Ok...a few days ago I reported that we would be going to Game On in Melbourne in Federation Square, right? Well, today on a beautiful sunny day in Melbourne, myself and two friends thought we'd go check it out. We arrived at ACMI at Fed. Square and paid our $15 admission fee. Now, coming into this, I had seen the floor plan and thought it looked a tad too small but figured that the content would more than make up for it, right? Well, let me rip the band aid off and put everyone out of their misery and wonderment...the Game On Exhibition was a massive disappointment to say the least. It was a failure on a catastrophic level!! It would need a crane of the likes which has never been seen before to life it up from whatever mess it had gotten itself into! But I rant, so let me go over a few key areas where it failed miserably. First of all, no pictures were allowed to be taken in the exhibition, no video footage of any kind, no photos of any kind...zip, zilch, nada! Bags had to be checked into a cloakroom before entering, no biggie there. I had my video camera but I thought I'd be able to use my camera on my mobile phone (cell phone for those of you reading overseas). There was one security guard in particular, female, that caught my friend taking a picture of a Mario concept drawing by Shigeru Miyamoto after she had asked him not to. She made him delete the picture from his mobile phone!! What kind of Gestapo tactics were these in play but it was to get better. There were tons of people taking pics with their mobile phones and with cameras but these were given free rein to do so. It was like she had deliberately picked on us and given us a hard time!
Second of all, the Sega Dreamcast had a big presence there which was fricking great but one of the best games ever made for pure fun and incredible sound, Rez, wasn't even being showcased on the DC. It was being shown on a *expletive* Sony PS2??? WTF??? I don't understand what went through the mind of the organisers of the event. Rez on a DC?? This just goes to show that some people have absolutely no idea of what a gamer is and what makes them tick. The floor plan wasn't broken up into manufacturers instead all the consoles were all over the place. So you had the Nintendo Gamecube and then next to it a Sony PSP?? What gives? I still can't make sense of the floor layout.
But the last gripe and what made me ask for my money back, figuratively speaking, was that I was expecting a presentation or things hanging on a wall like in a museum. After all, it was presented as such. Instead what we got was no different from walking into your local video game store and seeing various kiosks all demonstarting different games. There was zero difference between Game On and a games store!!! I could easily set up my vcarious consoles at home, get them running different games and charge people $15 to walk in my doors and experience some cutting edge gameplay!!
To finish up...if it comes back, won't be going back if the floorplan remains the same and to the female security guard, you know you are, "Sucked in mate! I managed to get the pics below when you weren't looking!!"
The full sized pics can be seen in the Photos section.