eGames Expo 2009

Game Event from Yug - Monday, 09 November 2009 @ 5:50pm

The eGames Expo in Melbourne is without a doubt the largest video game consumer event in Australia, and 2009 marks it’s forth year running. AustralianGamer.com was there in force as per usual, holding gaming events at our booth, managing the social after parties, and generally making a nuisance of ourselves. Thanks to the insane generosity of the AG community I was able to attend as well, and now the dust has settled and the hangovers have subsided, I’m going to take a brief look back on the 2009 eGames Expo.

For the first time, eGames (these days flying under the iDef banner in conjunction with the DLS) was not held at ‘Jeffs Shed’ in the Melbourne Exhibition Centre in Southbank, having moved to the Royal Exhibition Building on the other side of the city. I know quite a few people who were confused by this and ended up going to the wrong venue, but more than that it’s important to note just how completely different the two buildings are. While the Melbourne Exhibition Centre is slick, new and high tech; the Royal Exhibition Building is an old, grand and low tech structure. I still can’t decide if it’s a bad venue or not, but there’s no doubt it creates an entirely different vibe and atmosphere for a cutting edge technology expo.

The Royal Exhibition Building

I arrived at the expo late Friday morning along with GameArena’s Joaby and new AustralianGamer team member Luke, thanks to Brutal from the AG forums who not only provided transport, but also fed us breakfast.

We signed in, got our passes and headed to the empty AustralianGamer booth where we proceeded to make ourselves at home. Anyone who attended the AG booth this year can attribute its success to Jae, who organised and delegated the running and equipment for the whole weekend. A big shoutout also has to go to DarkYoshi for his LCD TV, a slight step up from the state of the art 51cm CRT TV’s of previous years.

The split between the DLS (Digital Lifestyle Show) and eGames was even more pronounced this year, as you walked through the entrance you turned left for the video games, right for the digital consumer goods. The main stage was well within the eGames area, plus there was a Madman theatrette playing anime all weekend, plus a room on the balcony for the DEVELOP talks.

I’m only going to talk about DEVELOP once actually, since from what I could tell it didn’t seem to actually happen. To get to the room you had to walk behind the main stage, up a flight of stairs, and through a door that always seemed to be locked. On the website there were only two sessions held there the entire weekend – the rest of the time myself, Michael Woods and a few others used it to hide in the darkness and air conditioning while recovering.

The main eGames show floor was filled up with a combination of game publishers, universities, stores, eSports, and community events. Without a doubt Ubisoft stole the show, taking a good chunk of an area right in the middle of the floor, and featuring playable versions of Red Steel 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Assassins Creed 2, Just Dance, and James Cameron’s: Avatar – the latter presented on one of those fancy new TV’s with 3D capabilities, the results of which were stunning.

The Ubisoft booth undoubtably stole the show

2K Games also had a closed off booth showing off Borderlands and NBA 2K, Madman were showing off Spectrobes: Origins and Split Second, Namco Bandai had a pretty sweet F1 car to help showcase their F1 2009 Wii game, AFA Interactive had A Boy and his Blob, Arcania and Fairytale Fights, and Microsoft had a truck with Forza Motorsport 3. Unfortunately, that was about it for the publishers – no Sony, Nintendo, EA, Activision, Sega, Blizzard ... and you could feel their absence.

Thankfully eGames 2009 will probably be remembered by alot of people as the time to shine for eSports, as there were multiple tournaments and competitions being held around the expo for casual to professional players.

The eSports Masters got kicking properly on Saturday at the Intel eSports zone broadcast live by the Gamestah guys, and hardly let up until the last hour on Sunday (we should know, our booth was right next door!). There were also tournaments at other areas all over the expo for Counter Strike, Halo 3, Halo ODST, COD4: Modern Warfare, Street Fighter IV and Tekken 6, run by reputable gaming communities such as GotGames, Cybergamer and Couch Warriors. Monash University also ran a High School eSports league to great success, and there were plenty of Rock Band setups at various booths and on the main stage. Rounded out with a great eSports panel featuring Daniel Chlebowczyk (Madman), Tony Trubridge (Team Immunity), Michael Woods (BigLeague), Alex Mottshaw (GotGames), Ej (GameStah) and RJ (Cybergamer) talking about the future of eSports in Australia.

The Intel eSports Masters Zone

The Level 3 community TV gaming show had a booth as well, and start up show The Lobby did alot of panels on the main stage during the weekend. In fact, the main stage was almost entirely filled up with community events (The Lobby, Tournament finals, Live Podcasts, Cosplay presentations, Singing competitions), with only a Q&A with EA Melbourne and a Web 2.0 talk by the founder of Kogan bringing any substance to the stage. The rest of the time was filled with rock band being played (sometimes VERY bady) by whoever wanted a go. Fact is the eSports and GotGames zone drew more crowds than the main stage most of the time, and considering how busy and successful the main stage was last year (ok, I might be a bit bias, but I stand by that statement) it was a significant let down this time round.

Except for the AustralianGamer live podcast Matt and I did Saturday on the main stage, which was awesome. Right? Right!

Yug and Matt live on stage for the AG Podcast

And to be honest ... well, there didn’t seem to be much else. Sure, all the Universities had booths to lure in prospective next generation game developers, and there were a few games retailers there selling games, plus there was some creepy dudes trying to sign people up to an online dating simulator. Maybe if I was more interested in the Digital Lifestyle Show I might have gotten more out of it, but I’m not all that interested in checking out the latest consumer electronics unless they have something awesome running on them – aka, games.

The other important and not to be dismissed element of eGames is the fact that it brings so many people together from all around Australia to socialise. AustralianGamer.com alone had myself, Matt and Cormac from Brisbane, Jae and Luke from Sydney, and AJ, Cav, George and Anna from Melbourne. There were too many people to count from the AustralianGamer.com forums, many of whom had also flown interstate just to hang out.

Gamers let loose in the pubs of Melbourne!

With that in mind, the other big event was the Melbourne Gamers Meetup on the Saturday night, an institution now that brings gamers together in typically non gamer environments – this time being the Kingpin bar in Crown Casino (although surrounded by an arcade). There were well over 100 people who turned up for the night’s event, featuring a mix of publishers, developers, pro gamers, and almost every gaming community. Highlight probably being the epic circle of drinking games (Yeeeeeeeha!), singing terrible 80’s rock ballads on the jukebox, and being kicked out at 2am and taking a crew of almost 30 gamers to a strip club.

It was great to see so many familiar and new faces at eGames this year, play a few unreleased games, catch up with some of the gaming industry personalities, and just generally hang out in Melbourne. Let’s hope next year’s eGames will be a return to form.

The AG crew at eGames 2009

(Thanks to Michael "Bench" Debevec for the use of some of his photos!)