Armageddon 09 ASB Showgrounds Auckland

As mentioned in our previous post, Game Culture was invited to cruise along to the Armageddon 09 Expo on the weekend held at the ASB Showgrounds in Greenlane, Auckland. If you’ve never attended an Armageddon in Auckland before, you’re definitely in for a treat. For fans of pop culture in general, there’s plenty to see and do at the expo. But if you’re a gamer, there’s usually a whole bunch of cool new games you can check out.

But before we get into the games, lets talk about the history of gaming’s involvement in Army and a little background on the venue. In previous years, the Armageddon expo has been successfully held at the Aotea Centre. If you’re a gamer that has attended Army before, you’ll certainly remember the event because it also used to be the venue for the BBS (Black Box Session) gaming LAN. The gaming LAN was held in conjunction with the Armageddon expo and was always a huge success with console gamers. There doesn’t seem to be too many decent console gaming LANs around these days, so the retirement of the BBS event was a very sad day for gamers. However, that said, this year there was another gaming LAN held for gamers which was sponsored by a relatively new outfit on the LAN circuit called ‘Gameplayer.’ Unfortunately, we didn’t seem to notice anything truly LAN gaming related happening in that corner of the expo when we checked it out:

There didn’t seem to be any Xboxes, Playstation’s or even a Wii for that matter… one must ask, ‘Is this a gaming LAN at all?’ Needless to say, the gamers at the tables looked extremely caught up in something... and after further investigation, it turns out that Gameplayer are big sponsors/supporters of Yugi-Oh in New Zealand. OK then… moving on.

While we have nothing in particular against Yugi-Oh (admittedly, I’ve never played the game nor do I have any inclination to do so in the future), we’re pretty sure the dudes in the photo appreciate what Gameplayer do on that side of things, but clearly, it’s no BBS. There’s a good chance we missed some of the ‘real’ gaming action (as we could only attend on one day of the event), so if you’re reading this and you know we’re wrong, feel free to let us know.

The next best thing for gamers had to be the display areas sponsored by various gaming distributors such as Sony, EA, Madman and Total Interactive. And I have to say, all of the distributors put on some great displays, Total Interactive especially with two stages! In the TI area various games were showcased including the upcoming ‘DJ Hero’ which looks and sounds totally fantastic, and also Guitar Hero 5 (which has already released).

DJ Hero was setup on a stage where you could get up and try it out for yourself. Although I was asked very nicely by Teresa to get up and strut my mixing/DJ skills, I thankfully declined to wait until I could embarrass myself in the comfort of my own home

There was also a stage setup for the guitar hero fans where you could do the same thing if you really wanted to… and some of the people that got up and played were actually pretty good!

Sony had two separate areas setup for their games due to the R18 restriction on games such as ‘God of War III’. And there’s no way you could miss the Sony area with their big, bright Sony symbols pointing the way.

We talked about the full list of games that were on offer at Armageddon here and if you attended on the second day, you could probably get close enough to even touch the consoles the games were being played on!

By all accounts Saturday was the busiest day for Armageddon where  it was literally back-to-back with people. So if you ever plan to go for the gaming, it’s better to go on the second day when there’s less people fighting over console time.

In general, it seemed like there was alot of space at the event that could have been filled by other things. Although there was more on display this year than last (due to the increased floor capacity), the Aotea Centre venue seemed a whole lot better to me. You could wander around and not get lost in empty spaces with arrows telling you that ‘You Are Here’.

I think on a personal note the loss of the BBS event for gamers is a big blow to the Armageddon event because without it, it’s not really a true gamers event to attend. The game distributors are great for organising their games on display to give gamers (and the general public) a taste of what’s to come which is awesome, but Armageddon just doesn’t seem like the same place for a gamer to hang out. It’s lost some of the atmosphere that made it exciting.

There’s no doubt that Armageddon is a great event for people to get out and see what’s happening in the world of pop culture and credit must go where it’s due. Kudos to Bill for organising the event every year and to all the distributors and sponsors for putting in so much effort to setup stages and consoles for everyone to play on.

Thanks to the Armageddon PR people from Paul Blomfield and to Sony for the media passes.