GEEX: Verdict from SLC's least qualified
Salt Lake City is a strange duck in the gaming world (it's a strange duck in any world, but let's stay on topic). I keep hearing the stat that in Utah, there are more gaming consoles per household. It has more game developers than you'd think, and hardly anyone, not even the people who live there, know it.
It also has an annual LAN sponsored by a local hosting company that is held at the University of Utah. It's all kind of underground here. So I was surprised when a show called GEEX, the Gaming and Electronics Expo, was announced. Even more strange was that it was held over E3.
Like anything in Utah, it was pretty tame. It lasted 3 days, all the Youtube videos revealed little about the show and there were suspicions that it would be...well, lame. Predicably, the news shorts and dry newspaper articles were nothing more than the usual "Hey, this thing is going on! Did you know?" type of pieces. I'm not sure which is more amusing to me: the article or the certifiably Utahn comments.
I didn't go. My gamer conscience told me I should, and I didn't, mainly because I didn't really want to spend little of the money we had on it. And anyway, I thought it would be little more than a glorified vendor display. This thing was half tournament and half convention full of speakers and vendors, a little hodgepodge. The topics seemed dry and some of the speakers (one guy was from Neumont University) were a little lacking.
One surprise was how much money was involved in the tournaments. A total of about 20 grand is a lot for Utah.
However, there are three promising signs and reasons I will go next year. First, a ton of people went, probably because of the tournament. Second, there are frequent rumors that some people snubbed it and wished they hadn't (oh the guilt I feel!). Lastly, it's coming back in less than a year.
Folks, this thing ended less than a week ago and they've already taken the old page down and put up the announcement for the next. The next time I've got to go.
It also has an annual LAN sponsored by a local hosting company that is held at the University of Utah. It's all kind of underground here. So I was surprised when a show called GEEX, the Gaming and Electronics Expo, was announced. Even more strange was that it was held over E3.
Like anything in Utah, it was pretty tame. It lasted 3 days, all the Youtube videos revealed little about the show and there were suspicions that it would be...well, lame. Predicably, the news shorts and dry newspaper articles were nothing more than the usual "Hey, this thing is going on! Did you know?" type of pieces. I'm not sure which is more amusing to me: the article or the certifiably Utahn comments.
I didn't go. My gamer conscience told me I should, and I didn't, mainly because I didn't really want to spend little of the money we had on it. And anyway, I thought it would be little more than a glorified vendor display. This thing was half tournament and half convention full of speakers and vendors, a little hodgepodge. The topics seemed dry and some of the speakers (one guy was from Neumont University) were a little lacking.
One surprise was how much money was involved in the tournaments. A total of about 20 grand is a lot for Utah.
However, there are three promising signs and reasons I will go next year. First, a ton of people went, probably because of the tournament. Second, there are frequent rumors that some people snubbed it and wished they hadn't (oh the guilt I feel!). Lastly, it's coming back in less than a year.
Folks, this thing ended less than a week ago and they've already taken the old page down and put up the announcement for the next. The next time I've got to go.
posted by Etelmik at
1:56 PM
2 Comments:
Hah! I didn't go for the same reasons as you. And now I'm thinking I should go to the next one, for the same reasons.
But I think I need to make it out to PAX next year even more.
Agreed. I would really like to go to PAX.
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