Australian Gamer Feature :: eGames and Entertainment

BECAUSE GAMESPOT ISN’T AUSTRALIAN

eGames and Entertainment

eGames is the first decent sized gaming convention held in Melbourne since the now defunct Australian Game Developers Conference. This event, however, is very much targeted at consumers.

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Video Game expos are a strange thing. They feature a weird blend of cool and interesting with the nerdy and lame. It never ceases to amaze me how such a diverse group of people get together and manage to get excited about the same stuff. Of course there are the extremes: there are the booth babes that always feature at such events who are clearly disinterested in gaming and even less interested in the computer nerds clambering to get a photo with them. Often they are visibly uncomfortable standing in heels for 12 hours and are close to turning blue as a result of wearing next to nothing in a large cold shed (unless they are advertising a specific game in which case they may actually be painted blue).

At the opposite end of the scale there are the serious geeks for whom a gaming expo is one of only two times a year they can be found outside of their bedroom, the other being the midnight launch of their preferred gaming console. These guys always have long hair, because to have a haircut would require social contact with a hairdresser. They have facial hair because shaving would require spending money on expensive razors, and hell they’ve got no one to impress anyway. They almost always have glasses and poor eyesight from years spent in a dark room with their face against a monitor. The only person they know by name is the guy that delivers the pizza, and then only if he has a name badge, otherwise he would be known just as “the guy that delivers the pizza”. Then there is the lack of personal hygiene...

Of course not all of us gamers are that bad, at least not all the time.

eGames is the first decent sized gaming convention held in Melbourne since the now defunct Australian Game Developers Conference. This event, however, is very much targeted at consumers. Whilst there was a supposed “media” day on the first afternoon, the event is almost entirely targeting the average computer nerd. I would imagine that as the event gains more exposure in the coming years that it will bring more media and hence more from the publishers/developers. What we had was a pretty good start though.

For those of you who attended, you may have been fortunate enough to see Yug and Matt up on stage doing their bit in between Nintendo demos and Crazy Purple Security Wizard Guy. I didn’t get much of a look fortunately, as I was at the booth most of the day. I heard they were really crap though… but that’s just a rumour. As well as many hours of incessant ramblings, they also got a chance to do the podcast live on stage. For the few people that remained at closing time, it was a good laugh. I should really apologise for the heckling… but I won’t. Frankly they deserved it for leaving me to man the booth all that time. Speaking of which, big thanks go out to Flying Fridge and Sniper Extreme for their assistance in manning the booth and for keeping the freaks out. It certainly made my life easier when I needed to go off to eat or piss.

As well as plenty of games to play, crap to buy and girls to look at, throughout the weekend the main stage featured everything from presentations by Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft all the way through to PC Case modding competitions, gaming panels and the Crazy Purple Security Wizard Guy. Amusingly the main presentation stage didn’t end up featuring a presentation by Intel even though they were a major sponsor of the event. They had scheduled a presentation on the new Core 2 Duo chip, but got bumped by Crazy Purple Security Wizard Guy who had complained that he presented to 150 empty seats the day before. Never mind that the presentations BEFORE and AFTER his managed to fill the seats and all of the available standing room... the guy didn’t seem to understand that gamers aren’t interested in holistic approaches to guarding your PC from nasty woodland spirits. But hey...we got a laugh, and that’s the main thing.

Probably the most disappointing presentation was the much anticipated presentation of the PS3 from Sony. When I say “presentation”, I mean in the corporate sense, not in the fun gaming sense. Whilst we were expecting them to show off some live game play, or perhaps demoing the new controller, or even maybe just some random PS3 hype. Mr. Sony Australia gave a very bland talk on the Cell processor and how L33T it is. It sucked. Worse than that, they actually were running the presentation USING the damned PS3. They had a game console which are so low in availability that they deem us Aussies not worthy of getting hold of one until next march, and yet they had theirs sitting there operating as a glorified Overhead Projector playing low-res video and dodgy slideshows… and badly at that! It was almost like that from their point of view we weren’t even worth showing. “Hey guys, we have this PS3 here, but as none of you will ever be able to get near one much less afford one, we’re not going to bother showing you. We’re just going to piss you off by only running a slideshow on it”. I mean, for crying out loud, how hard is it to slip in a disc of Riiiiidge Racer to at least give us something to oooh and aaaah about. Seriously Sony, you must’ve felt like a tool after the Wii presentation! Yeah I saw you lurking over there near your little PSP caravan.

Of course the real reason why the presentation was so lame is because Sony are busy flogging the PSP dead horse and didn’t want to detract attention from their Segway girls. They realise that there is no point in even marketing the PS3 in Australia this year, as the battle is all but lost to Nintendo and MS for the Christmas dollar. Sony will have to wait till next year.

Fortunately not all the presentations were a complete waste of my time, both Nintendo and Microsoft had great presentations that actually detailed some of their upcoming titles and features for their consoles. Nintendo gave us live demos, told us about all the upcoming channels for the Wii, told us about the fact that they actually do take the Australian market seriously. Even Microsoft with their now mature 360 console, still had plenty to talk about. From the upcoming HD-DVD and online Move marketplace to showing off the awesome Gears of War trailer. These guys came to wow us, and for the most part they did a pretty good job. Oh, and of course there was the free stuff as well.

Which reminds me...

At the end of the Nintendo presentation there was the typical “chucking of stuff randomly to the crowd”. These included Wii lanyards, Wii tees and Wii belts. Seriously, all the people that got in there and screamed like 12 year old girls at a Robbie Williams concert (or like Yug at a Robbie Williams concert), you need to have a long hard look at yourselves. In particular, I would like to single out the complete and utter [removed] that attacked two Swinburne students over a t-shirt and in the process knocked over several bystanders… including my fiancée! To help you visualise the lead up to this; a t-shirt was thrown to the crowd and was caught by a guy and a girl from Swingamers. In between the two was a middle aged balding man with beady eyes wearing one of those “I’m a software engineer” blue shirts. He probably had a pocket protector… you know, that kind of guy. Anyway, he managed to wrap his arm around the middle of the shirt and then proceeded to pull at the shirt with all his puny programmer might. Not only did he drag the Swinnie pair with him, but he managed to push several other people over and became generally abusive to the pair. When I suggested politely that he give it up, he began hurling abuse at me. Being the ever courageous journalist that I am, I attempted to get a photo of the scrap for inclusion in this report. At this point, the angry eunuch programmer set upon me and my camera. In doing so he lost hold of the t-shirt, realised that I was about to take his head off his shoulders, let go of my camera and then ran like a slightly feminine Mr. Bean to the exit. I attempted to pursue him to get a photo of the tosser, but failed to catch as he ran out the door. So, if you’re reading this, I hope you [removed due to excessive profanity] and your [removed due to more naughty words!!] eternally in hell whilst your [removed.. and how is that even possible??] with an Xbox... and I mean the original big black ribbed [potty mouth!!] not the nice smooth white one.

The highlight of the show without doubt was the sheer number of Xbox 360 consoles available to play and the 8 playable Wii consoles. Not only were there a lot of consoles, there were quite a few upcoming releases to get your hands on. Dead Or Alive X2, Viva Piñata, Rainbow Six Vegas and the biggie; Gears of War. It was great to see Xbox out in force and not just with a collection of 12 month old games (although they featured heavily). You could pull up a seat and try your hand at one of about 20 consoles in the Xbox stand. Viva Piñata wasn’t really at its best in this environment, but for those that have since bought the game, you would agree it is certainly worth a look. The game was kind of tucked in amongst all the other titles, and unless you’re looking for it you would most likely miss it. The game does take a while to work out what you’re supposed to be doing, but if you give it some time you’ll see it is actually quite a deep experience. The biggest showing of course was in the big Xbox bubble. Now, I’m not one to get overly hyped about a game, but GoW looks awesome and is a heap of fun to play. It is impossible to overstate how good this game looks. Even though hands on time was limited to about 2 minutes each, it gave you a good chance to see what the game has to offer. The camera angles and movement, the excellent use of environments for cover, and just the intensity of battle against big freaking alien dudes is amazing.

Of course the other major highlight was Nintendo’s showing of the Wii. Although the console was available at Game1, the experience at eGames was bigger and better with more games available to play. Even though the console was to be available in shops within a matter of weeks, it was a great way to get hyped about the console and experience some of the titles that won’t be available at launch (Excite Truck, Sonic, Wario Smooth Moves etc). Of course, as is always the case, the whole area was jam packed with fans, especially as it was directly in front of the main entrance.

In addition to the big boys with their big toys, there were plenty of smaller mobs around hocking their wares. Quite a few Hardware retailers, software developers and peripheral manufactures made an appearance. So whilst a lot of the expo was based around console gaming, there was definitely a big PC showing. The highlight of PC gaming was definitely the competitive gaming arena which featured Pro Counter Strike players sticking it to all comers. If you think you’re good at CS, think again... these guys were seriously awesome to watch. For your own slice of competitive gaming, there was plenty of hands-on competition in the Head-to-head zone featuring “winner stays on” rules for Wii Tennis, Fight Night and a few other titles which produced long queues of gamers attempting to take the crown as the head-to-head champion.

Well that about wraps up eGames. Unfortunately, I didn’t get as detailed look of the event as I would’ve liked as I was busy talking to a heap of you guys at the booth! But everyone I spoke to said that the event was a great starter, and hopefully will go on to bigger and better things next year. The event as a whole, for us, was a great success and gained us a lot of new readers which we’re extremely stoked about. So if you’ve come here from eGames, welcome to the family! Big thanks go out to Fridge and Sniper for helping out in the booth. We look forward to doing it all again next year! Actually... that’s a lie... but hey...

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