MAGFest X (2/2)

MAGFest Round Two: Fight!

Last week's Blackout threw off my schedule a little bit. So I'm going to try and double up here for a few weeks to get back on track. Let me start by wrapping up my MAGFest posts.

I could go on about the panels at MAGFest, because although it is the "Music and Gaming Festival," they throw a hell of a media con. I mean, just check out GLaDOS reading a letter to Princess Celestia or The Super Art Fight!

But one only needs to pause for a moment of quiet reflection anywhere in MAGFest to remember that the real focus is… is… OOOAAAARRRRGH

*clears throat*… is video games. (Yes, I found and watched and time stamped every one of those links for you. Because I love you, my MAGFestians. If you can ride it out past the eight minute mark of that last video, you come out transformed. Yes, I watched all ten minutes. I AM IMMUNE!)

If someone could write a script that would play the roar at random intervals no shorter than two minutes and no longer than twenty, you too could experience the joys of MAGFest. Well, not really, but I do want to troll my next LAN party that way. I know a few attendees were annoyed by it, but I wound up fascinated. It's an offline, randomly-generated, aural meme, and it's really fun to do.

The game room is astounding. I couldn't get my camera far back enough to fit all of it in one shot. Here's my best try. Ooh, look! They had X-Men!

I was standing at the mid-point of the room, in front of the pinball section.

There were clusters of games so that the space was not claustrophobic.

The dealers' room and board game area were located in the other half of this room. At first, I was fooled by the scale. "Oh, the dealers' room is just one fourth of the space, it's not that many people." On Saturday afternoon, I learned how wrong I was.

I just wanted to go through and pick up business cards. That's it. Maybe one or two quick hellos, but mainly if they were selling something, I wanted a website. If they weren't, I wanted to know if they were interested in interviews so we could make a later pass with the camcorder.

This simple request quickly divided the vendors into people who were livid that I would dare window shop, and people who were immensely friendly and willing to make sure that I understood why they were blazingly awesome. I'm looking at you, Mighty Rabbit Studios, Hello with Cheese and Random Encounter.

My speedrun of the dealers' room took me about three hours. I had to find a second bag to carry all the business cards. Overall, the majority of my time was spent bouncing around these two warehouse-sized rooms. I tried to make all the concerts that I could, and I did check in on panels, and those did stand head-and-shoulders above many cons that I've attended. But that's not where the real soul of MAGFest is.

It's finding Super Mario and realizing it's so much harder than you remembered. It's staring at the pinball machines going, "They made a pinball game out of that?" It's coming across a game that you know only by referential internet humor.

It's REAL!? Kidding, kidding.

As with any con, the attendees really make or break the weekend. Regardless of Jeff's critiques of their attire, I found MAGFest to be full of friendly, outgoing, and moderate-to-seriously competitive gaming geeks. I loved the inside jokes that gave the con a unique feel. The ratio of games to attendees meant that you never had to wonder if there would be anyone around to play Small World, but there was never too long a line for DDR (and they were people you'd want to play with, or wouldn't mind waiting behind).

Of course, any large gathering of people produces some rather random or funny encounters. For a collection of hilarious stories, check out this post on the MAGFest forums. Here's mine:

The Gaylord's glass atrium elevators go up all 18 floors and are visible to the huge open area below. Around midnight on Friday, I was going back to my room to grab a forgotten bit of equipment when a tween leapt into the elevator with me.

"Hell yes! I've been waiting for one of these all night."

I looked around the otherwise empty elevator. "I'm surprised. I haven't seen one get crowded all day. What floor are you trying to get to?"

"Don't care what floor. Had to get a glass one. ELEVATOR PARTY!" and he started bobbing his head slightly in time to imagined music.

I got out on my floor, "Um, ok. Enjoy your elevator."

"Yeah, you too, you too, you too," as he slammed his hands over all the buttons, and the dance began.
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And that, geeks and nerds, is our 100th DC Geeks post. Thanks for reading. I can't wait to see what we're able to do in the next hundred posts.