eGames Expo 2008

Game Event from Yug - Tuesday, 10 November 2009 @ 2:02am

The eGames Expo just gone has drawn a lot of comparisons to the previous years, and thinking back to eGames 2008 I realised we never did any post coverage of the event. Time to take a trip down memory lane ...

AustralianGamer.com had a huge presence at the eGames Expo 2008, not just having our own booth again, but this time letting myself and Matt have complete control over the Intel eGames Main Stage presentations. No more wizards in reflective purple robes talking about anti-virus software.

Perhaps the biggest change from previous years however was the addition of two other events and the overall branding of their combination. iDEF (which stands for the international digital entertainment festival) was promoted as a weeklong event, and included not only the eGames Expo, but also the DLS (Digital Lifestyle Show) and DEVELOP (Industry and Careers Symposium).

DEVELOP was a very interesting project to be included in the proceedings alongside. It's hard not to overlook the crossover that eGames and GCAP had in 2007, which inevitably leads to comparisons between GCAP (Game Connect Asia Pacific) and DEVELOP, which although in different cities (GCAP was in Brisbane), they were only a week apart.

It was a pleasant surprise then that DEVELOP not only managed to be unique and informative, but also separated itself as not competitive to GCAP, but more of a complementary event.

The event was held at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre, not in one of the bays however, but up the main set of stairs at the front of the hall and in a couple of custom setup lecture rooms. Master of Ceremonies and the man running the DEVELOP show was Justin Brow, founder of 60Sox.org.au and digital industry advocate for over 15 years, who opened the event along with a short speech from Peter Barlow - owner and operator of iDef and all the associated events within.

Peter Barlow - event organiser - opens the DEVELOP event with a short speech

Somehow I managed to make it on time to the opening, and was joined by fellow AustralianGamer.com team member Anna - fresh from her MX photoshoot success and basking in the fame that came with it.

The majority of attendee's were students or people looking for advice on how to get IN to the industry, and not many people already on the inside. Whether by accident or not, the majority of talks catered to this audience perfectly, and pretty much everyone who attended that I talked to found the whole experience to be invaluable and worthwhile.

The Wednesday featured speakers from international players Google, Microsoft, and Pixar; as well as locals Infinite Interactive, Primal Clarity, and your very own AustralianGamer.com. Most disappointing for myself was the no show from Brian Chau of Adobe Asia Pacific, who was going to talk about design and development with the new Creative Suite 4 - but he didn't show up.

The other talks I managed to catch were hit and miss, with Tony Keusgen from Google being a highlight - talking about innovation at Google and how they achieve it. Simon Allen, an animator from Pixar, basically just ran a show real along with photos of the Pixar offices. Local contributions were definitely positive - I managed to catch the tail end of Andrew Owen from Monash Universities talk, and while I'm unsure of what his topic was, I did get a good laugh from his stories.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment was missing Steve Fawkner from Infinite Interactive, one of the few actual game industry professionals discussing the gaming industry in Australia. At the same time in the other room, myself and Anna were giving a presentation about 'How to promote and network yourself in the gaming industry'. We got a good response from the people in the audience, and I was more than happy to field questions afterwards - most regarding what events to go to and how to approach game developers for jobs, again highlighting the type of crowd. Except for Michael Woods up the back who was just there to heckle ;)

After the day had ended, the more socially inclined moved to local Southbank bar 'The BLVD', for a few casual drinks organised by 60Sox.org.au. I was very happy to finally meet Giselle from AIE, as well as a few other familiar faces, and of course a bunch of new ones. I was well and truly sloshed as I stumbled away leaving Anna with a bunch of people buying her drinks, but was overall impressed with the quality of DEVELOP.

Yug at DEVELOP ... as you can probably tell

Thursday brought up a problem with the event - the focus on digital technology in general as opposed to specialising in certain areas. Gaming discussions were almost non-existant, with the only mentions of it coming from Robbie Minicola of TiVo, proclaiming the systems use for game developers. Problem was there were hardly any representatives from the studios there, only a handful of independents that seemed to take notice.

AG team member Brett flew in from Perth and arrived early Thursday morning, managing to make his way to DEVELOP just in time to hassle the TiVo people about their product and if it ask if it would be backwards compatible with old Sega games.

Without a doubt the diamond was Derek Robertson, the National Advisor for Emerging Technologies in Scotland, who brought with him a full report including studies directly linked to gaming from around the world. Reminding me of a Scottish Jeff Brand, with a passion for figures, his presentation was fascinating and I only wish the events were recorded in some sort of podcast for future reference.

After DEVELOP was over, Brett and I took a wander down to the main halls where the exhibitors were busy setting up for the rest of the weekend. We discovered that you can gain magic entrance to any event simply by wearing a fluoro jacket and giving a convincing nod - a technique I used for the rest of the weekend to get myself and other people into the event. Brilliant.

Fluoro jackets are as good as tickets

After wandering around the shambled mess of semi-constructed stalls, Brett and I left and caught up with AG Team member George and headed to a Sony organised drinks at an obscure bar down a dodgy alleyway. We caught up with many Sony peeps there including Rebecca Rice and Adrian Christie (who has now left Sony Australia and headed over to New York!), as well as a bunch of the guys from Hausmann, and some new faces from Sony with some very interesting stories about the park outside their window.

Also there were other industry people such as Jason Hill (Screenplay, The Age), Helen Stuckey (ACMI), Mike Bantick (IT Wire), and Andy Wells (GameArena) to name a few. Ex AG Team member Samo turned up just in time to help me decimate the Sony bartab, and by the end of the night we were all pretty inebriated. I vaguely remember walking past the EB Games on Swanston street where the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Litch King launch was taking place, but at that point in the night the idea of being around a crowd in bright lights scared me.

Friday, the beginning of the big reason we were in Melbourne. eGames 2008 DAY 1, typically known as an 'industry day', this time promoted as being much more accessible to the public. Matt and Yahtzee had arrived late Thursday night, and the three of us caught up early in the morning to carry our bags of goodies to the expo, located in the main area of the Melbourne Exhibition Centre.

The entire eGames / DLS show floor was still a complete mess of walls and wires at this point, with only a few booths beginning to take shape. The largest areas were inhabited by Sony (Who had dedicated sections for their individual games LittleBigPlanet and Resistance 2 along with a large section featuring their other games) and EA (With their FIFA Interactive World Cup competition taking up almost half an extra bay of space).

Our focus at that point however was to setup the AustralianGamer.com booth as quickly as possible, and put all our attention towards the Intel eGames Main Stage. You see, this year instead of simply MC'ing the stage events, we were actually given almost complete control over the content and format of what went on.

Having the AG booth directly next to the stage helped us a great deal, as well as creating a general meeting place for the majority of people and community members who knew each other. Our setup was the usual booth that feels like a lounge room from 10 years ago. Bean bags, shitty TV, SNES and MegaDrive consoles, and bowls of junk food. Oh, and AJ didn't have to fill up the bean bags for once. The main difference this year was Rockstar Games, who had provided us with a bunch of Rockstar merch to giveaway at the booth!

The AustralianGamer booth

We had the largest turnout of AustralianGamer.com staff members as well, so along with myself and Matt there was also AJ, Oracle, Anna, Samo, Cav, Brett, Jae, Simon and George. Phil and Starks stayed in their respective states, Starks with some excuse that it was his girlfriends birthday (pfft) and Phil because he's a pussy. *snap* Oh yes he did!

The expo doors opened at 1pm, and I had a bit of time before to have a walk around the expo and get a good look around. The show occupied a massive amount of space, but was generally split up into two sides - the eGames expo on one side, and the DLS (Digital Lifestyle Show) on the other, with the two main stages in the opposite corner of each. There was also a separate DEVELOP Theatrette located at the opposite diagonal corner, an area for industry panels and discussions more suited to a more close and personal audience.

The show featured all the big publishers, including Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Atari, Funtastic (now Madman) and AFA Interactive. Notably absent were Sega, THQ, Activision and Red Ant - although Sega decided to provide us about 500 Valhalla Knights limited edition art books to give away. Not that I'm begrudging them for their contribution, but that's a surprising amount to have to attempt to give away over a weekend without simply throwing them out into the crowd ... which we ended up doing anyway.

There were a bunch of other companies and institutions located in the eGames section as well, including a large selection of tertiary institutes that provide gaming related courses (AIE, Qantm, Box Hill Institute, Swinburne, RMIT, College of Creative Arts & Technology), a bunch of merchandise and game retailers (Arcade Gaming Australia, Madman Entertainment, Popcultcha, Gametraders, Gamerz Bunker, Scorpion Technology Computers, Gifts for Geeks), and a few online game communities (PALGN, Tektime, MyMedia, elroyonline).

Intel and Team Immunity had partnered up to provide a dedicated eSports Zone, giving gamers the chance to compete against the Team Immunity players as well as allowing Intel to showcase their new I7 Processor. As previously mentioned, Alienware and Anything Interactive had setup an area that featured 50 of the latest Alienware PC's showcasing some Activision titles as well as Red Alert 3.

The Alienware area featuring Activision games

The guys from GoSolid kept things kicking along in the Xbox Zone, where 20 Xbox 360's where networked and featured multiplayer games such as Pure and Need for Speed. Just behind that area was a massive crate that housed Microsoft's flagship title of the year - Gears of War 2 - providing lots of 4 x 4 multiplayer action and some questionable music choices.

Nintendo came with their typical we-didn't-mean-to-rip-off-apple clean and white look to their area, with a bunch of Wii and DS booths monitored by what can only be described as the most friendly group of 'girl-next-door' promo people I've ever seen - I suppose anything is an improvement from the GAME1 style bikini clad promo girls. Of course, they were still showing Wii Sports and a bunch of slightly older games, along with new ones at the time such as Wii Music, Animal Crossing, and Day of Disaster.

Atari had an area with a bunch of Playstations, setup showcasing their upcoming Tomb Raider: Underworld, their unreleased western shooter Damnation, and hourly Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 tournaments.

As I previously mentioned, EA had a massive area dedicated to their FIFA Interactive World Cup, a sectioned off booth that contained a mini-soccer field, a tonne of Playstation 3 FIFA 09 network setups, and some of the most over enthusiastic promo girls I'd ever come across. How they managed to keep their energy levels up the entire weekend baffles me, I couldn't figure out if I envied or hated them ... probably both.

The EA FIFA Interactive World Cup Area

EA went pretty much all out, with regular giveaways for people who won Mirrors Edge time trials, a dedicated Spore play area, a very dark room where you could play Left 4 Dead network and Dead Space (ooo, moody), and on the far side an area showcasing their Wii titles such as Skate It (the version that uses the Wii Fit board). They also had a bunch of random people running around doing parkour moves to promote mirrors edge, to various degrees of success.

Ubisoft was riding on a high with FarCry 2 and Tom Clancy's EndWar being recently released, while they also showed off the at the time unreleased Prince of Persia game, along with Wii titles Rayman Raving Rabbids TV and Shaun White Snowboarding.

For the families there was also a dedicated Kids Zone, which was pretty much taken over by Funtastic and their wide range of Disney products. I had a go of the singing one and found the hand movements a fun addition. Still, would have been 100% more enjoyable without Hannah Montana, the High School Musical cast, or any teen idol without a drug habit yet.

You literally couldn't go anywhere without bumping into a Sony stand, whether it was their LittleBigPlanet area with a massive earth art piece taking up the space in the middle surrounded by playable versions of the game featuring a custom level of Melbourne. The Resistance 2 area was properly themed as well - probably one of the best big budget quick 'showoff' games at the time - seriously, that first level against the huge walker brought back some Serious Sam memories.

Just one of the many Sony dominated areas

They also had a more conventional stand closer to the entrance featuring first party titles such as Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, as well as everything from PSN games to a playable version of Resident Evil 5. And of course you can't have a Sony area without Singstar, much to the joy of pretty much the entire AG crew.

I only had enough time to do the rounds of the major games publishers before I had to make my way to the Intel eGames Main Stage where Peter Barlow, the man behind it all, opening the event with a few words of thanks, quickly followed by a keynote by Andrew Owens from Monash University - one of the major sponsors of the entire iDef event.

What followed was a string of entertaining and informative stage events, including:

* The giveaway of a lifesized Spore creature!

* Jamies and crew from Nintendo giving daily stage presentations of Wii Music and Animal Crossing.

* Intel demoing the then latest Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition processor with Kamil Gurgen (Technical Manager, Intel) and Tony Trubridge (Team Immunity).

* Nokia doing a valiant attempt to flog their 'new' N-Gage system and software

* Ubisoft showing off the level editor for their recently released game Far Cry 2

* Atari Tomb Raider Underworld playthrough and Pro Evo Soccer Final

* Riff Wars Guitar Hero competition run by Ash from TekTime

Ash ran the awesome Riff Wars Guitar Hero comps on the main stage

* Sony Little Big Planet presentation

* Monash University Retro Games Challenge

* Scorptec PC Build Off

* A Dissecta panel (dedicated to the late Tim Richards), competitive gaming panel, and live AustralianGamer podcast

Dissetta panel featuring Mike Bantek, Jason Hill and Matt

* Gaming Trivia hosted by Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation featuring AustralianGamer.com vs Level 3

* The world first premier of the first GameDamage pilot

Matt, Yahtzee and Yug take questions after the GameDamage presentation

There was also a stage on the other side of the venue for DLS events, which for some reason hosted a whole bunch of FIFA finals. I heard Brian McFadden was also on that stage at some point, but we were doing out GameDamage thing on the eGames stage at the time and didn’t see him. Guess which stage had the most people watching :)

The main stage crowd for the GameDamage presentation

The show was rudely interrupted by a false alarm fire drill mid Saturday, which saw thousands of people evacuated from the expo to the carpark out the back and into the harsh, hot sunlight. Quick thinking by Oracle, Jae and Yug kept them entertained however, with some impromptu renditions of ‘Livin on a Prayer’ and ‘A Whole New World’ from atop of some industrial bins. Amazingly, we got the crowds singing along.

The firedrill put thousands of gamers out into the harsh sunlight

Jae, Oracle and Yug attempt to entertain the crowds

The Melbourne Gamers Meetup was all good to go at Kingpin / Galactic Circus Saturday night, with a huge turnout of people from all areas of the gaming community. This was the beginning of what will no doubt be the regular meetup drinking game ‘Yeeeeha’, and some massive drunken group sing along sessions.

Yahtzee and Yug share a drink

Matt, Jae and Talzgir strike a pose

We sang til we lost or voices

All up eGames 2008 was a huge success and an entire weekend of fun for all who attended ... which makes the 2009 expo all the more frustrating, and has everyone crossing their fingers for 2010.