I was visiting Gamescom 2011 in Cologne last weekend; for those who do not know, it is a big trade fair for video games. It was fun for the most part, and I got to see a lot of things.
I could test some games on the Playstation Vita; it seems like a solid handheld and there will be some great launch titles, but I still like my Nintendo 3DS more. Speaking of which, I "met" around 50 Miis via StreetPass, which works surprisingly well. The upcoming Super Mario 3D Land was also on my list, and I could play it for about five minutes. Beyond that, I also played RAGE, id Software's upcoming first-person shooter; sadly it was on an Xbox 360, and I don't like gamepads for first-person shooters.
Overall, I have mixed feelings about the whole Gamescom trip. I can't say anything about the business area where the press meets the industry for announcements and so on; it already closed before the weekend and it would have been hard for me to get access anyway. I imagine it like a big press event where journalists get to talk to producers and developers, while game studios can advertise their current projects.
The entertainment area however, and this is where I was at, is huge, noisy and crowded. Big screens everywhere, huge stages where you see the typical salesmen trying to attract the crowd by giving away free T-shirts and other merchandise.
My problem is that while I spend the greater part of my time with computer games, be it designing, programming, analyzing, playing games in my free time, teaching other people how to make their games happen, porting games to other platforms, I still don't feel like part of the whole "gamer" culture and I have better things to do than wait four hours in line just to get a first look on something called Diablo III.
I'm also not overly excited watching some 20-year-old Korean nerds battle each other in Starcraft II; it is good fun, maybe a bit like watching a football or soccer game, but I'm not exactly "hyped" about it.
To sum it up, Gamescom was not the best trip of my life, and I got bored at times, but it was interesting nonetheless.
I also made some photos, which should give a much better overview than my incoherent ramblings about gaming culture and such.
A fully functional replica of the famous "Tennis for Two" oscilloscope game.
Massive crowd watching an ESL Starcraft II game.
The spectacular one-million-dollar Dota 2 championship.
People trying to get out of the fair hall at the end of Saturday.
From front to back: My brother Michael (green shirt), his friend (white shirt) and my brother Valentin.
They are testing the upcoming Starcraft II addon "Heart of the Swarm" after standing in line for over one hour.
Crazy promotion action at the XMG stage. Free merchandise stuff is thrown into the crowd. XMG seems to be a laptop brand or something like that. I never really found out.