Games Convention 2008

kiwi_bird

My Blog

My annual report from the GC 2008:

Why did I go this year?
I decided to go to the Games Convention this year for a number of reasons. The first one being I live in Leipzig. If it would have taken any amount of "real" travelling I would have probably not gone. The second being that this may be the last GC in Leipzig, since Cologne is having their own "Games Convention". The Games Convention has also gotten to be this huge event where you can meet a lot of people from all over who share similar interests in one place. The last reason was, of course, to play games.

When did I go and why only once?
As the title already said: I only went once this year. I decided to stand up a bit earlier on Thursday and take the tram to the convention centre. The reason I decided not to go on any other day is, because you can neither breathe nor walk in the convention centre.

What was good about this years Games Convention?
This years GC was a lot better than last ones. Although there was no Nintendo and Microsoft, the 3rd parties covered the demand for Wiis. The most I had to wait to play a game was 30 minutes, which only took so long because I decided to play "Black and Magic Woman (Guitar Hero)" on a huge stage. There was also a lot of room to walk and it didn't feel cramped at all. I was able to check out all the games I wanted to see and left the convention centre feeling quite happy.
The most awesome part of the convention this year was their old school gaming area though. I played the first ever Space Invaders and was also able to play Asteroids from 1979. I was never able to understand how such stupidly simple games could have been fun, but now I do. I really enjoyed them and could imagine going to a convention with only old school arcade games. This may be because there are no arcades in driving distance from my house.
Another thing they learned from last year is to provide more trams. Last year it was a horrible mess and I couldn't get anywhere around the city. This time the city had supplied enough trams to make it a pleasant experience.

What was bad about this years Games Convention?
There is really very little bad I can say about this years GC. I was pretty disappointed when I realized that there was no Nintendo booth this year. I remember last years booth being really stupid and kind of sad, but the year before that the Nintendo booth was an oasis of awesome. I will not go into why - again. Maybe it's better for Nintendo to leave a year out and come back next year with one or two new announcements and, hopefully, a totally awesome booth.
A problem I realized just today is, that the "Leipziger Messe" is just way to small to fit the masses of people in. Thursday was fine, but I can't imagine the horror of going on Saturday or Sunday.

Overall:
This GC was a lot better than last years, as I already stated. I also believe if they would have had more time to prepare and to learn from earlier GCs they could have made it a great convention. But it's not really worth travelling to or paying more than 12€ for.

Feel free to ask questions and send me feed back.