Following Barcelona World Race 10-11 made easy
Catalans know how to do it! The media coverage of the Barcelona World Race 10-11 looks amazing. The non-stop live broadcast features pre-start inverviews, commentary, footage from the docks following yachts to slip lines and head out to the start line, footage from helicopters, twitter feed explaining what’s happening prior to start etc. The only inconvenience for non-Spanish speakers is that the live TV commentary is in Spanish only, however the twitter feed is in English. For Spanish speakers the commentary is very informative and interesting (ranging from medical information to boat construction), so now it’s good time to brush up some language skills.
The armchair ocean racers can play BWR game, which has been specially developed for the race by Universidad de Pompeu Fabra. The game looks great, however non-Spanish speaking players have to proceed with the strategy of trial and error figuring out how it works, as currently the game instructions are in Spanish only. The gamer community has already given critique on the limited range of colours that are available for boat customisation, and surely enough, all colours are depressingly dark and the range of them is plain ugly. There is no way one can build a dashing yacht in the game, but these are the crinkles that hopefully will be ironed out for the future releases of the game. The vast number of female players might also want to see a female sailor in the 3D view instead of the generic short-haired guy sitting in the cockpit.
<update Sat 1 January 2011>
Teething problems have been a prevailing issue with the BWR game during the first day of the regatta. Many players have been locked out unable to enter their game account and therefore they cannot change sails, or worse, running to ground. I suspect that this newly developed game may not have gone through a thorough testing with thousands of players before, and therefore these problems crop up when 14 000 players try to participate simultaneously. Hopefully the developers will fix quickly these bugs, as the gamer community already shows signs of impatience, especially the non-Spanish speaking population which does not seem to have equal opportunity in the game due to language restrictions. Understandably for game admins it is quite a handful to sort these problems out, and quite possibly they have been caught by surprise with the volume of support requests. The forthcoming days will be critical for the success of the game, so good luck and godspeed.
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The race website is comprehensive and features also a section for youth.
I’ve always loved Barcelona, it’s without doubt my favourite city in Europe and a strong hometown candidate, should I stay in Europe. Everything about these race preparations and available information just enforces my opinion how good Catalans are with digital media and communications. Really good job, BWR media team! Hopefully the standard of the media will remain equally high for the rest of the race.
Good luck to all competing teams.
