Nvidia #GAME24 London – Things we saw and things we haven’t

When I saw that Nvidia is planning a gaming event in London, I got pretty excited. I admit, I am a bit of a fan boy. Ok, maybe a bit more then “a bit”. But who wouldn’t be happy bout going to a PC gaming event, located not too far from you, with free beer and potential goodies.

#GAME24 was an part of a global gaming event, run over 24h in few places around the globe, with London being the last location. You could watch the live stream of the event on Twich, or register for a local event if it was somewhere close to you. That is exactly what I did. And even though I received my confirmation, the scary line claiming that not everyone might get in, held me in such a grip that even on a coach to London I was stressing about not making it in time. Silly me.

Turns out me and my friend arrived in plenty of time, managed to find a nice spotregistrations in a queue an hour before the doors opened, and started chatting to some other gaming nerds standing in with us. Since this was purely PC gaming event, one can easily imagine what were the topics of the conversations. Anything from “those kids playing CoD” to “pfft, console gamers”. Silly us. Someone from the events company had a pretty good idea about doing the registrations before the doors were opened. Good thinking.

An hour later we were invited inside. I can see the screens. I can see the logos. I can see games. Where’s the bar?

So what did we managed to see on #Game24 ?

We saw few games, of course. Now, I have to admit, London event wasn’t the biggest of them all. We had few game companies putting up their games like Gauntlet, Project Cars, Metro Redux, Darksouls 2, and some zombie game name of which escapes me… (in all fairness, it wasn’t very good).

Most of the gaming stands were also showing off the rigs. This I did enjoy, as not only most PC gamers will appreciate a good looking gaming rig, but also I had a chance to see some cases I was thinking of buying in real life. Scan Computers had a stand there (and it was the only company which had a manned stand) with a massive PC plugged into a massive screen and playing Project Cars.

scanApart from few games we were able to play (oh yes, and you could get in a massive queue to play few minutes of new EVE game on Oculus Rift), two free beers, unlimited free Red Bull and £5 worth of Paella (that wasn’t half bad) there were giveaways. I wanted to say panels, but unfortunately they were too short and didn’t really bring much content to call them that. So 4 times throughout the night we met in main section, the DJ’s would stop the music and we were introduced to someone. Who usually carried gifts.

 

Yes.

GTX 980.

This.

Unfortunately, I did not managed to win one (was close though). There was a lottery system (each bracelet had a number) which drew two numbers, which followed by silly challenge to decide who’ll get it. Like holding a PC case in front of you, and whoever lowers their arms first, would loose. Well, as silly it might sound, it was actually fun. The MC was engaging, the crowd was cheering (surely helped by two small beers everyone had). And we actually had a good time. They also gave away an Nvidia Shield tablet with a controller, some World of Tanks T-Shirts (seriously?) and another GTX980 at the end.

Oh, wait. No they didn’t! Apparently someone messed something up, and they only had GTX970 left. After a lot of booing and generally sad faces, they decided to give away … a bunch loads of Steam codes for the upcoming Borderlands Pre-Sequel! Well, that’s a win for me, as I did not get the GPU, so having a game nice gesture.

And that giveaway ended the night. Sure, the music carried on, you could stay till midnight and play some games, socialise (though most people left after the last GTX went to a new home). I stayed for some more Gauntlet, had a chat with the boss of Scan Computers, even got a selfie with him, after which decided to start my journey back.

Richer with a few freebies and a game, I went home. All in all it was a good event. Maybe felt a little bit rushed, and maybe next time it should involve some more content about actual tech (other locations had talks from some important people, talking about new Maxwell chips etc). But, after all, it was a hype up event to boost release of new GPU and I think it did it’s job.

Looking forward to the next one.

Over and out.

@scancomputers

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