Once we again return from the heady high-life of creating videos on Twitch and YouTube based content which involves talking b*llocks over other people’s hard work to remark finally one last time on the gaming phenomenon that was EGX which took place back in September of this year at the NEC in Brummieham.

Now considering that there has already been a lot written about this year’s EGX already in terms of what games were good / bad or otherwise and that there was a limited amount of time to see a lot of content over the course of one day, what possibly is there left which could be addressed here? Well, what about the event itself from the point of view of basically a customer?

That’s right, I may just write about various things here and do some videos from time to time about games when I can be bothered of course, but at the end of the day, I am just another face in the crowd with cash to spend (err…..ish…my bank account says otherwise with it’s ever depressing minus sign next most of the amounts on display), and there were a few things which really raised the eyebrow over the course of the day, which really should be remarked on in some shape or form.

Marketing

Considering this whole event is one giant exercise in marketing stuff for people to buy, it’s going to be odd to remark on this aspect, but there are some particulars which are worth mentioning.

Who loves Xbox? Say you do and get sh*t thrown at you….

Both Sony and Microsoft had a decent presence with their own areas, but by far the larger footprint was had by Sony, given that most people wanted to show their content on the best platforms. It seems that at the moment, Sony really has the lead in terms of developers wanting to show their wares and it’s all up to Microsoft to do something that can neither be done on PS4 or PC on the slightly more limited system they created to get people back.

A timed limited exclusive of Tomb Raider just won’t cut it. If anyone wondered what everyone thought was best, Sony must be loving it at the moment that most people where they weren’t just using PCs hidden behind huge boxes with their adverts on that their system was being used the most, and that would not have been a fact lost on people wandering around the place, especially leading up to Christmas.

The Xbox and PlayStation areas proved to be something of a rather bizarre situation where both areas were attempting to get people shouting their console name and say you love them in exchange for frankly free tat being thrown at them, and the small groups of people who got caught up in this, were lapping it up.

Seriously, how f**king desperate must you be to be shouting XBOX to get a tiny t-shirt which was even that expensive in the first place?

Unlike Rezzed, there were fewer opportunities to have some decent time to speak with developers away from just the Rezzed and Indie Areas, where basically that was the place where you were most likely to have a chat with people who were actually working on the games themselves and have some really interesting banter, and the event would have really benefited from more of that. That could have been even better marketing.

Queues

Pretty much this seemed to dictate what I was going to look at and if you’re only there for a single day, then pretty much you’re only going to get a chance with a few games, some of which you may just have ended up trying as you would have lost time just standing in a queue for up to an hour, if not longer for the really popular titles.

They wait…..for their doom.

The thing is, the event was at the NEC in Birmingham with a large access to space, and the bigger publishers present and indeed EGX themselves can do a bigger stand for the bigger titles they know people are coming for, and then allow more people in one turn. After all why wouldn’t you want your potential customers easier access to try the game before and therefore ensure a sale by guaranteeing that they can get a chance to try it and come away thinking it’s brilliant?

When EGX was first starting out in a tiny space in East London, there was no issue at all in trying things out, certainly not to the same level of queuing that you have now. But of course, the event has gotten massive over the last few years and it seems that will only continue. Of course long queues make for good PR photos too, so they will never want to add additional booths, simply because the camera loves to show something is popular.

If the queues continue to eat up most of the day at an event, and the ever growing number of betas are anything to go by, at what point would it better just to stay in the comfort of your own home and just have the code delivered directly to your desktop? And then, who would really want to go to an event like this? Seriously, please add more booths for the most popular stuff so more people can actually try it properly and not have to come back a second or even third day just to try what they wanted to.

Oh wait, that doesn’t mean more money for them….. never mind.

Shopping

YARRR, Game be there to steal your doubloons….

More so than years before, there were a huge number of places trying to sell their wares directly to the public, which given the gaming audience typically is larger and has a lot more cash to p*ss away on tat than what people thought back in the day, was kind of welcome to see. It’s just a shame that everything they were selling was more expensive than what you would just get on the high street or even online stores.

It was grand to be able to try out some of the mechanical keyboards in the flash as opposed to seeing them in packages and not knowing how good they were to type on. Same actually with some of the more exotic gaming headsets to hear how good the audio is with them before laying down some hard earned cash too.

But bloody hell, don’t try your luck so hard with overcharging beyond what you know can be had outside the event. If you charged the same price for example, you may have even done better!

Then again, we don’t know what the organisers were charging for people to put up stalls so maybe that had a factor in it. Oh, and the church people who set up a stall selling bible related stuff with Jesus plays games or whatever it was…..seriously…..go away.

The Retro Area

We’re going to end this article on a high and remarkably it’s a blast from the past.

The Retro Area was one of the the best areas of the whole thing, simply for the fact that you could have fun playing games from yesteryear where games used to come on cartridges, floppies or hell even tapes with all sorts of weird controllers attached. I suppose they were also a bit simpler to get going, seeing as you didn’t have to worry about Steamworks or any other real DRM at the time.

It’s also a strange way to see how far things have come over the years to what we hve now. This year, the area was getting larger for sure and started to include Xbox 360s in the area. It seems that 360s have just become classed as “Retro!”

Two titans of the day…..ah, memories.

It was a testament to how well some games have stood the test of time, not maybe from a presentation point of view, but from a gameplay point of view where even Centipede was still as bloody annoying to clear as it was years ago! I suspect as time goes on, this area of the expo will take up half the show floor and that would be good in terms of letting people who never got a chance to try Super Mario 64 when it was released the first time on the N64 for example.

A sad thought did occur to me at the time; Am I just getting old and pinning for simpler times when I could play games? Then I remember that it wasn’t easier in some respects; seriously the times the C64 failed to load a game because of a dodgy tape….really don’t miss that at all. And we can actually just emulate the good stuff as and when we wan’t to these days. They sell USB adapters for N64 controllers for a few quid these days, so you could even have the same stuff to control the games as you used to.

It would be very very easy to get lost in this area for an entire day, and that would be strange in some regards, considering you want to go to occasions like EGX to see the new shiny shiny. But hey, one can argue they give you the best of everything and you can do what you like. I really hope this always remains a staple of the event.

Conclusion to EGX

So all in all, coming away from the event, there were a few things which were exciting to see, including the games coming out which feature tea in one form or another (come on, Cuphead….cups are used for tea….don’t judge me) and some new things which raised the excitement level in some respects.

But these articles also showed some of the disappointments at EGX and what may need some adjustments for the event and what was shown there to be better next year. Now it’s up to the games developers to further blow our socks off in terms of their wares in the final releases and for us to throw tons more cash their way should they prove their worth.

Going to be fun finding out methinks.