As the UK’s biggest public gaming event, it would have been rude to neglect the 2013 Eurogamer Expo as we came off the back of Gamescom, PAX and the Tokyo Game Show. More than that, we wanted to make an impression on our home turf. This called for some Rare representatives with serious star power to weave a magnetic spectacle as they demonstrated KSR to eager crowds. As it turned out, only producers Mike and Adam were available. Zing! But how did they do? Over to Mike…
Attending public gaming events is always an interesting experience. The people you meet, the games you play and the feedback you receive all combine to create an event that’s every bit as exciting as it is tiring. With the Eurogamer Expo completed for another year, here’s a whistle-stop summary for those of you not lucky enough to attend.
Myself, Adam and studio head Craig manned the three demo pods, alongside Claire and Dan from the Xbox demo team, with engineers Jafar and Pete offering much-needed cover over the weekend. It was also up to me and Adam to entertain the crowds every couple of hours by demoing live on the Xbox stage. With everything prepped on Wednesday, all that was left was four days of continuous demos to over 70,000 attendees.
The doors opened at 10am on Thursday.
With the announcement of our exclusive Eurogamer Expo competition, we pushed most players towards Wake Racing so that they could put in some crucial practice for the 4pm stage show. We explained the acceleration and steering controls and players competed over our LAN setup, with each respective demoer offering encouragement to beat their opponent. Friendships and bragging rights hung in the balance with races coming down to hundredths of a second. Impressions were positive and I think we enjoyed the rivalries as much as those actually playing.
With people returning multiple times, we also had Climbing for them to experience. Scaling a huge stone stack against three other opponents is a pretty unique experience and felt completely different to anything else on the show floor. Representatives from various websites (including 123Kinect) got hands-on and instantly felt the increased fidelity that Kinect now offers.
As well as running the competition, we hopped on stage to show off the Champion scan experience. Nerve-racking doesn’t come close to describing the feeling as you wait for that newly-created Champion to be revealed – but all was good and every scan came out perfectly. Adam and myself soon got the hang of presenting and were quickly branded the Chuckle Brothers because of our ‘bants’ on stage. Not sure if that was a good thing, but at least we were making ourselves laugh.
Playing on stage in front of an audience is completely different to playing at the booth on the show floor. Competition contestants soon found this out. While the best recorded times at the booth were around 54 seconds, times of 1:04 were sometimes good enough to win the prize – a visit to Rare and immortalisation as a character in the game. Congratulations to the winners and we’ll be seeing you again soon!
To top off a fantastic week, we were delighted to win an award for Best Sports Game of the show. See the pictures below for a punch-drunk Adam showing it off immediately after finishing a stage show. Also for pictures of us with some stage show winners, and the Earls Court floor plan which looked like an upside-down Magic Tree air freshener and made us laugh more than it should.
Thanks to everyone who played, the fantastic Xbox crew (especially Claire and Dan!), Envy and NJ Live who supported us all week.
See you next year!
