Every gaming staff’s dream is to be part of a big gaming event, whether it’s a player or a professional in the field, and we’re no different. Our dream of looking like a large scale game seemed to finally come true when we decided to keep a booth at Gamescom this year!
A little story full of interesting facts –
Gamescom is one of the largest gaming conferences in Cologne, Germany, and has a large audience there. The official numbers this year were 31,300 merchants, 1,153 companies and 373,000 players who attended the event, which held more than 21,800 square feet. Gamescom Opening Night Live was hosted by producer and presenter Geoff Keighley and was watched online by over 500,000 viewers.
Our experience
There are quite a few messages on the internet about getting ready for events, but if you’re not there, get involved in something, nothing really sets you apart. When we first attended the event, we had our share of lucrative moments when we struggled from putting equipment to dismantling.
Day 1 or Construction Day was quite busy as many people in the event arena set up booths. We arrived at our designated booth already in the finished booth.
Our First Department
Our job was to fill and decorate the space, but we wanted what was a challenge in itself because we had forgotten to fly with the posters set in the studio. We had to check with a poster printer (copy & paste), which was thankfully present at the Cologne fair and was happy to help with the posters. Fortunately, they also had EU converters / sockets, which saves time. Setting up and setting up devices takes up most of the day. Once the switch was installed, another problem was staring directly into the face – our Steam building just didn’t work as a “missing executable”. We had set up and completed the game on a Steam test drive a few days before the event, but there we were confused as you tried to figure out what the problem might be. We had quite a few theories, including: Was it recognized because of the regional change in Steam? Was it because it was an executable file and there are strict anti-download laws in Germany? However, we ran an offline structure on one hard drive that saved the day. It has also been revealed that one of our developers released a Steam Post-Tests type bug that caused this failure.
Day 2 started fairly early for the crew. The platforms and the entrance to the arena were a picture of how many people tried to get into the arena and get to know each other. These were just trade visitors, exhibitors and the press, the event audience had no access to Gamescom. We started out pretty busy when half of the crew were on their way to meetings and the rest occupied the cabin with interested publishers, enthusiastic developers and service providers. One of today’s accomplishments (and the event) was the knowledge that the corporate department can invite up to 100 people to the department. This was probably the only day we had time to try the entertainment that jumped us off.
Day 3 or August 21 was by far the busiest day during the Gamescom entry. Som Aavega Interactive Team; we met several publishers and got an extensive demonstration of Jolly Rogers: Pirates Rumble
Darksiders Franchise Booth
and was quite exhausted in the evening. The lack of food was the least concern from the day the team broke up to get to the meetings in time, and we had to go! Having a slice of pizza in the middle of everything on the walk was just a divine experience and a much needed fuel. At the end of the day, we crawl back to our hotel!
Day 4 and our enthusiasm hadn’t stopped, but in fact it drove forward when we realized the audience was exponentially huge. The road from the pier to the arena was quite eventful, the audience just carried you without us really having to walk. Fortunately, shopkeepers and exhibitors had a separate entrance to the arena. In addition to the gatherings, we had some time to visit Indie Village in Hall 10.2.
