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Went to the annual Taipei Game Show today. It's on from Friday 2/6 to Tuesday 2/9, so I just reached it on it's first day. A bit late though. It's open from 10 am to 6 pm. As with the book exhibition last week, I arrived at 4 pm. Too late to try stuff. But still plenty of time to locate all the booths and take pictures of loads of stuff. Took 148 photos while there, which is almost half of what my camera can contain. And that's in just 2 hours. (I make it save a raw together with a JPEG, so total size per shot is usually about 22-23 megabyte. I could cut it down to 2-3 per shot by not saving raws, should I have to snap more when I'm going back.)
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In this place there's many booths and several stages for different kinds of performance. Some of them they have turnaments. At others, you can just jump up on and get a brief instruction like this guy above is, and you're in a competition of some sort, competing for freebies.
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The whole event is actually mainly consisting of just two things: Loads of booth babes and hordes of guys taking pictures of them. Which is probably exactly the blend it takes to market computer games these days. Or at least it's the only combination used these days.
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Probably going back there tomorrow, hoping I can get to try some of the games. I doubt it'll be easy to do so by that time. Probably, much more people will be there by then. Pretty many were there already today, but tomorrow is weekend and some famous people are going to be there. That's what a Taiwanese guy at one of the booths told me, and of course he'd be telling the truth. I just have no idea what kind of famous people could be showing up. Gamers? Game developers or CEO's? Or real television stars? I hope there'll be a few foreigners too, but that's probably very unlikely.
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In case any girls are reading this, I apologise. It's just not fair, but all the hot guys in this place has cameras all over their faces, so it's impossible for me to get much interesting stuff for you. Although probably more than 90% of the people in this hall are male, only girls get on the scenes, unfortunately.
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Notices my photos switched from 450 to 400 pixels in height? I'm using my new Canon 50D with a wideangle lens. Did write a bit about that, but not enough for a blogpost. I have tripod, camerabag with backup battery, killer lens, lots of tiny misc stuff and wouldn't imagine what else I could need apart from flash equipment. It's no more less easy to tell the seasoned pro from the newbie. That guy infront of me carrying around a tiny stepladder says it all.
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If you go to the exhibition, you'll see it's pretty focused about taking pictures. At least half of all the guys here have cameras and you'll get all the chances you want to take pictures next to all kinds of different dressed up girls and creatures.
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Just so that you know, it's not just all sorts of Taiwanese games completely unfamilliar to you that's on display here. There's also a few imports from Europe, and of course, World of Warcraft. The latter has both this scene above...
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...A merchandise shop...
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...Which also deals in grande figures...
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...A meeting stone that you may write your name on, which is standing next to the line you have to wait in, in order to have your picture taken with the two gorgeous girls in the picture at the beginning of this post... And finally:
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The bloody Intel Extreme Masters Asian Championship finals.
Actually, this area is run by Intel, who advertises their processors by holding tournaments in many widely popular games. It's not just for WoW that you can participate in the Asian Championship Finals, the finals for Quake and Counterstrike take place there too. Also, appareantly, not just asians can participate. You'll be able to see a few people from Sweden and America there too. Here's a link to Intels site about it: Intel Extreme Masters Asian Championship Finals at the Taipei Game Show (TGS) 2010.
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On the stage which was empty before, the World of Warcraft teams shows they also have some beautifull girls to do pointless dances, just like everyone else. To the tunes of TAFKAL80ETC and all of the most popular Taiwanese pop songs that'll start to piss you off pretty quickly.
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Woah! There's a guy on the stage. Now that's weird!
Actually, WoW, although almost the only player in Denmarks MMORPG market, does not have a big share in the giant market of Taiwan. Although people are consuming MMORPG's and games in general much more than anywhere in the western world, Blizzards booths are much easier to reach due to smaller crowds. Also, they take up a relatively big share of the exhibition and it seems Blizzard is investing a lot in this as well as advertisement in general, which can only be due to Blizzard wanting to get more into the vast masses of consumers that can be found in Taiwan, and of course, Asia in whole.
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Enough Warcraft already. A few meters away, three girls just decide to sit down for a while.
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And before you know it, they're completely surrounded by photographers. I wanted to join in on the fun for a while longer, but I gave up after 2 pictures as it was too hard to get a clear shot without arms and heads sticking into the foreground after a few minutes had passed.
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Instead I went to snipe this cutie, but she gathered a big group of people pretty fast by throwing with freebies, and I had to fight to not get stuck in there when a group of gold-dressed girls went on stage to dance the Nobody Dance. And for some reason, when the tunes from the accompanying song starts pouring out, there'll be people all over in no time.
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So I went back to get a last shot of the three girls before they dissapeared. I wonder what game they advertised. Can't read chinese too well just yet.
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Funnily, this game called Monster Hunter could do with just one big scene. With this only - at which you could come up and play and win baloons resembling claws - the people running it managed to probably get more attention than any of the others. A clever combination of big screens and cute catgirls.
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I have to buy a truckload of fluffy ears before I leave Taiwan, no doubt about that.
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There also be pirates.
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And they be giving out free stuffs that you can see flying in the air if you click the picture two times to get the full version. I love my new camera.
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Just to make us 100% aware that we are indeed in Taiwan, people are also selling mousepads for those who like to touch the breasts of 2D-girls.
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And that would be my end station for today. At this booth some people were exhibiting their new 3D screen technology. They hope to launch a product soon, so you will be able to buy a film to put over your computer screen, then install a graphics driver, put on some 3D-glasses and play your games with 3D-effects like some cinemas would show Avatar in.
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Without glasses, the screen is impleasant and blurry to look at, but after a few seconds of wearing the glasses, the tail of that airplane actually seemed to stick out of the screen.
Spent a lot of time by the booth to talk with one of the guys there. In English, fortunately. Decided to see a little more for the last half hour and went away just to meet the guy again by the exit and linger there untill the guards got the last people herded out of the closing exhibition hall. It's nice to talk casually about Taiwan and future career dreams in Asia once in a while. I do that a lot, of course.
Wauw. That's a bit of a monster post you just digested there! Thank you lots!
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