GAMEX – Prequel

Introduction

In roughly one month’s time the doors to the biggest and best gaming convention in Sweden will open up and yours truly will be attending the event. I was there last year and I was far from disappointed. Spending an entire day walking around a massive complex filled to the brim with game related information and items are one of my wet dreams.

I haven’t been able to attend events such as E3, GDC or GamesCon because they are all hosted abroad and it is very expensive to go there due to the costs of traveling, providing accommodation and the tickets themselves aren’t cheap. This is why GAMEX is a blessing for those here in Sweden who aren’t working for a well-established paper or website.

The Event

This is only the second time GAMEX opens its doors, and even though they are rookies in the world of gaming expo’s they had a quite impressive stock of conferences as well as a large gathering of developers there last year.

During my visit I had a chance to try out both the PS3 Move along with Kinect before their release, everyone got a sneak peek at games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops, Diablo 3, Battlefield Bad Company 2: Vietnam, The Fight and Dragon Age 2. I even managed to interview an employee from BioWare about their new epic adventure, sadly no photography was allowed but he answered all my questions with extreme professionalism.

Besides the chance of looking at new titles that haven’t been released yet GAMEX also offers you the chance to check out new music, movies and other forms of entertainment. Known artist perform on the different stages, you get the chance to compete against other people to win prizes or take your shot at bringing down a professional gamer. You´ll also be able to bring your computer and attend the Dreamhack event taking place, if you feel like having your gaming gear stolen.

It is all good fun; I spent about 10 hours walking around the showroom during the day and evening. I doubt that the pickings will be slimmer this year since the previous expo was a big success which attracted more people than they thought.

Some of the companies attending this year are Electronic Arts, ASUS, Activision, Bandai Namco, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. I’m quite sure there are even more developers who will be there but sadly not all of them are mentioned.

Expectations

Like everyone else I’ve got some expectations that I hope will be fulfilled when visiting GAMEX, one of them is having a chance to play demos of both Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3. I would also like to see better quality conferences being held this year, even though they had quite a few last time there was no creamy inside and a few were even cancelled or moved to another day.

I also think a lot of people would agree with me when I say that there should be more foreign representatives around to answer questions. They should also think about planning the showroom better since it was hard to find all the booths.

Final Thoughts

I’m really looking forward to visiting GAMEX once again, last time was a complete blast and as I said before I doubt it will be less entertaining since they’re becoming permanently established. I will be writing about my experience at the expo in November.