The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the biggest videogame convention in the world, is held every year in Los Angeles, CA for thousands of exhibitors to show their wares. Meanwhile, local gaming conventions have begun springing up all over the globe, including here in Victoria.
GottaCon, the brainchild of Victorians Carson Upton and Evan Hatch, is now in its fourth year of operation. The convention wrapped up in early February, but the organizers are already looking forward to next year.
“Over the last four years tabletop gaming has grown into a large part of our convention through a lot of hard work. We now hold some of the biggest events in western Canada and we will continue to grow and support these events,” says Upton, GottaCon community relations manager. “We did see incredible growth in the computer gaming section this year and we are looking forward to seeing more growth next year.”
One of the new additions to this year’s convention was the streaming of live gaming tournaments online at twitch.tv, including live game-casters.
“We worked very hard to have a great group of live casters come out this year. I am very happy with the results we saw this year,” he says. “This is something we will continue to include in our events in the future.”
Although the videogame tournaments were a big hit with convention-goers, some of the participants think that next year should be run a bit tighter.
Kyle Arctander, a player in the StarCraft 2 tournament, feels that the convention has the potential to be a great way for gamers of every type to get together and compete, if a few bugs get ironed out first.
“Meeting all the different calibers of players in the tournament was great, but the network connection was poor, with other games interrupting ours,” says Arctander. “Registration was also left open until 20 minutes before the event, meaning that all the brackets had to be rearranged on the fly, leaving those us who signed up weeks before waiting a long time for things to get sorted out.”
Despite a few bumps, GottaCon organizers are still looking forward to next year after a 36-percent growth in attendance this year.
“The convention went really well this year,” he says. “I am looking forward to seeing our event grow again next year. We try hard to provide what gamers are looking for, which changes all the time.”