OddballGreg - rAge Gaming Expo 2014

rAge gaming Expo, the place where all the fine gaming enthusiasts of South Africa gather to stare at the oddly dressed, play new games and gather bundles of advertisements, half of which they are unlikely to look at.

Gaming, a 4000+ person lan, closed door game viewings, public gameplay booths, exclusive offers, local developer initiatives and a lot of walking, these and more were what I experienced at my first time at rAge. Let's talk about it.

For those of you not yet sure, rAge is the large, annual gaming expo organised by NAG (New Age Gaming) and, more recently as I understand it, IGN Africa, which was launched with the aid of NAG back in December 2013. Famous for cosplayers; a 2000+ person lan where people from all over the country, (and perhaps even from outside of it), come to connect to a massive lan network and play games for 3 days straight; game booths and developer talks and just general nerdy madness.

So with that out of the way, here's what I saw at the rAge 2014, the first major gaming expo I've attended. Standing out in the lines outside, the first game of the day was spotting various cosplayers waiting to enter the exposition, with appearances ranging from the blurred out showering Sims woman, to Cloud and Sephiroth Final Fantasy, to a woman dressed in a black rogue outfit that was eventually agreed to have probably been a Legend of Zelda character. (Though there were plenty other great cosplay outfits to be seen within later on, such as fantastic Vi and Jinx outfits from League Of Legends, a large variety of Star Wars characters including the typical Jedi and Sith characers and even some Ewoks, a couple of masked Ichigo's from Bleach and many others, this video from Evetech showing some of the colorful characters from earlier days.

My thoughts were ambivalent as I took my first steps into the actual expo area once the doors were opened, inaccurately stowing my halved entrance ticket into my breast pocket as I walked, my somewhat less nerdy girlfriend beside me with a mixture of interest and exhaustion on her face due to a long night the day before. (I appreciate her suffering my excited explanations of each game we came across, having been following them online for a long time already myself.)

Post entrance, the first place of note we happened to stumble upon was the fenced of Nag Lan, filled with tired looking gamers, a lot of blow up mattresses and sleeping bags, and a rather massive screen detailing how the 2Gb p/s line provided by Internet Solutions had at that point downloaded a whopping 100TB over the course of the expo. (For any foreign readers, I will point out that the average South African uses a 2mbps ADSL line, and frequently gets the urge to punch people that complain about not being able to stream 1080p. Teehee)

That behind us, we proceeded on to find the home_coded stand which is for South African developers to display their works, at which point I immediately found my way to the screen where the highly acclaimed Broforce by FreeLives and watched a good few moments of patriotic madness before we moved on. (I will guiltily admit to forgetting to look at the other home_coded games that were on show due to a desire to see what more this buzzing event had to offer, and perhaps an unnecessary ambition to ensure that my girlfriend remained entertained. BECAUSE PRIORITIES!) 

Nevertheless, onward we walked, our feet bringing us through aisle after aisle whereupon we discovered the XboxOne stand, complete with Assassins Creed Unity as well as various other games such as Sunset Overdrive, Shadow Of Mordor and Alien: Isolation, Forza Horrizon 2 and various others. Having been intensely interested in Assassins Creed Unity and Shadow Of Mordor since their announcements, they received the brunt of my attention while we explored the Xbox stand.

Steps along brought us past the various board game and trinket shops, as well as an enjoyable conversation with one of the local game artists who discussed the state of art showing at rAge, as well as various other things. (And was wearing a Sailor Moon shirt... which was pretty cool.) I admittedly cannot remember her stand name, but will sure to give a shout-out to her for some really cool 8bit art and a very friendly personality.

Continued exploration brought us across the rather inky Splatoon stand, the parkour inspired zombie game Dying Light, and the 2K stand which was admittedly the only one that made me excitedly drag my unfortunate girlfriend along so that I can watch Borderland: The Pre-Sequal in action. Also, here's a trailer for said game... because it's awesome!

That said, we accidentally found ourselves in a closed door showing of a Tom Clancy's The Division walkthrough by chance, which was itself quite interesting as a very ambitious and original MMORPG shooter as they discussed the various elements of gameplay and the engine designed exclusively for the game.

Eyes readjusting to the light of the main dome, our attention soon came to the event stage where League Of Legends pro, Stephen "Snoopeh" Ellis of the Evil Geniusus team, was talking about what it is to be a professional gamer and basically bringing attention to amateur league tournaments such as the BlackMonsterCup which is where he started his professional gaming career. He also did push-ups... 70 of them. (I will admit to feeling slightly lazy at that point, considering my slightly sedentary lifestyle as a gamer, blogger, and general IT aficionado has led to an appalling state of fitness.)

Following that, the final stop was the Mortal Kombat X stand which I only noticed as it was clearly visible from the stands we had been sitting on while Snoopeh spoke. A few minutes of watching Sub Zero brutally remove various parts of his opponents, and it was fair to say that my girlfriend and I were somewhat tired after what had been a rather eventful few hours, (unsurprising considering we were tired before we had arrived.), the Corsair sponsored Dota 2 tournament was announcing it's end as we made our way to the exit, somewhat satisfied with all that we had seen, but glad to be going. (Take into account that we both crashed for about an hour or two after getting home, and it's clear just how tired we actually were.)

All in all, my first time at a gaming expo, and at rAge in specific was fairly eventful and interesting, though I think getting some sleep before I go next time is well under advisement. If you were there at rAge and saw something awesome that I missed, or just think I'm silly for going there tired, please be sure to let us know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter as we here at TCSA love to hear from you. Better yet, be sure to share this article with any of your friends who went to or wanted to go to rAge this year, they may appreciate the info. And if you yourself would like to read more fun articles like this one, do be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter so that you can get all the latest posts, as they're published. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Happy gaming my friends.