RAGE Expo 2005

The R.A.G.E. Expo was indeed an exciting event which was held in Mumbai at the Nehru Science Centre at Worli. The main expo was held on Saturday November 26th and Sunday November 27th. The event had both conferences aswell as an exposition on the main show floor. GamersIndia.com has already covered the R.A.G.E. Awards and GI will be covering some of the more interesting seminars later. Let’s focus now on the Show Floor.

The Nehru Science Center is quite large. Upon entering the building, we walked straight to the registration desk where we were greeted by some of the charming expo girls. We filled out a form and received the program guide for the various seminars that would be running throughout the weekend. The seminars covered a broad range of topics which we will focus on later.

Taking a sharp left from the registration desk, we entered the Show Floor. The Show Floor had representation from every area of the industry: Publishers, Developers, Distributors, and Media agents. The first thing that we noticed was a booth to our left that had a large R.A.G.E. banner and R.A.G.E. decorations all over it. There was one Playstation 2 hooked up to a decent sized television. The game was Time Crisis 3, a really cool Guncon game on rails.

World Wide CD Rom, distributor of everything Activision and Vivendi Universal were exhibiting their latest and greatest wares. That includes Quake 4, Ultimate Spiderman, Gun, Call of Duty 2, Half-Life, True Crime, and others. They were even giving out free posters of Quake 4. Hope those of you that attended, got yours. GI was informed that World of Warcraft is coming to India. It’s time to upgrade that video card and begin practicing those Orc mating calls!

Game Masti. distributor of games of Electronic Arts in India, had a PC version of Need For Speed Most Wanted, FIFA 2005, Cricket 2005 to name a few. The booth was lined with huge posters and banners of EA’s hottest titles, from Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault to Black & White 2, to Harry Potter. Game Masti also had the full line up of PC software, of which sports seemed to be the predominant genre.

The ever-present Microsoft was in full force at the show with a lineup of games, applications, and peripherals. Microsoft had the most professional look at the show. Their booth was open and housed half a dozen computers with LCD monitors and sleek Microsoft keyboards and mice. This booth had the largest number of booth girls by far. Yet, none of them seemed particularly interested in showing off the wares (Microsoft’s, not theirs). Age of Empires 3 and Fable: The Lost Chapters were being demoed alongside their lineup of Encarta 2006 and Office products for students. There was also a huge section entirely dedicated to keyboards and mice. It was large enough to house an entire separate booth!

All hardcore PC enthusiasts would have been drooling over the huge assortment of graphic goodness NVIDIA was showing off. NVIDIA had all of their latest graphics hardware. A wall scroll in the booth gave descriptions of their various cards and their intended usages to the laymen in the crowd. To show it off they had a version of Far Cry playing and it did look slick. And who did we see playing the game? Not the expected teen, that’s for sure. One of the attendees’ fathers was hard at work, blowing away anything and everything he could aim at.

Level Up, the guys behind Ragnarok Online had probably the slickest booth at R.A.G.E. The booth was housed inside of a castle made from cardboard brick walls and foam watch towers. There were about half a dozen computers playing Ragnarok that players could walk up to and have a go at. There was also a large screen monitor demoing the game. Many people gathered around the booth when the Level Up guys started handing out free merchandise, like hats and cloth bags logoed with Level Up and Ragnarok all over them of course. The energy around the booth was quite electric.

A new magazine, called Animation Today, details current hot anime, upcoming anime, making of featurettes, and even some gaming related material. The latest issue has some of the specs on the Xbox 360. The magazine comes with some PC demos so it’s worthwhile checking out if you’re an anime geek and PC game fan.

Then, of course, the LAN Gaming was where it had always been. About two dozen computers were hooked up and ready to go. Attendees could compete against one another and check out some of the more popular games currently available like Counter Strike, Need For Speed, and more.

The crowd was hot, and gamers of all ages were present. We spoke to a number of attendees at the show to get an idea of what they were into. Some of the teenage crowds indicated that their platform of choice was, surprisingly, Playstation 2, not PC. One very interesting group consisted of three older ladies and a young girl. None of them had ever played a computer game, but were giving Counterstrike a first shot. They indicated that the young girl was the one that had been primarily interested in coming to the show. The young lady appeared to be a pre-teen and she, herself, was a Counterstrike fan.

The show really picked up on Sunday night, with the largest number of attendees present. Booths weren’t packed, but the turn out was good. Atleast we were able to play some games without having to wait in hour long lines.

Overall, it was a wonderful experience. There were so many top name executives from their respective industries here. And the crowd seemed to be enjoying themselves. Here is hoping that next years’ R.A.G.E. will be larger, a little better organized, and better publicised.

Kyn Chaturvedi