GenConOz Brisbane 2008

Game Event from Yug - Tuesday, 08 July 2008 @ 10:34pm

I should preface this retrospective report of the first GenCon held in Australia with a few pieces of important information about myself.

I am not a table top gamer. I have never played dungeons & dragons. I've never gotten into the Stargate TV series. I've never dressed up as my favourite character from a show/game/movie. I do not own a dice with more than 6 sides. I've never participated in an RPG that wasn't a video game.

It's because of these facts that I feel I was not the target audience for GenConOz 2008. I'm sure if you read the above paragraph and found yourself shaking your head in disgust, then I've no doubt that the expo would have been an absolutely fantastic and worthwhile experience for you.

Realistically, I was there for the video games ... the promoted 'Best 4 Days in e-Gaming'.

Which is why I was disappointed.

But I'll get back to that in a moment.



GenCon actually has a long and established history, founded in 1968 as one of the largest and most prominent gaming conventions in North America. These days it has expanded internationally, with conventions also held in the UK and France, with the US version held in Indiana now similar in size to E3. So the Australian show, to be held in Brisbane, Queensland, had quite a history to live up to.

Held at the Brisbane Convention Centre and taking up two of the massive halls, there seemed to be about a half and half split - on one side an endless sea of tables and chairs for the board, card and table top games - on the other side your exhibitor booths, main stages, screening rooms and LAN Competition.

No doubt about it, when you say 'gaming' to most of the people there, they aren't thinking about video games.

So what e-Gaming was there to be had?

Well to start with, AustralianGamer had a booth there - the usual setup of course: crappy TV, bean bags, bowl of lollies, a Super Nintendo and a Sega Megadrive. Games on offer included Sonic 2, Mario Kart, Tetris, Donkey Kong Country 2 and Mario All-Stars to name a few. Our booth was generally constantly full, although until the weekend it did feel like we were a bit of a babysitting service for parents to dump their kids.

GameTraders probably had the most prominent area, with a setup comprising of PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and N64. Guitar Hero, Smash Bros Brawl and Call of Duty being the big draws in their area, although there were plenty of times when we had GameTraders staff sneak into our booth for some Tetris battles.

Queensland Games had an area there, unfortunately the only playable game being the admittedly fun but casual title 'Tumblebugs' by Wildfire Studio. Other than that, a video that showcased locally produced games from Pandemic, Krome, THQ Studio Oz, Fuzzyeyes and Half Brick, and a bunch of guys from new indie studio Vahalla standing around telling people about their latest Dawn of War mod project.

Krome Studios had their own booth, and provided the latest and most exclusive gaming to be had, with playable versions of their upcoming games Hellboy 2 on the Xbox 360, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on the Wii. Steve Stamatiadis (or Space Captain Steve!) - creator of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger and the upcoming Blade Kitten game, was also available to meet and greet.


There was also a decent sized LAN being held by JB and the LAN Smash people, which while small for most of the days was packed during the Saturday. I'll need to confirm final numbers but it did look like there were over 60 gamers there during one stage, and for those that participated it seemed like alot of fun.



And ......... well, that's it. You would have at least expected some of the local publishers of upcoming Warhammer or table top game based franchises to make an appearance, but they didn't. Where was a Warhammer Online preview by EA? Where was Eye of Judgement on the PS3 from Sony? Even local distributor Red Ant should have had Warhammer: Mark of Chaos on display, and THQ certainly has an existing catalogue of Warhammer games, with a complete collection coming out soon on the PC. Where were they?

Ultimately, at an event like this - unproven and untested - the majority of publishers and distributors aren't about to take the risk ... yet. If anything is to come out of this event from a video game perspective, it's that if it's going to be advertised - it needs to be backed up, because the interest is there.

There were a few other events that were of interest during the 4 days there, stage presentations and lectures, but good luck trying to find them. On the Friday there were two sessions organised by the GDAA featuring Mick Dobele from Half Brick, Lauren Pears from THQ Studio Australia, and Truna from the IGDA ... but it took myself and my friend Mark a good 15 minutes to find when and where they took place.



Similar with our live podcast with Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation, I couldn't find mention of the time or place where it was being held anywhere on the website or in the GenCon booklet ... I'm amazed that any of you found it at all! And those of you that did may have been disappointed with the length, but unfortunately it seemed we were given the '5 minutes left' signal only 10 minutes in! Regardless, Matt, myself and Yahtzee loved being up there and hope to do more public podcasts in the near future. You can listen to it here.

The rest of GenConOz was enjoyable depending on what separate niche you were into. It was great to see Handy and the Animavericks guys there again, I found out about Jugger - a competitive weapon based sport modelled on an old Rutger Hower movie, the cosplayers that attended ranged from muffin top overweight manga chicks to amazingly detailed an impressive Square characters, the stage presentations ... well, the less said about some of the songs I heard the better (Chain Mail Woman sung to the tune of Pretty Woman??).

This is the first year GenCon was run here in Australia, and regardless of anyone’s thoughts on the show, I look forward to the improvements and evolution of the expo next year!