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.

Binge Gamer's James Walker interviews Yahtzee. Yes, he is very tall. No, he doesn't speak incredibly fast all the time.

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.

I had nothing but love for the steampunk people all weekend. For the record, that's a working zombie cattle prod he's holding.

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.

Post from: EveryJoe

GameX 2009 Review

People are weird. Really weird. But I don’t have a problem with weird. In fact, I’m weird myself. I mean, I write for this really weird website and all I do is talk about adventure games. That’s pretty weird, isn’t it? I’d like to think so, anyways.

That’s why when I heard about Monkey Island Memorial Day over at The International House of Mojo, I wasn’t too weirded out. A Monkey Island Memorial Day? That almost sounds absurd… in a completely freaking awesome way!

Back in 2007, some crazy Europeans through together a bash to end all bashes. This bash consisted of Monkey Island themed games and party favors. And why not? Monkey Island is awesome. Seeing as the event drew close to 500 people, those same crazy Europeans decided to make this year’s event a two day shindig which shall start on May 23rd, 2009 and take place in Vienna, Germany in 4 different locations! Now, that’s a lot of monkey madness!

Sounds interesting, doesn’t it? Well, check out the schedule of events and plan on attending. It should be a piratey good time!

[Image courtesy of Monkey Island Memorial Day]

Post from: EveryJoe

Monkey Island Memorial Day

The San Diego Comic Convention is quickly approaching for us fans of comic books. I mean, it’s just right around the corner, from July 24th to the 27th and there’s gonna be a ton of cool stuff to check out and see. Not only will our favorite comic creators (Penny Arcade, Marvel) be there, giving presentations and having booths, but we will also see some video game developers there! Yep, that’s right, we’ll be seeing TellTale Games, Electronic Arts, LucasArts, Mythic Entertainment and Capcom… just to name a few.

It sounds like this is going to be the coolest convention on the FACE OF THE PLANET. Hmm, maybe I should get tickets for next year!

If you’re interested in checking out who all is going to be exhibiting at the Comic Con, check out this link. There are also a TON of presenters, which you can check out here. And if you’re crazy enough to actually go to this thing, where I’m sure nerds and dorks will abound, you can still get your tickets here. I WILL ENVY YOU.

[San Diego Comic Convention image courtesy of San Diego Comic Convention.]

Post from: EveryJoe

San Diego Comic Con – 2008

You know what’s disappointing? When you’re waiting to hear news about a brand new game from the awesome Double Fine at the Leipzig Game Conference from Tim Schaefer, and you get NOTHING! No news about new games whatsoever! Arg! Well, I guess we did get some news. The projected release date of this new game is scheduled for some time next year, according to The International House of Mojo. Some time next year?! Are you serious?! They can’t even give us an approximate month or anything? Jerks!

We still love you though Double Fine!

If you want to know the specific things Tim talked about at the Leipzig Gaming Convention, well, I have good news for you. Gamasutra did an entire article on what the man had to say for you.

I’ll tell you one thing Tim did say: He loves to feed geese. Read the article to find out exactly why!

Post from: EveryJoe

No News Is Not Good News Tim!

Oh, what I would give to be at the GC Developers Conference in Leipzig, Germany… You know why? Because there has got to be a vast showing of all things adventure gaming. I mean, it is Germany, afterall. And they do love them some adventure games.

That’s why I’m not at all surprised that the German developer and publisher, dtp/Anaconda, has come out with a full list of games that they will be showing. And what’s better? They’re all adventure games! According to Kotaku, dtp/Anaconda will be demoing or allowing users to play the following games:

• Gray Matter
• Mata Hari
• Windchaser
• Drakensang: The Dark Eye.
• So Blonde
• Memento Mori
• Undercover: Dual Motives (this one is for the DS)
• Legend: Hand of God
• Overclocked

If you’re an adventure game lover, then it would appear that these are exciting times in the adventure game world!

Post from: EveryJoe

dtp/Anaconda WOW the Leipzig game audience

Well, before, the AdventureCon didn’t look all that exciting to me. I mean, did you take a look at the website? Kind of scary! The convention itself kind of looked like a glorified Zork fest. I mean, there is lots of talk about Leisure Suit Larry, but there are so many more great adventure games out there then that. Well, now that they’ve had Al Lowe put onto the list of guest, I have one more exciting announcement to make.

According to an email I receive last night from the AdventureCon people, another adventuring great has agreed to join the convention guest list. That adventuring great is non other than Jane Jensen. Oh yes, Ms. Gabriel Knight herself has agreed to stand in front of the masses and speak her mind.

It seems as time goes on, more and more people will be announced to be attending the AdventureCon. Jane Jensen is just one more reason to pack up the bags and head on over to the wonderful world of Las Vegas. Maybe the AdventureCon people will be able to rope in some people from TellTale, or maybe Autumn Moon or quite frankly ANYWHERE. I’m sure there will be plenty of independent game creators there, too, that many would love to see just as much as these big names. Looks like it’ll be a good time.

I can only imagine how much trouble a bunch of adventure gamers could get themselves into. OH YES. THE WORLD WILL BE OURS.

Post from: EveryJoe

More AdventureCon news

I was perusing the awesomeness of GameBoomers and came across quite the wonderful piece of news. There will be an actually Adventure Gaming Convention for us awesome adventure gamers coming to you for the first time ever! The convention is called the AdventureCon and it shall take place in Las Vegas at the Mirage Hotel and Casino on July 23rd through the 25th. You know what’s awesome about conventions in Las Vegas? GAMBLING.

Oh wait… that’s not what I meant. I mean to say that it’s only a 5 hour drive to Vegas! Plus there’s free booze! Not that that would be the deciding factor as to whether I go or not, but it is an awesome bonus!

Here’s the scheduled events:

July 24th – Afternoon

• Buffet lunch for all adventurers
• Scott Adams will talk about his experiences and adventures at Adventure International
• Adventurer’s Workshop – (TBA)

July 24th – Evening

• Special Zork Tribute Cocktail Party in the Zork room

July 25th – Morning

• Breakfast buffet for all adventurers
• The Exhibitors Area will be open all day.
• The Zork Room will be open all day.
• Panel discussion with past and present adventure game designers

July 25th – Afternoon

• Buffet lunch for all adventurers
• Mystery guest speaker (to be announced)
• Adventurer’s Workshop – How to Beat Impossible Situations in Adventure Games

According to the AdventureCon website, Zork, one of the very first adventure games ever, will be celebrating it’s existence of 30 years very soon. Can you believe that? I didn’t even know they had computers that could play games 30 years ago. Alright, I lie… There were computers that played games 30 years ago, but I try not to think about it. It scares me.

Mmmm, Commodore 64 goodness…

The convention may be a bust, but hell… there will be lots of booze! YES.

Pricing hasn’t been established for the tickets yet, but keep checking back here and I’ll get you the prices as soon as it becomes available.

EDIT: Apparently the dates for this little party have changed from July 23rd-25th to August 28th and August 29th. Apparently the reason for this change is because Al Lowe has agreed to be a guess speaker at the convention. Not bad… not bad at all.

Post from: EveryJoe

The First Annual AdventureCon