I don't remember whether this was the 8th or 9th time that I attended the event that until 2008 was called simply “the Games Convention”. Either way, even with almost a decade of gaming-expo expertise, I never cease to be amazed by how even the cheapest and ugliest of branded keychains or other promotional items elicit such fights to the death among what scientists technically refer to as “The Unwashed Masses”. Unless we're talking about the Portal 2 shirt. That probably was worth breaking a neck or two. Swagstravaganza.

But yeah, let's talk about some actual hardware and software, shall we?

Ever since E3 switched back to its old format, gamescom has been suffering somewhat. Most of the publishers tend to bring their old builds to Europe, since it would be rather uneconomical to produce a new demo for a show that is this close. Sony, Disney Interactive and Capcom decided to completely skip gamescom 2010 even. Nevertheless, the show attracted over 254,000 visitors this year.

Sony—a company that always cared more about the European shows than Nintendo or Microsoft—finally got around to announcing Resistance 3. What a relief! The genre of grey/brown-ish, irony-free sci-fi shooters in which you get to fight an alien invasion or something along those lines had been starving for so long now after all. Obviously, it wasn't the only action title that made it to Cologne this year.

Every year gamers get together far and wide to help kids cope with having to be in the hospital by making sure they have videogames, toys, and other supplies to play with. It's not just a holiday thing; this helps out year round. So go to http://www.childsplaycharity.org and see if your local hospital has got it's list up. If not, get them in touch with Kristen and she can help them get started.

While the original target of 200,000+ visitors wasn't met - it's been "only" 185,000 -, the Games Convention 2007 was once again one of the biggest shows in the industry. This was my fifth time attending the GC, but the first I ran into a fellow GWJ reader, chrisg. And unlike last year when I was busy demoing a certain game, I actually had some time left to check out other games such as Spore, Team Fortress 2 and StarCraft II among others.

Within four years the Games Convention 2005 has established itself as the gaming expo juggernaut in Europe. Last year the show had more than 105,000 visitors. That number was topped already on Saturday this year – one day before show ended. Once again it was crowded, once again it was loud, once again Chrisg didn't make it to Leipzig, once again I had a lot less time for games than I had originally planned.

As some of you may have heard by now EA sports spent over 300 million dollars to buy exclusive rights to the NFL players, teams and stadiums for the next five years of gaming. This essentially kills ESPN Football and any other brand looking to make a competing product. Bill Harris over at Dubious Quality posted some excellent thoughts on the issue, I suggest you have a look if you're interested. As a community we can help try to turn this around or at least show EA and the NFL our displeasure. Click here to sign the petition asking the NFL to reverse the deal for the sake of the gaming industry and their own organization.

Another thing you can do is quit buying EA games new. If there is a title you simply must play buy it used, don't give them a cent. There may not be much we can do about this but you just never know what can happen.

I didn't have much time for frontpage content in the past months, but things are slowly getting back on track and I should have some more time for gaming again in the near future. Nevertheless, I'd like to use this opportunity to point out a great feature DIY-Games and GameTunnel have partnered for. They wrote down brief previews, introducing all 81 games that are running in the Independent Games Festival 2005 Competition. Shedding a light on titles like the adventure The Witch's Yarn, which is...

... quite unlike any other game at the festival. It plays more like a book or a play than a game, and provides a very innovative game play that will likely get this game noticed. In the game you don't control a character as you typically do in video games. Instead you queue actors into the story.

Curious? Well, the other entries aren't uninteresting either and cover the full range from arcade shooters up to puzzle games. Not to mention the obligatory Break-Out clone! Fight spammers in Base Be Gone or control space battles in Chain of Command. Slitherine - we had a little chat with them a while ago - submitted their online strategy project Legion Arena, GWJ's platform darling Gish also happens to be among the contestants. Again. I highly recommend browsing through the articles at DIY-Games and GameTunnel as you will stumble over a number of unique and remarkable games you may have overlooked or not heard of at all otherwise.

EBGames.com failed me again, for some reason they didn't list Tribes: Vengeance so it didn't even get a mention in The Week Ahead. Sway, Pyro and I had a great time with the new demo a couple days ago and I found the beta to be both exciting and rife with jet packing. Assuming they offer the dedicated server files to the public, the GWJ server will be hosting the retail version of the game as soon as possible. It's about time you people experience my uncanny spinfuser lead shots and amazing grappling skills.

The single player looks like it will be more fun than the previous two games too, bonus!

Games Convention 2004 in Leipzig/Germany – after attending the GC for the first time in 2003 (as reported here and here)
I was really looking forward to participating on the exhibitor side of
things. And unlike last year I was there for the whole 4 days. Settlers
V, Splinter Cell 3, Pro Evolution Soccer 4, Brothers in Arms, Halo 2,
Fable and many titles from smaller German and Eastern-European developers
were waiting for me. Oh I so would be playing them, have a fun time at
the show and only pretend I'm working.

And oh was I wrong.

Day three of E3 is upon us and the drive to catch a glimpse of the games that have eluded us thus far is in full swing. It's already 1PM here and Sway and I still haven't hit the West hall for another pass at Nintendo's display. We did get some pretty intensive looks at Microsoft's games so let's start with that!