G-eight video game expo

So, recently someone in the FB chat group for magic players at a Growlife (a game store I frequent) mentioned that they would be working a booth at G-eight all weekend so we should come by and visit. I hadn't heard of this but I was looking for something to do Saturday during the day so I searched online and found out that G-eight is a video game expo for indie games held here in Taipei with games from Taiwan, Korea, Japan and the US. This was in line with my recently expressed desire to write about indie games on this blog so I decided to go. It helped a lot that the ticket price for one day was just 300 NT which is about 10 USD.

I have been to the site of the expo many times because there are a bunch of restaurants there including one we like to go to for fish and chips. But I hadn't ever been into the expo space. It is an old converted soccer stadium. Luckily I wandered right up to the entrance even though it is a bit hidden. I felt a bit surprised that overall it seemed a bit small but of course my only point of reference for gaming conventions is Gencon which is huge. I was also surprised at how large the "adult games" (read porno) section is. It was walled off and of course I didn’t go in but it took up a good chunk of the real estate. The other thing that surprised me was how sexualized some of the stuff that was outside of the adult area was. I know this is just part of the gaming culture from my experience of Steam (on online video game market) but was a bit taken aback about how out in the open it was here.

 

So at first I wandered around and just got the lay of the land. Basically there were a lot of "booths" with computers to try out the games. Most of these had lines of people waiting to play. So eventually I walked up to a computer that was empty and the guy came to help me. They seemed to think it was funny that I asked if the game had English because of course it would as it is an international expo. I didn't really like the game much but played it for a little bit just to give it a try. It was one where you would select soldiers to put down on the battlefield between your two cities. You didn't actually control the soldiers on the battlefield. They run around on their own and if they eliminate the enemy soldiers they will attack the opponent's city. There was some confusing mechanic where you could place the soldiers in a grid and combine them to make more powerful units before putting  them on the battlefield. You also have a pretty low limit on how many soldiers you can have on the battlefield at the same time. The graphics were pixel graphics (meaning very low resolution 2D images) and I didn't think it looked good at all. Some pixel graphics are pretty good but not this. So when I was finished I got up and the guy gave a collectible trading card that all the booths have.

So then I was wandering around and looking for a bathroom when Eric spotted me. Eric is the guy who had posted about it. He is quite nice and has a great dog named Pooper that he brings to Growlife. (Pooper was sadly absent from the expo.) I am kind of surprised that he spotted me because he was in the middle of playing the game he was demoing with Fox (another Magic player). We chatted a bit. I find his work situation kind of confusing. He is always kind of vague and has described himself as a pro-gamer and as a "fixer" as in someone who is good at like solving problems and like connecting people. He set up an internship for the twins as an example. He seems to work for a gaming company of some kind but I am not clear exactly what they do but he travels internationally a lot. He was kind of explaining that he was like a cofounder of this game publisher that is based in Shanghai and like used “we” and he was working the table so I thought this was like his job. But then he was explaining he works for them on paper but doesn’t really actually do anything for them. So just another aspect of his job situation that is confusing. So he finished playing with Fox so I sat down and tried his game. I also played against Fox. It was ok. It was kind of a weird concept. It was a tower defense game (meaning waves of the opponents soldiers advance toward your tower and attack it. You have to keep them at bay with your own soldiers who will try to attack the opponents tower. These soldiers are also automated in that you don't directly control them.) But it was combined with a slot machine mechanic. Basically you keep  pulling the lever for the slots and if you win it will award you items you can use in the battle. I liked it significantly better than the first game but I still don't think I would pay money for it. I did ok but Fox won in the end. So Eric gave us some extra trading cards. Including ones from last year that he claimed some people were seeking.

 

So then I wandered around some more.  Then I saw a game that looked ok. It was like a 2D platformer. I guess the best way to describe that genre is kind of like Mario Brothers from the original Nintendo system. So someone was already playing so I just stood to the side next to this other guy who I assumed was waiting to play. So this guy struck up a conversation. He asked where I was from. I said US but he didn’t understand at first until finally it clicked for him and he said "Oh USA". Then he asked me if I was a developer or whatnot and I said I am just a player who lives in Taipei. He told me he is a programmer working for a small indie studio. I asked him what games he worked on but he just said 2d platformers. So I asked him if he worked on this game because when he started to talk to me I thought he might be an attendant for this game we were watching but he said no. So then he was asking me if I like this kind of 2d platformer. I was kind of non committal. He asked me what I like to play. I said rpgs (roleplaying games but video games not the tabletop kind) and he was asked me if I like jrpgs (Japanese RPGs which kind of have their own aesthetics and style) or arpg (meaning action RPG, more combat oriented where you control the movements of your character in real time battles). So I said I don’t play jprgs because I couldn’t really remember what arpg stood for. So he was like yah, jrpgs can be kind of foreign. So then he was pressing me a bit about it so I kind of just acquiesced to the whole arpg idea. So then he said I probably like The Witcher (This is a very famous series but in particular the 3rd one which is often ranked as one of the best video games of all time. It is about a monster hunter called a Witcher. They are making a TV series based on it.) So I kind of tried to explain how I felt about witcher one and three but I don’t know how much got through. He said Witcher three is a masterpiece. So then he was asking about my favorite so I said Disco Elysium (this is a very offbeat roleplaying game set in a fictional former communist country. There is no combat. But it as far as I know it is quite famous and is another common contender for best game of all time.) But he hadn’t heard of that which I thought was weird. So that was another communication barrier because it took a long time to kind of communicate the name of the game and I had to spell it for him and then we both looked it up on our phones. So then I asked him what he liked to play and he was like Dark Souls (which are very difficult combat games with no difficulty setting) and Monster Hunter (which is another action game about killing monsters and harvesting their body parts to make better weapons which I have played a bit) and was like bragging about how big a fan he is of those games. So then the guy on the computer got up and it turns out he is the story writer for this guys company. So they started talking in Chinese. Then I kind of realized I wasn’t actually in line to play this game and there was like an actual line so I went over to the line and like waited a little bit to play.

 

Basically you play as a flame spirit in a forest that is being abandoned to some evil spirits and your job is to find the primal flame (or something like that). I kind of sucked at it but I liked it the best of these three games that I tried. The art was nice though not fantastic. I got to a boss that I couldn’t figure out how to beat despite the hints the game gave me. I gave up before the attendant told me time was up. But I was a bit self conscious because it seemed a big line had formed behind me while I was playing.

After that I went out to sit on the grass in the sunshine and record some impressions that this post is based on. Then I decided that basically it was mission accomplished as I felt I had had some good experiences and got a good feel for the expo. I didn't super feel like standing in more lines for games. I was also a bit tired as I didn't sleep the night before and I had to be back fairly early to go to dinner with Ellie and her parents.

 

So overall I would say that it was a win in terms of getting out of the house and doing something interesting around the city. Particularly something related to my interests. On the actual video game front it was a little ho hum. I wasn't super enthused about any of the games I saw or played. In some ways it didn't really get me super excited to be in this hobby. But I am glad I went.