Last weekend marked the first edition of 1UP Conference + Expo, a new gaming event located in Belgium. Although February isn’t a typical month to host gaming events like this one, this first edition already showed us a lot of good things to come. Wondering what it’s all about?
1UP Conference
1UP has an interesting and innovating concept, it combines a Conference filled with interesting industry speakers with an Expo where you can discover the newest games. Sadly, we couldn’t attend the Conference and Belgian Game Awards on Friday but I’ve heard from some colleagues that they saw a lot of interesting speakers. It’s a bit of a shame this part was organized on a Friday, resulting in a rather empty Expo area according to a lot of expositors the day after. Although we missed the Conference, we went for the Expo part on Saturday and we saw some huge potential in this new player!
Gaming
Compared to other local gaming events, 1UP isn’t the biggest out there, you could easily walk around in less than ten minutes, but we loved the overall atmosphere. It’s clear that the organization was aiming for a different style of gaming events, no dark and cold concrete walls filled with demo pods. No, 1UP was beautifully crafted, including blue and purple neon lights everywhere. From the gorgeous Indie Corner to the Cosplay Village, a lot of time and effort went into the creation of these booths and it’s a something we can only applaud. If you compare 1UP to the bigger players, it certainly wins when it comes to the overall atmosphere.
But, the atmosphere isn’t everything for a gaming convention. Sadly, the playable games were rather limited, at least when you were visiting to play some upcoming triple-A games. Ubisoft had a nice Far Cry New Dawn booth and in the Nintendo area, you could play some Smash Brothers and Pokémon. All great games, but those are already available in stores. I can imagine that this came as a disappointment for some visitors, it seemed like 1UP was a bit too late, and at the same time too early, to offer some truly impressive upcoming triple-A games. After wandering around for quite some time, it became clear that 1Up didn’t focus on big games, instead, they offered some fun VR-, and Indie Games.
Virtual Reality with a gun
It’s clear that VR is heavily endorsed by developers by now when looking around at the many games 1UP had to offer. It doesn’t only limit itself to games either. A lot of companies are rallying behind VR as a real experience you can actually physically engage in. Not as consumer level products you can buy but as an experience tailored for groups of friends or even team buildings for corporate bonding between colleagues. The experience we were most excited about was one by FUTURIST GAMES based in Brussels only a stone’s throw away from the Royal Library in Belgium. They offered a wide array of VR games but we got to play the amazing After-H which is regarded as a VR FPS eSport. Our co-founder Jean seemed to be particularly good at it playing on the rebel side of the warzone. The amazing thing is that you physically hold a replica, not unlike a G36 where all the buttons for movement and action are mapped to buttons on the physical gun. When you bring the rifle to your aiming eye you actually look through the red dot sight in the game itself. It felt like a true extension of reality and we were very excited at such a feast for the senses. It felt really exhilarating considering the fact that you’re up against actual real players a few feet away from you. These kinds of ideas are refreshing and whilst they’re not really home consumer based, they bring the arcade feeling back with a serious immersive upgrade where you can meet up with friends and brawl it out in VR!
Cosplay
There’s no con without an overdose of kids dressed as Deadpool and 1UP is no different. Luckily most of the cosplayers were present with their very own work. It’s wonderful how a good cosplay can put a smile on a child’s face! Cosplay was very present and the Cosplay Village was well decorated with a decent sized stage to show off your hard work of the past few months! Most cosplayers we talked to were very excited to be here and meet with fellow cosplayers. CosplayShop was present to showcase their workshops on how to get into or improve your costume creation skills. There was also a classic photo booth to get your shoot of the day. First, there were some technical lighting problems at the photo booth but they were resolved fairly quickly. One thing is sure, a big lump of gold was dropped on this con as the prizes for the cosplay contest were substantial for 1UP’s first edition. BeCosplay really did their best in the Cosplay Village to make it a true cosplay haven. It’s clear that 1UP has the potential to fill cosplayers calendars for the years to come. But it will need more than only its cosy cosplay stage to do that.
Conclusion
This first edition of 1UP certainly shows the potential of this concept. Although we missed the Conference part of the convention, we liked the Expo part a lot. It certainly has the body of a professional gaming expo thanks to its gorgeous attributes and soft purple/blue lights. The biggest tip we can give, is to search for the soul of the convention a bit more, perhaps some really big triple-A games can help lift the show to the heights it deserves? A promising first edition, we can’t wait to see how this one will evolve over time!
