When you go to an expo, you expect to have some mildly curious people lingering, a few exhibitors sitting expectantly at their demo stations, and a general lukewarm vibe filling up the hall(s)… Nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to the Nordic Game!
Let me see… Jam-packed halls. Main stage for the presenters, pitch stage for the games. A dedicated room for a whole day of policy sessions. Developers’ day. A huge B2B meetings hall with half a hundred or more tables. The place literally buzzing with cheerful people talking about their passion, proudly presenting their ongoing work. Not to forget free coffee and surprise hamburgers…
But let’s start at the beginning. The Székely Family and Co. (SFC) team arrived a day ahead to be sure that even if our equipment gets lost at the airport, we would be on time. Turns out, time was not the problem – the airlines managed to break our demo computer – let me quote Tolkien here: ‘there and back again’. 🤯 Off to a good start…
This means our first trip was to a computer store, and there we had some luck at last. Though repair was not possible on time – later turned out, at all – but one single laptop that can run VR-prepared smoothly was in stock at the store! Phew!
On to the venue, settling in, setting up all equipment, last tests, and everything is set for the next 3-4 days. As you can see, this incident couldn’t make the team lose their spirits 🙂
The event started quite strong, with the Games Policy Summit taking place on the first day, where Zoltán Székely (SFC) presented B-prepared and its policy context. It was an enlightening topic among all the other presenters focusing policy effects on games and game subsidy systems, compared to B-prepared focusing on the possible impact games can make in education, and the necessary policy background.
Meanwhile, the demo station was full from the first minute to the very last. A PCVR and a flatscreen demo of VR-prepared was available for the audience to try, and neither demo staff nor computers rested. The audience of Nordic Game is not only the average gamer and game enthusiast, this event brings together the cream of the Scandinavian and broader European players of the industry, which means we had invaluable feedback from fellow developers, publishers, studios and marketing experts. With the occasional ‘official’ B2B meetings in between, this kept the full staff busy.
A definite highlight was to see how naturally the event took accessibility. If you already tried VR-prepared, you already know we have a few dedicated missions to the topic. What an experience to get feedback from an actual wheelchair user!
The flow didn’t stop for the 3 days of the exhibition, so we were really happy when some colleagues from HVL dropped by to give us a helping hand.
The 4th and last day of the event was a dedicated Developers’ Day, full of engaging workshops and masterclasses, hands-on opportunities to learn the latest trends and industry secrets.
Were we satisfied with the results? Check the photos below and have a guess 😉
