GameX 2009 Review

If you peruse the EveryJoe.com page, you’ll notice that I usually write for the Football category here, not the Gaming category. As one of the writers and founding members of the site Binge Gamer, however, I had the opportunity to attend GameX in Philly this weekend. You can check out Binge Gamer for tons of coverage of the event, but I wanted to also do a review of this con right here on EveryJoe.

First, a little about the con itself. It was actually held at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center, located in Oaks, PA. This was the first year for GameX, which is seen as a competitor for VGXPO, a con that was held earlier this year.

Going into GameX, I didn’t know what to expect. I knew there was bad blood between GameX and VGXPO, since many of the main staff members of GameX has worked for VGXPO in the past. After attending both shows, I know where my personal alliance lies. I went to VGXPO with Binge Gamer in 2008, and although this show was full of attendees, it was highly unorganized and frustrating for vendors. I also found the head honchos at VGXPO to be incredibly rude, as my many emails to him (including some offering time and money to help with VGXPO events) went unanswered. I didn’t go to VGXPO 2009, and after hearing about it, I’m glad I didn’t waste my time. That’s not to say GameX was perfect, but the staff was amazing, the events were organized, and I had more fun than I’ve had in a long time, even though I was working.

There were two main rooms for GameX. One had a main stage, a number of vendors, hands-on previews of many different games, and an artists’ row. The other included retro and arcade games, an area for people competing in a con-long game designing contest, a few vendors, and an area for panels and QVC. Yes, QVC did a live broadcast from the event, selling millions of dollars worth of Wiis.

GameX secured a few great celebrities for the weekend:

• Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw who does Zero Punctuation at The Escapist
• Brian O’Halloran (Dante Hicks) and Marilyn Ghigliotti (Veronica Loughran) from Clerks
• Sandeep Parikh (Zaboo), Robin Thorsen (Clara), and Jeff Lewis (Vork) from The Guild
• David Nykl (Dr. Zelenka) from Stargate: Atlantis
• Jsu Garcia, film and TV actor, most notably from Nightmare on Elm Street
• Rake Yohn of MTV’s JackAss and Viva La Bam

They also had a number of games available for press and attendees to play:

• Bayonetta
• Dante’s Inferno
• Global Agenda
• Shaun White Snowboarding: World Stage
• Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
• Storm

That’s in addition to the Rock Band 2 tournament on the main stage, a huge DDR set-up where a dozen people could play at once, too many retro games to list (including tournaments), and a bunch of other games I’m probably forgetting. Oh, and the tabletop group that was there was running RPGs all day.

The con also had a Steampunk Fair. They invited Steam Gear Lab and the League of S.T.E.A.M. to invade GameX, and along with items to demonstrate, members held a meet-up in full costume (and in character), and there was a steampunk art competition with thousands of dollars in prizes.

GameX 2009 Pros

Ok, so now that you know what went on at GameX, let’s talk about the things this con did incredibly well:

• I can’t say enough about the staff. As soon as our site got there, the two PR guys introduced themselves, and throughout the weekend, they connected vendors and press. Now, if you were an attendee, that might not seem like a big deal, but believe me – the staff aren’t just for the press and vendors. Everything ran smoothly and on time, and a number of non-press attendees that I talked to told me how helpful the staff was with finding events and solving problems. Basically, if they didn’t know the answer, they took you to someone who did know the answer.

• ORGANIZATION. My main gripe with VGXPO was that nothing was organized. You might as well have used the schedule to wipe your ass, because every single event was canceled or changed. I’m sure there were scheduling issues at GameX, but I didn’t know about a single one. The program had not only a schedule, but also a map to help conference-goers find the booths that most interested them.

• The event covered a wide variety of interests. There were video games of course, but also table-top games, dealers, the Army, Star Wars cosplayers, bands, arcade machines, tournaments, steampunkers, artists, and celebrities. I’m sure that even the non-gamers that got pulled to the con with their friends or significant others found something to enjoy.
  

  Like playing with dice more than a controller? GameX has ya covered.

• There was something going on most of the time. During the entire weekend, there were panels, celebrity meet-and-greets, and stuff going on over at the main stage. At some cons, it is easy to get bored once you’ve walked around the booths once or twice, but at GameX, you could stay the whole day and find things to do.

• GameX had a whole separate food area. Yes, it was overpriced, but it was run by the convention center (I think). The main “plus” to this was that there were plenty of tables if you wanted to sit down for a few minutes. Speaking of sitting down, GameX had a nice press room where people like me could sit to do work or interviews, which was invaluable.

• The afterparty was amazing. GameX held an afterparty for vendors, press, and attendees who wanted to stay (I’m not sure if it was for all attendees or just VIPs). The Escapist also held an afterparty at the same facilities, Arnold’s, which was like a Dave and Busters. There was an impromptu band, as well as free food and drinks. SO MUCH FUN.
  

  One thing that definitely did not suck? Bayonetta. I think I had a nerd-gasm while playing it and will be first in line to buy it when it's released.

GameX Cons

This convention was not perfect by any means. Hopefully, since it was a first year convention, most of this stuff will be cleared up for next year.

• The main stage was LOUD, and the placement sucked. Half of the time, you had to SCREAM to talk to a vendor, and the panels were very hard to hear because they were in a room right across from the stage.

• It wasn’t easy to find the convention center. They did have signs and the parking was free, but it really was in the middle of nowhere. You had to drive to get to hotels or most restaurants. A little birdie told me that it *might* be at the PA Convention Center next year, which would be MUCH better. It’s a hassle to park at that location, but it’s much more convenient in every other way.

• Attendance was low. I don’t know how many people made it to the event, but some of the vendors told me that they were promised 20,000+ people. My estimate is more like 5,000, but I wasn’t counting heads, so maybe I’m completely off. All I know is that a lot of the booths were empty, with vendors standing around, especially when major panels were going on.

• The Internet went down a few times. This was a major problem on Sunday because vendors couldn’t even use credit card machines, and a lot of people left upset about that. Personally, I see this as more of a site failure than a GameX failure, but they were ultimately responsible for the net access, so the fact that it was down stank.

I’m not really saying anything here that hasn’t been said by multiple other members of the press. Even staff members I talked to were very, very aware of the problems with the show, as well as very happy about the things they did well. At the end of the day, though, the failures are all things that you’d expect from a first-year con. I’ve been told there there IS going to be a GameX 2010, and I look forward to attending again – and you should too.

P.S. If anyone reading this is going to MAGFest in January, look me up!

All pictures are courtesy of BingeGamer.net unless otherwise noted.