Despite growing up on video games, I've never been to a Games Conference before. I don't know why that was the case; could be a conflict in schedule, a venue too inconvenient for me to make the trip to, or maybe I'm just cheap that I didn't want to spend some money for the tickets. Finally I've decided that things should change. I love gaming, and now that I'm working my way up the games development ladder I should expose myself to these things. Attending the Philippine Game Festival is the first time I ever got to experience something remotely comparable to international events such as E3, PAX, TGS, or GDC.
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| SMX Mall of Asia |
The conference was held in SMX Mall of Asia. Me and my wife took the two hour drive from Bulacan to Pasay City to get to the event venue. It was a two day event (Oct 3-4), but we only attended the 2nd day, as it was the only time we're available. We arrived at the event place around lunch time, so it's not surprising to see fewer people on the floor.
If I'm not mistaken this is the fifth PGF, and understandably, the venue is much smaller than the more prominent game events, like E3. Hopefully someday though, the Philippine gaming industry would pick up and grow even bigger. Also, this is an indies only event, unlike in E3, where the big publishers have the money to set up gigantic TV screens, and hire booth babes. No, there are no booth babes here. It's all about the games and devices!
Speaking of devices, I tried the much anticipated Occulus Rift. In case you haven't heard of it, it's a virtual reality headgear. You wear it like a heavy pair of goggles, and the screen is presented to you in full 3 dimensions. You literally feel like you are in the world. I remember stepping up the edge of a cliff and my fear of heights crept up on me for a second. I managed to jump across though.
Some devices are pre-configured for near or far sighted visions, but actually you can configure it anytime. I'm 20/20, so I didn't try them.
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| Jacque tried it. She felt dizzy after |
Most Occulus games on display were horror games. We didn't try those. We went with the one adventure demo being developed by Secret 6.
Then there's the mobile games. I was especially keen on them because as you know, we're developing our own mobile game right now, and I wanted to learn how to set up a booth and promote a mobile game on places like this. While their demonstrations are in tablets, they still brought some TVs to help promote the game. Some have a single device with them, some have many on display, mainly because they have more than one game to showcase.
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| Kooapps's booth |
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| IGDA Manila's booth |
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| Pop Puff and Away showcase |
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| The Face Mountain booth |
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| A Mascot! The guy inside the suit was a former officemate, but I forgot his name... |
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| Boomzap's booth. They have a couple of games on display |
The games we had the chance to try are good; inspiring even. It's nice to know that games awareness in this country is continuously growing and we're moving from a purely consumer community to independent producers. I hope someday a triple A developer and publisher would hail from the Philippines, and go toe to toe with Square Enix, Ubisoft, and even EA.
Lastly there are PC games. A couple of titles on display are familiar to me, because I've seen their campaign on Kickstarter.
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| Wild Season by Quickfire Games |
I wanted to try the Quickfire Games booth, but their game seemed addicting that no one was gonna leave anytime soon. Their game Wild Season was on Kickstarter and funded since last year. It's a Harvest Moon type of game, which Jacque and I loved.
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| GDAP booth |
There's also the GDAP booth, where I could have been a part of (just assuming, hahaha). I tried two demos: the first is a JRPG, and the second one is some zombie first person game.
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| Wish there was more laptops there |
We went through the booths counter clockwise, and so the last booth we got to visit was the Graywalker's Purgatory booth. It's a full 3D turn based tactical RPG. Think Final fantasy Tactics, The Banner Saga, and so on. I didn't get the chance to try it, but according to their kickstarter page it's set in a post apocalyptic world, so it might immediately interest the Fallout fans out there.
We didn't stick around for long. The trip back home would have been very painful if we got caught up in rush hour. By 2 pm we were out of there. Sadly, we couldn't attend any of the scheduled conference because of this. All is good though, we got shirts, magazines, notebooks, and even snacks as freebies!
All in all the experience was fun and worth it. We'd be willing to attend the next gaming event and pretty soon, hopefully we'll be up there with our own booth!
-- LJ
To contact the author, just send your e-mail to hobbigames@gmail.com
