With the longer days and calmer weather, we're getting ready to bust out the grill again! Stay tuned to our site and social media for announcements as we schedule potlucks and informal Game 'n Grill events!

SMASH THE SOTO!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 01:04:00 +0000

Don't forget, this Saturday is the Soto Birthday Beatdown! We will be harassing and smashing Soto all-night and this is always a big event! Feeling down and need a win? Come and challenge Soto to the recently added Super Street Fighter IV in the War Room! Slap Soto silly with a SuperNova in the pods! Lap Soto in sheep mode on Manx TT in the arcade! It's all good-natured fun in honor of everyone's favorite target and we hope to see you all there.

Quarterly Passes: Winter quarter passes are about to expire and Spring quarter passes are now on sale! The nightly unlimited passes are always available, but these quarterly passes are great as they grants you unlimited pod and War Room gaming and $5 in arcade tokens every day the Airlock is open for three months! Want to become the king at BattleTech or Red Planet? Desperate to beat Rastan in just one credit or at all? Need to bone-up on your Halo or Tekken skills for the next tournament? There is no better deal! Contact pilotinfo@the-airlock.com for more details.

Airlock News and Upcoming Events

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:02:00 +0000

We appreciate everyone coming out to celebrate uglyman's birthday last Saturday. It was great to see a full house, with big crowds gaming in the pods, the War Room and the arcade all at once. We appreciate your support and invite you to keep returning as we take further steps to enhance the Airlock experience!

NEW THIS WEEK:

MORE GAMES!: The Airlock is now even MORE awesome as a half dozen more arcades and even a pinball machine have been added into the space on top of the active collection! In addition to that, the much-requested Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition has been added to the War Room Xbox 360 library!

MORE COLOR!: The decor is getting an update! Some of those old marred white walls have already been patched up and painted this week with some fresh colors. Ideas are being floated around about further enhancements to the look and feel including a possible "Wall of Members/Fame!"

UPCOMING TOURNEYS: This Saturday, March 9, the Airlock is hosting another Halo 4 tournament! The last Halo tournament was a great success and we are going to do it again! Once again, there are prizes on the line! Airlock swag and bragging rights could be yours! As with many of our tournaments, this is a friendly event. So it doesn't matter whether you're a seasoned FPS-veteran or a console noob, we welcome everyone to join and if you buy the all-night unlimited pass, you get FREE entry into the tournament so there's all the more reason to come and join in on the fun!

A WILD SOTO APPEARS: The date is almost upon us! On Saturday, March 16 is this year's run of Soto's Wacky Randoms! It's Soto's birthday and he hasn't been able to be around as often lately and his presence has been missed. We will run another light-hearted randoms tournament full of hilarious mismatched mech battles. This has been a huge event in the past, drawing a large crowd. Make sure to join us as we give our resident mascot his birthday beatdown. There may even be cake!

As many already know and everyday more people are discovering, The Airlock is not only a great spot for birthday parties and group events, but is also a great casual hangout. The original social gaming of the classic arcade hangout is alive and well here! In addition to the BattleTech/Red Planet pods, the console/FIOS TV War Room and the wide-variety of arcades and pinball, there's something for everyone to enjoy! Every evening we welcome both regulars and newcomers to join us for a night of no-pressure friendly gaming and hanging out. If you haven't been in for awhile, you are missing out!

NEW PRIVATE EVENT OPTIONS:

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 21:24:00 +0000

In addition to the new coin-op arcade section, the Airlock is pleased to announce new options for those looking to be able to serve alcohol at their private events. A permit is required and there is a new pricing structure for these options. Contact pilotinfo@the-airlock.com for more information.

ARCADE EXPANSION

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 22:12:00 +0000

The Airlock is now better than ever! In addition to the BattleTech/Red Planet pods and the Xbox 360 War Room, the gaming options have been expanded to include over a dozen new stand-up arcade machines! With a mix of action, fighting, sports and racing games, there is something for everyone. Take a trip with us to yesteryear and challenge your friends to post the best scores on these classic games. We will begin showcasing media of the expansion and notices about upcoming challenges with the new games, so come down and check it out!

Schedule changes for this week!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 18:18:00 +0000

Hi everybody,
Many of you spent some time here over the holidays, thank you for the support, it was a lot of fun! For those who didn't make it here I hope you had some fun wherever you were and I hope we see you here again soon!

I have been working hard on some things behind the scenes and I will hopefully have more to talk about late next week, but in the meantime I need to get the word out about some schedule issues for this week.

Tonight: (Thursday) I would like to remind you that we have RedPlanet on Thurdays again, so BattleTech people should steer clear of this night. We had cancelled RP night for a while due to lack of interest, but I have had quite a few people asking me to bring it back. We would LOVE to have some new players for this and would be very happy to teach anybody who is interested. It is a difficult game to learn but the best way is to show up for one of these nights and get tons of missions in on the flat rate pass. We will walk you through the config process and help you find some routes on any course you are interested in.

Saturday: This is a very important schedule change I need to get out there. This week only, we will be opening a little bit late on Saturday. We will be opening around 7pm for a 7:30pm BattleTech tournament and then we will continue the night as usual. I have a memorial service to go to and I want to give myself a little extra time to get back here in case of snow.

Please keep The Airlock in mind for all of your private events, we book a lot of kids birthday parties this time of year, and the best time slots go quickly, so get those bookings in early!

I hope we see you all in the pods again soon! I will have some fun things to share with you all over the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

--ugh

HOLIDAY HALO 4 TOURNAMENT

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 20:03:00 +0000

The end-of-year Halo 4 tournament is this Saturday, December 22 @7pm! The tourney will be in free-for-all format, featuring multiple qualifier rounds of varying game types (Oddball, King of the Hill, Slayer, etc.) and a final round for the top players. The top three Spartans at the end of the final round will each win a Halo 4 swag bag full of goodies generously provided by 343 Industries! Also, every tournament participant will receive redeemable Halo 4 codes as well as an entry into the raffle for the sealed copy of Halo 4 signed by the 343i team! The entry fee for the tournament is only $10 or $5 with the purchase of any unlimited play pass.

Holiday season parties: Still looking for a venue for a birthday, morale event or end-of-year party? Holiday season parties are booking now so call or email to reserve your time!

Quarterly passes: Winter quarter play passes are now on sale! This super deal entitles you to 3-months of unlimited open play BattleTech, Red Planet and War Room gaming action whenever the Airlock is open! These passes are offered in limited quantities so lock in your purchase now! See the pricingsheet for details.

Happy Holidays!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 18:34:00 +0000

HOLIDAY HAPPENINGS @ THE AIRLOCK

Seasons greetings from The Airlock! Help us have a good holiday season and ring in a happy new year by spreading the word and most importantly bringing your friends down and playing some games with us! We need and appreciate your continued support!

Holiday Halo 4 Tourney: Time to lock and load! Halo aficionados and FPS gamers must join us for this one! In the next couple of weeks, The Airlock will host an end-of-year Halo 4 tournament sponsored by Halo 4 developer 343 Industries! Numerous prizes from the Halo swag bag are up for the best Spartans out there with the grand prize being a sealed copy of Halo 4 signed by the 343i team! Format, fees and the schedule will be announced soon!

Schedule switch: Over the course of the next week or two, (as soon as the private event schedule allows), fighting game night will be moving to Tuesdays, and Red Planet night will be returning to Thursdays to accommodate players of the respective games. There will still be general open play for anything on those nights, but if you love fighting games and Red Planet, these nights are focused on your games so show up and support them!

Quarterly passes: Autumn quarter play passes expire this week but winter quarter passes are now on sale! This super deal entitles you to 3-months of unlimited open play BattleTech, Red Planet and War Room gaming action whenever the Airlock is open! These passes are offered in limited quantities so lock in your purchase now! See the pricing sheet for details.

MARS OPPORTUNITY WEEK CONCLUSION!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 18:06:00 +0000

Mars Opportunity week has concluded and it was a blast! We want to thank our out-of-town friends for making the trip up and gaming with us, the generosity of our supporters for supplying all of the prizes, Roadkill for running the tournaments and all of the participants who came out and shared in the fun!

Friday night's BT tourney was a standard 4-round free-for-all with a final where players could choose any standard mech with a different mech each round and no repeats. Fourteen competitors duked it out for a spot in the final worth double tournament points. Chinook led the way into the finals followed by KwikPain and EDGEKOOLZ. Having saved the use of the Kodiak, KwikPain dominated the final round on the Tribe Incursion map with BlackMantis and Pickwick taking second and third place. Chinook was thoroughly suppressed in his Annihilator and took fifth and EDGEKOOLZ fell to last. When the points were tallied, KwikPain won the tournament, receiving a prize pin and a spot on the world board, with Chinook and BlackMantis placing second and third.

Saturday night's Red Planetfest was one for the ages! With prizes and bragging rights on the line, sixteen players teamed up in pairs for some serious tandem Martian football action. And even though everybody had not played Red Planet in awhile, everyone brought their A-game. Every runner held first place in a race at some point and the crushers and blockers were all over it with very close scores in most of the rounds.

The competition was fierce leading to a pair of teams tying for first place and two for second place with close ties for third and fourth place going into the final matchup! An impressive display of skill by all! With round scores breaking the ties, the number one team was Dalkin and Berseker who then got to choose the teams amongst the runners-up for the final best of 3 rounds, 4 vs.4 super football match. They elected to team up with the other pair tied for first, Zax and Raid, defaulting the second team to Deadeye, Thunderbear, KwikPain and BlackMantis. The finals were held on Brewer's Bane with Zax and Deadeye running. Zax's team managed to outscore Deadeye and took the first round 54170 to 38133. For the second round, a switch was made as Zax took a Bug and on the other team, KwikPain and BlackMantis switched roles, having KwikPain be the blocker while Mantis crushed. The switches proved worthwhile for team 2 as they turned it round, winning 54010-30504. For the final round, no further changes to VTVs or roles were requested, but Zax mixed up his running tactics by reversing course to throw the other team off balance. This did not pan out well and team 2 went on to win by a greater score of 63125-28317, securing themselves Airlock prize pins, spots on the Mars board and qualification into the bonus round!

The bonus round was a standard death race on Paingods with every man for himself. Though the score fluctuated a bit, Deadeye was dead-on and went on to take first place, narrowly beating BlackMantis, followed by KwikPain and Thunderbear. As the winner, Deadeye was first to claim an item from the pool of donated prizes and selected the FASA jacket. BlackMantis opted to take the Red Planet sew-on patch, KwikPain took the Red Planet pin and Thunderbear received a Red Planet cap.

Sunday was filled with BBQ and more Red Planet! Even though it was pouring rain outside, KwikPain was manning the grill and putting up cheeseburgers and hot dogs and everyone loaded up on some good eats in between rounds of Martian Football and NFL action on the TVs. It was a great way to wrap-up the weekend!

MARS OPPORTUNITY WEEK!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 17:25:00 +0000

It is Mars Opportunity Week at The Airlock. Extended hours, special deals and events all this week! The Airlock is playing host to some out-of-town pod gamers and invites everyone to come down and show these guys how we do it here! The special guests that will be arriving for this weekend's festivities are: Mike "Thunderbear" Castro, Dan "Deadeye" Hornung, Chris "Taurus" Hollis, Michael "Berserker" Lattanzi Jr. and Mike "Coolhand" Skierski console gaming with us over Xbox Live in the War Room! And of course, our Special Events Coordinator Glenn "Roadkill" Elliott will be running the tournaments and keeping score. This week will be full of crazy good gaming fun into the wee hours and we will cap it off with good eats during our Sunday potluck and we encourage everyone to join us!

NEW IN THE WAR ROOM: Halo 4 is running on all the Xboxes and it is a smash hit! We have already had a full room of players and had as many as 14-players battling it out at once! Bring your friends out for some teamplay and friendly competition!

FEATURED DEAL: Save big and play all you want this week with the Mars Opportunity Week Super Pass! Unlimited play in both the pods and the War Room from Thursday through Sunday and entry into all of this week's tournaments for only $80 + tax!

Wednesday is Neophyte Night: Are you new to BattleTech or the games in the War Room? Or are you just looking to improve your score? This night will still feature casual open play but experts will be available to teach you the basics and anything you want to know to take your game to the next level! Only $25 for an unlimited pass in both the pods and the War Room.

Thursday is Mars Curiosity Night: Fighting games and more in the War Room! $15 for unlimited play in the War Room and one pod mission or $25 for all-night play in both rooms. Free Red Planet lessons with paid early entry for the Saturday tournament! If you've never tried Red Planet racing in the pods this is the perfect night to check it out!

Friday is BattleTech Tournament Night: The tournament starts at 7 PM, so come early to ensure a spot in the tourney! The format will be announced shortly but will likely be something beginner-friendly to accommodate all skill levels. $25 for unlimited play in both rooms or $10 for just the tournament ($5 for those on a nightly/monthly/quarterly pass).

Saturday is Martian Football Tournament Night: The tournament starts at 7 PM, so come early to ensure a spot in the tourney and to get matched up! This Red Planet tournament will start with two-player tandems for several rounds. The top four teams will then be paired together for a four vs. four super match and the winning team will be awarded Airlock prize pins! Also, the winning players will face-off in a special death race for the grand prize! Former Virtual World Entertainment employee Vic "Dr. Cuervo" Bonilla has generously donated his FASA employee jacket to be awarded to the winner of that final race. $20 for just the tournament or $10 if you're on any type of pass. The regular $25 pass for both rooms is also available for open play in both rooms outside of the tournament.

Sunday is Airlock Potluck Day: Bring food to share for this fall social! The Airlock will be open from noon to 9 PM. We will break out the BBQ for grilling and there will be plenty of Sunday NFL action on the TVs, BattleTech and Red Planet in the pods and furious gaming in the War Room. Come for the food, stay for the fun! $25 for the unlimited pass, otherwise regular pricing.

We need your help!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 00:33:00 +0000

Hi Everybody,

I want to welcome all of our new friends that C89.5 helped us connect with! I hope to meet you all soon, and I know you are going to love The Airlock!

We have survived what historically is always the worst four weeks of the year for us, but not without some damage. We are dangerously cash poor right now. If we were to have a couple of bad weekends, or any kind of bad luck, there would be some severe consequences. We have survived this kind of situation before, thanks to the generosity of those who play here. In the past I had to rely on personal resources which I no longer have available. Unfortunately this time around it really is now or never!

All of that said, there is a lot of good stuff going on! We have the War Room now, with support for 16 players across 4 xbox360s and 4 51" plasma displays. We have some new party customers and some new players hanging around at night. Thanks to some spots on C89 last week even more people have found us that haven't been here yet. The number one thing you can do to help us right now is to just make some time to visit The Airlock! Just show up and play some games! We have canceled 4 out of the last 6 tournaments due to low turnout. We cannot afford another. Those who have been a part of our tournaments know that they are a lot of fun and we have one almost every weekend! We are going to start having Halo4 tournaments in the War Room too!

Referrals are also a big help! Find out who books your corporate events and ask for us! If you have a friend with kids age eight and up, please let them know about us too! We love to do parties for corporate events, birthdays, sports teams... any group can have fun here!

If you can't be here you can still help by doing all of your Amazon holiday shopping through the link below! It doesn't cost you anything, you get the same great prices and service you expect from Amazon but we get a little bit of credit for it! In the past we have literally used this money to keep the lights on, and we can use all the help we can get right now!

Thanks to all of you for reading, I hope I see you soon. Over the next few days we are going to be rolling out some very special event announcements like the first Halo4 tournament in the War Room, and a visit from some special friends flying in from around the country! Stay tuned!

--ugh

Gunslingers Tournament This Weekend!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 11:37:00 +0000

For immediate release:

The Airlock is hosting its biannual Gunslingers tournament! BattleTech fans will know this to be one of the year's premier BattleTech events as a new sheriff will be chosen in this single-elimination, no-return duel-tournament! This event is expected to draw a large crowd and all of the matches will be displayed live in the viewing area where spectators can sit on plush couches and view the play-by-play of each match to see who will ultimately be the last one standing.

Following the conclusion of the tournament, open play will resume. In addition to the common BattleTech modes such as Attrition and Capture the Flag, players will be introduced to the increasingly popular Airlock-exclusive modes that have been highlighted by both new and veteran players. Invented by The Airlock's veteran pilots, these custom variations have notable names such as “Halo, Terminator, Heavymetal Headache and Seattle Special” and they offer special focuses on skill-building and game exploration. Players are typically encouraged to suggest their own ideas for custom games during open play.

The Airlock's 4000 square foot facility also features a newly established video game console lounge complete with four 51” plasma TVs, plush couches and chairs, four Live-connected Xbox 360's with support for up to sixteen players and includes a growing library of popular sports, shooter and fighting games. This recent expansion also features increased amenities, including free Wi-Fi, an expanded rack of beverages, snacks and frozen foods and an adjustable space for extra seating, dining and other activities to accommodate large parties and corporate events.

In addition to special events and general open play, The Airlock schedule features frequent beginner-friendly tournaments, advanced play and themed events in both the pods and the console lounge. Also, while players are given brief tutorials on their first visit, occasional “bootcamps” are held for more in-depth instructional lessons covering more of the pod controls and game functions for both BattleTech and Red Planet. The Airlock's website maintains a public calendar with details of each day's events.

About the Company:

Established in Kirkland, WA in 2009, The Airlock is home to eight Tesla II BattleTech Cockpit Simulator pods running BattleTech Firestorm and Red Planet. It is the Pacific Northwest's sole BattleTech pod site and is a premier gaming destination for pod and console gameplay. The company has strong ties to the local software and digital entertainment communities and receives gaming visitors from around the world. Located a short distance from Microsoft, Nintendo and several game development studios, The Airlock is a choice destination for team-building and corporate outings. For more information on the company and upcoming events, please visit The-Airlock.com and follow on Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter @TheAirlock.

This week at The Airlock!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 19:53:00 +0000

Hello Pilots,

I wanted to share a bunch of news with you today!

T-Shirts:

First of all, the "I saved the Airlock" T-shirts have finally arrived. I want to thank everybody for being so patient with these. I learned a lot from this process. It might be easy to get a few t-shirts printed, but to set up a vendor to supply them, for the foreseeable future, on reasonable payment terms... that turned out to be more of a magic trick. I am sorry but the way my schedule is this week, it may be next week before I get a chance to ship the ones that are going out of town. The locals are welcome to pick their copy up anytime.

There was a bit of a mistake with these. I ordered 100% cotton, but the shirt shop sent 50/50 cotton poly. I have already talked to them about this and they admit their mistake and have offered me a few options to deal with it. After talking to some of the people that ordered them I see that some people like these better, some don't care, and a few might have a problem with it. I don't want to make those who don't care wait, so we are going to roll with it, but please let me know if you have an issue with these and we will do our best to work it out. I have done some research on the particular shirts that we got and was really surprised at the reviews I found. These are the top rated shirt in their price range. Really some amazingly positive reviews out there about the durability of these, and many companies outfitting their workers with these after seeing the quality of them. Despite their lightweight feel, people with experience with lots of different brands said that these last MUCH longer than other shirts. I have been wearing one that Wyoh bought for me, for about 18 hours now and it is very comfortable.

I have ordered a large order of the new "The Airlock" shirt and have been told they will be delivered at the end of the first week of October. I have also ordered some nice embroidered flex fit hats. I will start taking presale orders of these new items later this week for anybody who wants to reserve one in their size, and we intend to try to keep them in stock from now on, whenever possible.

RedPlanet:

I am going to share some sad news now... I am cancelling RedPlanet night until further notice. I love that game and I know many of you out there do too. Over the summer RedPlanet night was often busier than any of the BattleTech nights. We had a really good thing going. But I have lost money on every RedPlanet night for the last 2 months now. As much as I would like to just wait for things to come around again, I simply cannot afford to. The business is in a really dangerous financial position and I have to cut something out of the schedule that has been consistently losing money. People are off doing other things, or have something going on in their life that is keeping them away. Most of it is temporary I think, at least for those I have been in contact with. I hope we will find a solution for this soon. I have been sitting in an empty room most of Thursday night lately. A couple of times nobody showed up, and a couple of times it was only Green Knight. We haven't had more than three people for that night in 2 months unless my notes are wrong.

I had hoped that Sunday would get things going again with a Martian Football night. I appreciate those who showed up, but the truth is we lost money there too. We will try one again in the near future, but it is going to be very hard to schedule another one if we don't get some support from it. If anybody has any ideas for this let me know. The best thing would be if some RedPlanet fans out there would organize themselves and schedule something with me where we know we will have enough players to make it great.

I have considered the possibility of running a series of RP events or maybe making it seasonal somehow. Perhaps if we don't have demand for 52 RP nights a year, maybe we could have 20 really good ones... I think we will let the dust settle a little while and then revisit this with some fresh ideas.

War Room:

For those who missed the announcement the front room is now the War Room. We have four 51" plasma displays and 4 xbox 360s. We have 16 wireless controllers and comfortable seating so we can handle 16 players simultaneously!

The war room has been great, we are having a lot of fun with the new gear out there. Thursday will be fighting game night until further notice. So if you purchase a $25 pass you can play in the war room all night and we are collecting fighting games to play (you are welcome to bring your own discs too!). I am going to do my best to land at least one copy of DOA5 by then. I am really looking forward to the.... fighting...in that game. Our library of games for the War Room is growing quickly and I will post details about that one of these days.

Friday will continue to be open play in both rooms until further notice. The War Room is also available for your private event! If you have a group that wants exclusive use of the war room the cost is $50 for up to 16 players if it is during my normal business hours. Schedule 5 hours on a night we are open in the war room and you can have the whole night from 5pm to midnight! We will run the pods for anybody else who is here during that time. If you want a completely private event with your group and nobody else here at all, you can choose the war room *or* the pod bay for our regular outside-of-hours private events price, or take both rooms for $35 more!

New Pricing:

The new pricing is working out great, pick a night and play the whole time we are open for just $25! Some nights the War Room is included, and talk to us if you are interested in monthly or quarterly passes! Tournament fees aren't included in the passes but are half price for anybody who is on a pass.

Campaigns, leagues, etc:

Chinook is working on some fun campaign ideas for small stories that can be played out in a few missions in the pods. I am constantly approached by people who want me to organize something more long term, like a board game night or a campaign thing or a league for one of the games. The truth is that I do not have time to do a good job at any of these things. If you want to run board game here talk to me. If you have friends who want to do a madden league in the War Room or a night for a particular fighting game... we can probably work these things out. The best way to communicate with me is by email on stuff like this. just send it to pilotinfo@the-airlock.com I can't promise we can get it done, but I would be happy to look at your idea and see if it can fit in the schedule somewhere, and see if we can make it fit business wise.

Rent Week:

We have had a mostly disastrous month. September has always been pretty bad for us, but this year PAX weekend went very badly for us financially. We had a lot of fun, but there were a few deals that didn't go our way. This followed by the usual PAX hangover week would have been bad enough.... We would have been in trouble at that point, but now borderlands 2 has taken a big chunk out of another week. I hope you can all find some time to play at The Airlock this week. I hate to write articles that sound like a pledge drive, but the truth is if we don't have a couple of busy weeks it will be very hard to get things back on track. I also appreciate those out there who are booking events right now. If you want to have an amazing private party here just contact me and we will get you set up!

Tournaments:
This weekend we have a beginner friendly BattleTech tournament on Saturday at 7pm. I hope to see you all for this one, and I hope you will bring some friends along too! Then it will be time for Grand Melee and Gunslingers, details of which will be published ASAP (hopefully tonight if my phone quits ringing for a minute).

We will also be looking to run some War Room tournaments, let us know if you have any requests for this. It is a high priority for me to get this going but I really don't know where to start. Look for more news about this soon!

Tonight:
I missed all the NFL action this week, so to make up for it, I am going to be hanging out from 5pm to 10pm playing some madden in the War Room. Come by and join in! Nothing serious, and just $10 for a pass (no pods).

Thanks for reading, I hope to see you all soon!

--ugh

New Simpler Pricing! Nightly, monthly and quarterly passes available for all!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:19:00 +0000

Hello again Pilots,
I wanted to draw attention to the fact that our prices are changing again. I realize I have bounced them around a little bit lately. Sorry if I have caused some confusion, but I needed to test out some different ideas before I could confidently move forward with this.

I have spent a lot of time lately thinking about the way we do business, and how different it is than when we started. When we brought the pods back to the Northwest in 2009 there had not been pods available to the public in Seattle for almost 9 years. This left us with a strange problem because we had some very experienced, though admittedly rusty, players in Seattle, and a whole new generation of players who had never played before.

We looked at what the site in Denver was doing at the time, and based some of our ideas on that. They had a very different situation, being located in a large family fun center. These ideas slowly evolved into a complicated set of membership policies, which we designed to provide discounts to attract players of similar ability levels, on particular nights. These policies served us well, creating over 2 years of fun member's nights, most of which saw some very advanced play.

We have now expanded The Airlock from 1600 square feet to 4000 square feet, We have installed equipment for a console gaming competition room, we have fought to overcome financial difficulties caused by complicated circumstances at our old location, and we have even unpacked most of the boxes from our emergency move in January! Obviously things are different now, but the biggest change of all is in the player base in this area! We have so many excellent players now! Many of them are better teachers than I am, and with their help we are able to handle more new players at a time.

Recently we have lost some members to everything from cross country moves, to seasonal changes in work schedules. We wish them well, and hope they will keep The Airlock in mind, and visit us when they get the chance. We will continue to try to find new people and invite them to give The Airlock a try.

I have been frustrated for a while trying to maintain the old pricing system, even in its simpler, most recent form. After thinking long and hard about this I have realized that we are just sticking to old ways of thinking and trying to make old policies fit with what is, three years later, a very different business. Until further notice the prices will be as follows for ALL players:

Individual missions: $4.00 plus tax, per mission, per pilot
Unlimited* pass for one night: $25
Unlimited* pass for one calendar month: $125
Unlimited* Pass for three calendar months: $300 (LIMITED QUANTITY AVAILABLE )
*note: pod availability is limited, we will take turns and share the toys, but you will get a lot of games on these passes if you stay the whole night! Unlimited passes do not include entry fees for special events such as tournaments and boot camps.

There will be some War Room time available to people who buy these passes on certain nights. I would like to get some sleep before I start to work on that schedule, but I will continue this project over the next couple of days.

Thank you all for your support!

--ugh

VERY Limited quantity of fall passes now available!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Over the Summer we sold a few season passes which were good for unlimited play for 3 months for $300 + tax. Those expire on the 15th of September. We sold 6 of them, as a very limited offer to make sure that it didn't upset the balance of pod availability. This depends so much on who buys them because different people show up on different nights. In hindsight we would have been okay selling a couple more because they sold primarily to RedPlanet players.

This was such a success that I have decided to do it again. There was a great side effect of this sale because the players that purchased the passes were all great guys that are a lot of fun to play with! They have helped a lot because they have been hanging around so much, it has greatly reduced the number of dead nights. Having a few people around makes it more fun for new players.

So I am excited to announce another season pass sale. This is still in very limited quantity. I am only going to sell 5 of them, and then we will evaluate the impact on pod availability, based on who buys them.

The price will be $330 + tax if paying by credit card or $300 + tax if paying cash. I normally don't split prices on payment methods, but most people payed with cards last time around and it generates a significant amount of fees, especially on a string of big purchases like that. We are cutting things so close right now, as we put the finishing touches on the War Room. I want to make sure we are covered for the transaction fees next month in particular, and I am really pricing this as low as I possibly can. We also are in the usual race for the end of the month bills, and the holiday weekend delays all transfers for next week, so cash can be put to work 5 days sooner in this case.

As a special thanks to anyone who is buying their second season pass, If you are currently on a Summer pass that hasn't expired yet, your Fall pass purchase will be $50 cheaper!

What is included?
Unlimited play in the pods during business hours, excluding special events such as tournaments, boot camps, or private event closures (rare).

War Room play during War Room members night, which is currently Friday

War Room play during any special night when it is included with a nightly pass purchase

Pass players will be in the rotation with everybody, you are not more entitled to a pod than somebody who paid that night. We haven't had any problems with this yet. I have been very happy with the way this has been.

What is NOT included?
Special event entry fees, such as tournament entry fees, (ok to play before and after the tournament, assuming there are seats available)

War Room Play when it is NOT included with the nightly passes

I will sell these to the first 5 people to EITHER email me at pilotinfo@the-airlock.com and let me know they want one, OR show up with, or call in a payment. I am offering the email option because I will be unavailable by phone most of the afternoon today. Leave me your contact info and I will call you after I open the shop for the night.

Thank you all for your support!

--ugh

PAX WEEK NEWS!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 22:06:00 +0000

Hi Everybody, Wanted to share a few bits of news. Lots of projects are coming together right now and these are the ones we can talk about:

PAX WEEKEND SCHEDULE: This year's PAX weekend schedule is starting to fall into place! I always take some flak for not posting this sooner, but it is just the nature of one of the craziest weekends of the year. We have many groups that get in touch with us and we juggle private events and extra hours open to the public to try too find a balance where hopefully everybody gets to play. We will be open Friday for normal hours and Saturday for normal hours. Both days we will offer a special $30 pass for unlimited pod play to non-members who would like to play all night. Members can get their usual $25 deal which includes the War Room on Friday night for any time it is available.. The War Room is available to rent for just $50 per hour for your group of up to 16 players, which can be a great way to duck our prime busy hours in the pod bay. We have lots of availability left for this week and weekend, so drop me a line if your group wants some time in there. Sunday we will be closed this year for a private event. The event we have booked is from 6pm to 11pm so we would be very happy to book any groups that would like to play before or after that. It will be our regular low rates for either room or add $35 per hour for both rooms! We need to know as soon as possible if you are trying to book, the availability will drop as the week goes on! Monday plans are below!

Monday Afternoon BBQ! Wrap up your PAX weekend with an afternoon BBQ at The Airlock. We will be open from noon to 10pm on Monday for anybody who would like to spend Labor Day with us! Just $25 for unlimited play in both rooms and feel free to bring food to grill/eat/share! We will fire up the grill around 2pm. These events are a lot more laid back than our normal stuff. I hope you can all stop by and play some games!

RENT WEEK! As I mentioned in my previous post we have had a little bit of down time this month installing the War Room and we really need your support this week to get the bills paid as we finish out the month! Please stop by and play some games this week! Thank you all for your continued support! With the new equipment and many new things on the drawing board we hope to take this place to the next level over the next few months. We can only do it with the help of the pilots, so please continue to spread the word, and let us know if you have any groups who might want to book either room!

T-Shirt Update: Very very sorry about the delays on this, some of the delay is just my fault for being too distracted with the War Room Project that needed to happen on a very tight timeline for various reasons. The other reason that this has taken so long is some bad communication on the part of one of the vendors I was trying to get these from. It is sorted now and I should have proofs in the next few days. If they are approved by me I am told they will be delivered in two weeks. Thank you all for your patience on this, but the extra time has let me set up what should be a long term agreement with a supplier, that can get us a lot of good quality merchandise on terms I can work with. I intend to have shirts and hats in stock in addition to the pre-ordered ones from this Summer.

Madden NFL 2013 is HERE. I am going to pick up 4 copies of the new madden tonight! I am hoping to throw together a night to play it this week. Stay tuned for details to be announced soon, but I need to flip through the menus and see what our options are first. With the addition of this game our library is now four copies each of Madden, Halo Reach and Halo Anniversary. This library will continue to grow as people support this project!

War Room Couches are here! We now have comfortable seating for all 16 players. Please be gentle on this furniture, it is not commercial grade stuff, but will be very comfortable seating while we get things rolling in our new console game competition room.

FROZEN FOOD is here! Thanks to a generous donation of a nice freezer we now have some frozen food options. I haven't sorted out a good source of ice cream products yet but we have a limited supply for now. Current menu includes: Red Baron pizzas, French Bread Pizzas, Hot Pockets, Jimmy Dean Breakfast Sausage Croissants, Frozen Burritos and popsicles. York, Reeses and Crunch Ice Cream Bars are also available! Hopefully this makes people more comfortable during their late night gaming, or anytime they need a snack!

Prize Pins! Many of you know about the prize pins that Virtual World used to provide, but unfortunately there is not a sustainable source of those currently. Chinook has been hard at work on a set of local prize pins that you will be able to win for various competitions at The Airlock. They are not meant to replace the old tradition, but merely something fun to collect and show off your accomplishments here locally. We are very excited about this project and we will be posting some information Chinook has put together later this week!

New Lighting! If you haven't seen the place since the lighting upgrade we hope you will stop by and take a look. It has eliminated much of the glare we were seeing in the pods and makes the place look much more like it should. We will continue to work on this and the other cosmetic projects we have going as the next few weeks continue.

NEW PEOPLE! We have had quite a few new people around lately. Of course we have had slow nights occasionally, but we have had some huge nights of all new players, and some of them are hanging around as regulars now. Welcome to all of you! We are glad you found us!

New Boot Camps! We have had some issues filling boot camps at the new location. After talking to the customers a little bit we have listened to the feedback and developed a new way to do boot camps. I will be posting in the next day or two to explain the new Boot Camp, which will take the place of the old beginners boot camp. It will basically be just the first few lessons so that it isn't as much of a time commitment, and then people can practice those basic skills before they dive into the rest of the material at an intermediate boot camp event. The benefit to the new boot camp is it will be taught on a more individual basis with a teacher working directly with your group, and it will be available basically any time we are open to the public (except during tournaments and other special events).

Thank you all for your patience and support during this busy mess of projects we have been working through. Thanks to Chinook for all of his help, and thanks to all the regulars who have been hanging around trying to take some of the load too. I think it is about to pay off with a really fun fall season here. I hope you will all be around to play with us!

--ugh

Welcome to the War Room!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 13:06:00 +0000

I am proud to announce some of the biggest news we have seen in a long time! It hasn't exactly been a secret what we have been working on, but not everybody has seen it yet. The Airlock is now even better with the addition of the War Room! The front room is no longer empty! We now have four 51 inch Samsung plasma screens and 4 Xbox 360s! Complete with 16 wireless controllers, the War Room is ready for 16 simultaneous players to battle it out on their favorite Xbox 360 titles!

Join us tonight as we continue to break in the new equipment! Tonight, anybody can get the members deal! Just $25 for an unlimited pass tonight for pods and War Room play!

Currently there are four very comfortable chairs in the room, and there is another order of furniture on the way, which will add four matching couches in the next few days! Each of our four Xbox 360s are connected to our 35 megabit fiber optic internet connection for the lowest lag gaming possible! Equipped with an Xbox Live Gold account for each console there is no need to be limited to system link games, and there is no need to be limited to the people in the room either!

Xbox Live users reading this are welcome to send friend requests to the following gamer tags: AirlockPod10, AirlockPod11, AirlockPod12 and AirlockPod13. Join us from all over the world, and find out why it is so much fun to play with the kind of people that hang out at The Airlock!

A lot of people have asked why we should try to provide console gaming that people can play at home. Well many people have console gaming at home, that is true, but not many have the space and equipment to put 16 players together at the same time across four brand new matching screens! Even more fun is that you need only walk through a doorway to be in the Pod Bay with 8 very rare Tesla II cockpit simulators! This goes a long way to allowing us to entertain larger private events, and allows us to reach out to a broad variety of players that want a venue for their console gaming events.

To start we have 4 copies of Halo Reach and 4 copies of Halo Anniversary Edition. If you have Xbox 360 discs you would like to donate it is appreciated! We will be trying to get our hands on 4 copies of the new Madden as soon as we can.

Until further notice Friday nights are going to be War Room nights! Any member on the members pass will be welcome to play in the pods AND play in the War Room! We will also be having some special events that will be open to the public. The rest of the time the room is available for rent to your group, and we are going to start it out at a very temporary, very low rate of $50 per hour if it is during our normal business hours! That means if you bring a group of 16 and rent the room on a normal week night it will cost just $3.13 per person, per hour, plus tax! The War Room calendar is completely empty at this point, so drop us an email if you would like to schedule something! If you have any ideas, suggestions, booking questions, just drop me an email at: pilotinfo@the-airlock.com

There will be an extra good deal for any group that wants to book some sort of recurring event as we attempt to fill up a big empty calendar, that means anybody who wants weekly, biweekly, or monthly events should contact us quickly and grab a piece of the schedule!

Until we see how people use the room it is very difficult to price events outside of business hours, so to start, the pricing will be as follows: The current outside of hours events pricing will allow you to pick either pods or War Room for your group. If you want both at the same time it will be a flat fee of $35 more per hour, plus tax. If you want to book some hours of one and some hours of the other that is also welcome.

We really need help from all of you! Please get creative and round up some friends and book this room! The Airlock has battled for financial security for two and a half years now, we still have none. I constantly hesitate to post about it because it seems to always sound like a PBS pledge drive around here. We sincerely hope that if we can book up this new room it will get us away from the danger line a little bit, but I need to be honest right now and admit that things are very very scary today. We have taken on a lot more risk to bring some new features, and we do so without any money in the bank to pay the rent in a few days. We need to have the busiest couple of weeks we have ever had. Please help us do that so we can all enjoy the new toys!

We need your help now more than ever! Join us tonight for multiplayer Halo like you have probably never experienced before! I have lots more to share, and lots more projects we are unrolling right now. I will also explain the T-Shirt delays in the coming days. I expect to have proofs back on the T-Shirt printing by midweek next week. I am sorry for the wait, and the poor communication. All will be set right ASAP! I will get more info posted as soon as possible!

Now it is time for me to get a couple of hours of sleep!
See you all tonight!

--ugh

The Amazon link

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 16:00:00 +0000

Last winter when the situation here was extremely bad, we were getting ready to move and had nowhere to move to. We had no money and not a whole lot of hope for the future. Well we still don't have much money, and there are still some things about the situation here that are a huge concern, but there is DEFINITELY hope for the future.

There is a ton of potential to our new location, and the new crowd of customers we have met this year. I have watched you all in awe, as you jump on board with all the ways that I suggest that you could help us keep this all going. One of those things is the Amazon affiliate link.

I realize this is sort of a hack move on my part, but this is something that costs you nothing and really makes a huge difference here. Some people did their holiday shopping through our Amazon link and it amounted to hundreds of dollars that paid some bills here.

If you are going to shop Amazon please click the link first, which now conveniently lives to the right of this article and on every page of the website in our sidebar. Please continue to do this and know that you are helping out in a BIG way.

Thank you as always for your time and support!

See you in the pods!
--ugh

Help us fight facebook's latest money grab!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 17:30:00 +0000

Facebook has really been causing trouble for small business lately with their feed prioritization/censorship algorithms. If you don't know, facebook is controlling what shows up for you so small businesses you follow, like the airlock have to purchase advertising in order to let followers see the posts.

This kind of thing has gone on for a long time but it has become much more blatant lately. They started by showing the "reach" of each post in the administration interface of the business pages (the page I see when I want to post to my business page). This would show you how many people were actually seeing your post. There is no transparency at all to their methods of measurement, and it would be in their best interest to report low.... hmmm... don't even get me started... the upshot is that it now costs me approximately $5 PER POST to let people who like our facebook page know about an upcoming event, or any other kind of announcement I need to make. The reasons why are obvious, and my opinions of this probably are too... let me just propose solutions:

You can do a LOT to help. Like it or not (no pun intended), facebook is STILL the best source of new customers and is the way that many people expect The Airlock to communicate with them. You can all save The Airlock a ton of money on advertising by liking and sharing posts from The Airlock! When you like a post it increases the chances other people will see it. Sharing it guarantees that at least SOME of your own friends will see it.

One of the most helpful things is when people go to The Airlock facebook page and click the share button. They have hidden the share button in the new timeline view, but you can just click on the snowflake looking icon next to the message and like buttons and choose share from the popup menu. Every time somebody does this there is a very good chance that we will pick up some new customers and we don't have to spend precious dollars on "promoting" a post. We need that money to pay the rent and handle other expenses, not to increase our rank in facebook's system! Click share and include a note about our Birthday Parties, Moral events, tournaments and other fun stuff we offer. You may very well make a huge difference by doing this!

It is helpful if you follow us via different methods such as using an RSS reader to follow this blog, or you can follow us on Twitter and/or Google+. Both of those networks allow us to communicate more freely with you without spending extra money.

The other way is to sign up for our new email list! We are working to create a system to summarize all the blog posts and event announcements in email to make sure you don't miss anything important, and we will also be occasionally sending out specials you can redeem if you are receiving our emails! If you would like to signup just GO HERE.

Thank you all for the help, this is just another small obstacle to overcome. I am confident we can work around this!

--ugh

Martian Football Sunday! Beginners Welcome!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 20:30:00 +0000

Sunday we will be open for a special event! Everybody is welcome to join us for Martian Football! For a special price of just $20 you can play from 2pm until 10pm! If you have never played before we will teach you! Martian Football is a very challenging, and advanced team mode in RedPlanet. This is not a tournament or serious competition of any kind, we will do out best to teach anybody who is interested.

I have done a very poor job of scheduling martian football nights since the move. We should be paying more attention to this amazing game and making sure that the fans of this game get to play it more often. That said we need to fill the pods to really make this game interesting and RedPlanet nights have been a little light lately (as have the other weeknights). If we get a lot of support for this we can do it more often, but we need to bring new players into Martian Football to make that happen.

If you have any interest at all in trying something new, please don't be shy. You should by all means expect this to be challenging, but be aware that we will be very happy if we see some new faces on Mars this weekend!

Round up your friends and bring them! This is a great deal for lots of pod time and hopefully a new experience for some new friends!

--ugh

Last day for T-Shirt Orders!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:30:00 +0000

If you want to order the "I Saved The Airlock" T-shirt you need to head over to the online store because today looks like it will be the last day to buy one! We need to get our order in to the print shop right away to take advantage of a sale they are running this month.

International orders: Very sorry we were not able to handle your orders online this time but we would be very happy to take your order... just drop us an email at pilotinfo@the-airlock.com and include your phone number, time zone, and a good time to call, as well as how many shirts you would like of each size. We will get back to you to handle the details!

Thanks very much for your support! We should have some exciting new products for the online store very soon!

--ugh

New Email list! Sign up and SAVE!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 21:30:00 +0000

We have a new email list you can sign up for. We intend to send some sort of periodic summary of the announcements and blog posts and other information. We will also be sending out some special deals to the list! People who are signed up will be able to save some money on parties and missions by redeeming these specials at The Airlock.

Thanks to Mojo for setting this up. You can head over to THIS SIGN UP PAGE to get on the list!

You can also use an RSS reader to follow these articles, let us know if you need help with that, the subscribe link at the top of the news section is all you need to make sure your reader grabs all of these articles!

Thanks everybody, sorry to be posting so often lately but we have significantly changed the way we do business here, so I want to make sure that I communicate these changes as clearly as possible. I still have a lot more work to do on the website, but hopefully the new simpler pricing will become more clear as I get time to refine those pages.

Thank you for your time. I see the web stats that show just how much people actually do read this stuff, and I am blown away that people care that much. It is good motivation to keep doing what I do!

Have a great day!
--ugh

Beginner Friendly Tournament Saturday! (and all Summer???)

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Harnden) — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 19:30:00 +0000

Attention Pilots!

There will be a beginner friendly BattleTech tournament on Saturday! Bring your friends! These tournaments are fun even if you have never played in the pods before! What started as one of our SEC's little experiments has turned into one of our most requested events. We did one of these not too long ago that tied the record for most pilots entering a tournament at The Airlock.

After talking with our SEC, (Roadkill) about some problems I have been having with events we have decided that we are going to run mostly beginner friendly events for the Summer. We have so many new players around here that we want to make sure that we accommodate the pilots that might not have fun with some of the more advanced stuff.

If you are one of the many pilots that enjoys the more serious competition, please know that we will be doing our best to keep that stuff going too, but we think it would be better to run those a little less often to make sure that they are well attended, while hopefully bringing a whole new generation up to the level where they will feel comfortable with those events. There is just a lot more demand for simple fun accessible events right now, than the really serious stuff.

For now we just want to focus on a Summer of fun, friendship, and killing Soto in the pods.

Please help us keep the lights on! Round up everybody you know and bring them to this tournament!

See you all Saturday!

--ugh