Go3+Expo+2009

Report on visitation to an IT Conference by Jade Ling.

This is a report detailing my visitation to the G03 Electronic and Entertainment Expo in 2009, which was held at the Perth Conventin Centre. Go3 ran from Friday the 2nd till Sunday the 4th of October, and I chose to attend on the Sunday with my friends. The expo focused primarily on electronics, such as car stereo systems, and entertainment, such as laser tag booths and comic stalls. I knew about this years G03 because I had been told about it by a friend the year before, and I knew it was an annual convention. Therefore after checking with Jack that Go3 was an acceptable confrence to attend to, I arranged to go with my friends. Also a large participant was the ‘make a game’ competition that students from various educational institutions had been participating in.

For example, there where stalls from Curtin university, where students had hooked exercise bicycles up to a computer. The game interpreted movement output from the pedals as movement in game (you actually had to pedal the bike to move), and also recorded the handle bar movements as turning and aiming movements in game. A few custom triggers on the handlebars also allowed participants to shoot at targets. Students from Murdoch tafe, Fremantle E-tech and Central Tafe also presented games that they had been developing.

A particularly interesting demonstration was from Murdoch Tafe. They had computers forming a square, with several screens mounted on rigging above them. The screens displayed different character models at different points in time (ranging from a burly soldier to an orc, as I saw) and was controlled by a student in a special suit with sensors that detected movement, and fed the information back into the computer. This then synched the computer model with the student, and the model made the same movements. There was a pamphlet noting that this technology was widely used in the game making industry when creating animations, especially when the focus is on realistic and believable movement.

There were several stalls from laser tag and paintball companies- I counted 4 laser tag and 3 paintball. Many small business also had stalls, offering anime-focused merchandise such as wall scrolls, graphic novels, figurines and statuettes, game and anime themed necklaces and other such things. There where at least three of these stores, one of which had a large collection of prints and wall scrolls.

Several traditional card-game small business has set up stalls; there was one focusing on Dungeons and Dragons, another focusing on Warhammer, and one that contained miscellaneous games such as YuGiOh and Starwars. Of particular interest to me was a display showcasing the new Dungeons and Dragons style or tabletop roleplay, where 3D elements are introduced into the game, by way of model walls and such.

I noticed two displays of car audiotronics. Immediately upon entry, I noticed the Joker-themed 4WD positioned smack in the middle of the entryway. I was in awe of the time and level of technical skill needed to airbrush the entire car with incredibly accurate and almost life like blood splatters and madly grinning and hooting Jokers from the movie the Dark Knight. The car had two massive subwoofers instead of back seats and sported many LCD screens- one of which was in the middle of the boot. At the time the screens where showing off the Spiderman movie. The second car had a sleek silver finish and was at the back of the expo, and surrounded by display pedestals with various different types of speakers. This car had an incredible set up, I could feel the bass thudding through me as I walked past even though the car’s music was turned down low.

A large view-screen was also displaying various anime and movies, giving visitors to the expo a place to sit down and take a breather. Several of the people nearby when I stopped for a breather were in cosplay (that is, dressing up as a character from a game or anime) and where posing for pictures.

I enjoyed being able to get a sneak peek at Borderlands, a game which was being released soon after the expo. The game is an FPS or first person shooter, and the booth was curtained off and set to the side. There were several large screens exhibiting the game and allowing visitors to give it a try, on both the xbox 360 console and the PS3 console. I chatted with one of the presenters for a little while, and was intrigued to learn that the game uses a special mathematical matrix to calculate and develop both monsters and weapons, so it is theoretically plausible to have unique monster/weapon combinations in every game. Also, the developers had announced that there where upwards of a million weapon combinations, because you could combine virtually anything together.

The textures in the background of the game looked cell-shaded, which was an interesting choice; because it doesn’t require so much processing time, it leaves more room for more CPU intensive applications to run more smoothly, such as the impressive weapons and monster randomization. Also, I found the co-op modes interesting, as if you get stuck in single player mode, you can connect, via the internet, to a friend and invite them to help you out in your game.

I was a little bit disappointed in this years G03, however.

When I went last year the major focus was on electronics; nVidia had a display of their latest graphics card, Alienware had a massive table setup with their cases and hardware with a recently released game available for visitors to play, and there where many other vendors of computer hardware and software present. In comparison, the 2009 Go3 falls rather short as it seems more aimed at the entertainment sector and I found this disappointing. Even though I enjoyed myself, the focus on more traditional gaming versus pc or console gaming, and the focus on audio system and anime instead of technology was a different experience than what I had been looking forward to.

Afterwards, upon reading reviews of the expo, several other people expressed the same opinion. Also, many of the small businesses that attended where promised enough profit to offset their presence, but did little by way of sales. Much of the marketing for the con also focused on the presence of the Twilight stall, which sold autographed pictures and merchandise. Having this tall was completely irrevelant to Go3 and soured my experience because it was clearly just an attempt to draw in more customers and make some money. Twilight had nothing to do with the purpose of the con and was clearly just a marketing gimmick which I found distasteful.