Over the last weekend of May the first Electronics & Gaming Expo was held at the CTICC. My brother and I had initially planned to just check it out on the Friday but because it was so quiet we decided to come back the next day, which was the right decision as the place was packed and most of the advertised events and competitions were taking place. Here’s a look at days 1 and 2 at EGE CT 2015.

  

Like I said, Friday was pretty quiet, but the advantage to going then was that we actually got to try out most of the demos (except for Oculus) and see some pretty surreal sights, like these two little kids absolutely dominating Mortal Kombat X (they knew all the character backstories, special moves and fatalities…equal parts impressive and terrifying).

  

Saturday was a totally different story, we arrived round lunchtime and already the parking lot was full up to level 6 so we knew from the get-go things would be more exciting inside. And they were – the cosplay contest was in full swing and very entertaining.

    

  

 

  

    

  

My brother was pretty excited to recognise a bunch of cosplayers from Kalahari’s Diablo III launch back in 2012 …

We also chatted to the team from Amazeballz who designed and sported some really cool costumes and contraptions for the expo.

  

Exhibitors included software and hardware companies, comics, new and used games, fanart and figurines and a massive collection of boardgames for sale and available to play on the dedicated game tables.

  

  

  

As well as having loads of games available for people to check out and play, official competitions and demos included live game tournaments, a presentation for and by cosplayers including practical tips and tricks on building costumes, wig maintenance and selecting the right contact lenses, a ‘hack-a-thon’ as well as a live over-clocking demo where the guys were using liquid nitrogen to cool their system down.

  

  

Though I’m really not a serious gamer I enjoyed the expo and think for a first time event it was a big success.

There’s definitely room to improve though – sure more exhibitors would have been nice but my biggest gripes were the lack of an accurate itinerary (no-one at the event was able to tell me what time anything was taking place, and all events advertised for the expo were simply given the time of somewhere between Friday and Sunday, not good enough I’m afraid) and a pretty sub-par digital presence which, for an event like this is kinda embarrassing – if there was an official event page on Facebook, I couldn’t find it (only events for the Hackathon and cosplay…both with the vague timelines I mentioned earlier) and the website was very spare on information too – buying tickets was also a bit of a struggle, I only saw one direct link to computicket on the EGE website and unfortunately I only saw it after I manually searched Computicket for the event and once I’d bought the tickets there was no option to print them at home…and my local computicket branch couldn’t give them to me either because it wasn’t on their system so I had to go to Checkers which thankfully worked. I know that I’m complaining about a third party company now, but the expo would have had some involvement in the ticket process, surely? At the very least they should have made sure the tickets could be printed at home.

  

Anyway, all things considered I had a lot of fun and am sure everyone else who went did too. Looking forward to seeing where this event goes in the future- hopefully it’ll be back again next year, bigger and better.

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EGE on Facebook  |  website  |  Cosplay SA

Gallery on Facebook over here