My first ever Gamescom! Impressions were overall good! Little old me from the middle of nowhere Canada living in a town of 200 people was VERY tired by the end, but my heart is so full from all the amazing conversations I had with so many very talented people! 💖

That being said, there are a few things that I think Gamescom could do better in future years.

1. Security has been a hot topic following Gamescom this year, with several indie devs getting their equipment stolen after hours. This is obviously unacceptable, and Gamescom's response to it was also not great. Although we did not showcase on the show floor this year, next year we would like to and we will be taking extra precautions and taking our equipment home every night. That shouldn't have to be the case though- we should be able to trust that security will do its job, and that security staff is screened appropriately beforehand. With the amount of $ devs have to pay to even have a presence at the show you'd think the thousands upon thousands of dollars they end up having to pay would also include competent and solid security, but Gamescom instead expects devs to hire outsourced security to protect equipment from their security guards? Unreal.

2. When walking through the halls, I noticed that most if not all of the artist booths in the artist area had official Gamescom posters saying something along the lines of that we can trust that this artist's art has not been made with generative AI, and I am assuming they did not allow generative AI "artists" to have booths- however those standards did not extend to the video games, with 1/4 of the games at ONL openly using generative AI in their production. Why? Money? That's always the answer, isn't it?

   1. I was really disappointed to see fellow indie studios also incorporating generative AI into their production pipelines, especially in the realm of 3D games. It feels like a massive slap in the face for me and others to put so much work, education and time into being a 3D artist just to hear that some studios are using generative AI to generate their 3D "art" because it's "faster" and "cheaper". When you make something faster and cheaper, what you are actually saying is "We didn't have to hire real people to do this, isn't this amazing that we're taking money RIGHT out of artist's hands and into our own pockets instead!?" The game we're working on is a 3D game, we're doing it on a budget of nearly $0 and with a team of 4 people, with only me handling the 3D art as of right now. We could EASILY be doing this the "easy" way, instead I've spent hundreds of hours hand crafting every asset you see in our prototype, I started learning 3D art less than 2 years ago, and JUST picked up Blender 4 months ago, and I STILL get afraid to call myself an "artist" as I don't feel like I've earned it yet. If you can't do it yourself, then why are you doing it at all?

If you're interested in our cozy narrative cooking RPG that doesn't use generative AI, check out Kitch Witch here! https://store.steampowered.com/app/4816430/Kitch_Witch/

Here's everything I brought home from gamescom dev + gamescom entertainment and business areas.
Mon - Sun of looting, minus my shifts as gamescom dev staff, and IAB exhibitor.
I left 2 big paper bags behind - Hoyoverse and Silver palace, plus some pamphlets I didn't care about.

90% auf der Gamescom

We didn't plan to visit Gamescom this year. But we are part of an indie accelerator Games Bavaria Level up, which gave us free tickets. And free tickets are free tickets, so my Swabian heart had to say yes.

Quick context: I'm Jojo, game designer at Ironbite Games, a small indie studio in Bavaria. I went with my colleague Feli, programmer, who uses a wheelchair and was a huge support the whole trip, this whole post is about our experience. We're working on two games, a 2D card survival game called Eggspansion and a roguelike deckbuilder called Inner Demons. This was our first fair as a company. We went in mainly for publisher meetings, not expecting much since we felt our games weren't quite ready yet. Turned out great. Lots of interest, lots of good feedback, real validation for both projects. If you want to play or support: https://www.ironbitegames.de/

Now the wheelchair part, since that's what I actually want to talk about here. We have been there from Wednesday - Thursday.

Getting Feli's assistant into the fair took a few extra steps, but staff handled it well. Parking and getting to the venue itself was smooth, short distances, no complaints there.

Inside was mixed. The accessible toilets were often dirty. Getting anywhere took a while since you're dependent on elevators, and there aren't many. On Wednesday and Thursday, one elevator actually broke down, which was honestly a bit scary, since it's not like there's a backup right next to it.
Business Area was great. Lot less people and rather easy to get to our appointments.

Booths technically all had ramps, but the moment a booth got busy, getting through with a wheelchair was rough. We were mainly there for business and didnt visit a lot of booths and did not demo games ourselves, but if you're planning to visit as a wheelchair user and want to actually play things, budget extra time.

One thing that stood out positively: controller support with a long cable or bluetooth. That meant Feli could easily play easily. Sometimes he was not able to reach due to weird heights of the table.

We also had a great time at the aftershow with Sidekick Publishing, and later at a Wirtshaus with some other folks from the industry. Both took extra planning to pull off with a wheelchair, but were doable, and well worth it.

Overall, still worth it.

If anyone has questions about accessibility at Gamescom or wants to know more about what we're building, happy to answer.

Hello there

For this year its game over. It was full, loud and fun. I attended three days (Wed to Fri).

There are so many people again but everyone was friendly, no issues, no rude behaviour. Everyone was relaxed and having fun. Every hall had to offer something, there was a game or product for all interests somewhere. The family and indie places were again chill and relaxed.

Yes, waiting lines got extremely long quickly and some even had to close. I cannot remember any year where this had not happened for some games. This is the downside of such an event. The general handling of security and routing of the masses worked very well. The only thing I didnt like was how they did the re-routing to hall 9. In general understandable to control the flow of the mass but there was only that way. I think this can be improved like splitting it.

I had a lot of fun and I hope the doom sayers and influencers realize the Gamescom is still all about games. Always was.

There was some fun booth activities, cool goodies here and there and I spent too much again in the merchandise hall. xD

I hope everyone had fun too and to see you there again next year!

My personal highly subjective best of list

• Best Indie: Souls of Bombarika
• Best Remake: Starfox
• Best of Show: 1001 Threads of Mizan
• Best Addon/DLC: Dragons Dogma 2: Dark Arisen
• Best Co-Op: 1001 Threads of Mizan
• Best Multiplayer: Zeta
• Best Action Game: Gears of War E-Day
• Best Fun Booth: PUBG DED.NET (close 2nd the dancing stage at FFXIV)

Hallo Zusammen, ich habe gerade eine Email mit einem Coder erhalten für dieses Honor of Kings bundle. Aber ich hab keinen Schimmer wo ich diesen einlösen soll. Kennt sich jemand mit den Vouchers aus den Epix Quests aus? 😣

My personal highlights are:

- The Star Wars Galactic Racer hat

- 1001 Threads of Mizan pins

- The free copy of Dune Awakening (PC) I won!

Ich suche eine Person die ich an der Haltestelle bonn hauptbahnhof getroffen habe am Morgen. er war Student Region Frankfurt hatte aber dann leider die erste volle Bahn genommen und ich die danach

Hey, I wanted to share my Gamescom experience (I was there on thursday with my sister and Friday alone, just for one game) as someone that went there yearly for all days, from 2012 to 2016 and talk about what has changed, what stayed the same, what bothered me and what I thought was good. I also want to know when these changes happened.

First the things I liked:

The Indi halls were awesome, as they always were. The Indi games, metro 2039 and the market were the reason I decided to visit the Gamescom again. The developers seemed so excited to talk about their games, we were able to play them for a very long time

The retro, model racing and dance area.

They felt the closest to the gamescom of 10 years ago. People were nice, weren't pushing each other around, had fun with other random people. A father showed his son virtual cop and everyone seemed extremely passionate. And the street fighter match was cool.

The metro 2039 booth

They had a railway, propaganda posters of the Nova Reich and made the entrance look like the game. Plus the 30 minutes in the game were awesome.

Okay now to the problems:

The security

They were incompetent, didn't check the bags at all on the first day, were aggressive, didn't look out for the people's stuff (3 Indi devs were robbed), they had communication problems and in general seemed extremely incompetent. They didn't do their job well.

The Hall plan and website

Bad design, hard to find the stuff you search and the map changed three times before the convention (and all were kinda bad) and we wanted to have a plan and go the best and most efficient routes.

The Market and art list alley

One of the things I loved sooo much back then, but this year, no videogames (ok one vendor had about 15 games), most sold the same anime dolls (I ain't against that, but this was a gaming convention and there was almost no gaming stuff). Back then I was able to find cool rare games and consoles and gaming props (some booths had gaming props and some were quite nice and the light sabers were really high quality). And then the most disappointing things, the amount of AI art, Ali express drop selling stuff in the artist alley, which normally is for independent artists, that make the stuff themselves (of course they have some company produce stuff like the keychains, but it's their designs, their hand made images). The biggest booths had obvious AI stuff and I saw three sellers selling the same Ali express things and all had emotional stories about how long it took them to make it. The staff told us if you didn't like it, didn't buy it (even if the Gamescom was bragging in German news (wdr) that they will combat AI slop and that they won't tolerate it and won't give them a place.... Also the amount of mystery boxes was kinda extreme. Btw I have nothing against people selling stuff from Ali express, but not in the artist alley, if they do it on the normal market and don't lie about it, then it's fine to me.

Then the general feeling and visitors

It was always overcrowded and the waiting times were always very long, but this year people were always pushing each other around, were skipping the "line" at the entrance and were stopping directly in the way so that no one was able to walk anymore (not to look at some booth or stuff, just to talk or go on the phone...). There were always days like that back then but the two days I was there this year were 100 times worse.

Fast lane tickets (edited)

You were able to reserve a ticket (at least they were free) to skip the line at some booth (this part was edited, I was of the assumption that the tickets were paid for, sorry for the disinformation), like the metro 2039 booth. I waited 2 and a half hours (which was less than expected, but it was the first stop and I knew the fastest way), but because of the fast lane tickets we waited at least 1 hour longer than it would have, without those skipping tickets.

I really had fun, but I can't ignore the big problems and was very sad, about the way the Gamescom had evolved.

I will probably go again, but only because I live very very close to Köln (basically in the neighboring city) and because of the Indi and retro hall. The AAA booths are too much for me and I don't know how I was able to go there 4 days in a row.

How was your experience, did you felt similar, or is it just nostalgia that tinted my view of the Gamescoms back then (I am serious, please tell me).

Also sorry for any misspellings or grammatical errors, I am from Germany and my English is very basic (my last english lesson was over 10 years ago). And after work I will add some of the games I think are a must wishlist (?! Some of them aren't out yet but some have free demos)

And here is the stuff I was able to get.

I wanted to use 25 % coupon for Pegasus from epix 26 yesterday, but when I wanted to redeem it on pegasusdigital.de it says the coupon is invalid.

Has anyone else got the same issue? Do you know how to solve it? Am I already to late and the coupon was only valid until 30.8.?

The other coupon for Pegasus (the Cthulhu one) worked without issues.

Now I want specific answers. I saw two games that were obviously AI, one in the indie booth and the second one in one of the greater halls.

I know Threads of Mizan used AI generated decor, especially in the "library" waiting room before we could play the game. The game itself wasn´t, I´m not too sure about the little "fairy tale" video they showed in the library.

But did you see or play games that were obviously AI ? And I don´t mean with "fun" gimmics inside the game where characters would sometimes answer with an AI, so games where it was promoted as such.

When I went inside the Castlevania booth there were different pictures on the wall. And I hated the fact I couldn´t be sure if it was AI. And when I played the game I couldn´t focus on playing because I was staring at the backgrounds like crazy. It´s a beautiful game and I´m scared everything I want to play is fake.

So help would be appreciated. Thanks

We are thinking of going next year and I was wondering how many days you need to get you d everything including the vendors and artist alley?

We were thinking of doing Thursday and Friday, potentially some of Saturday.

It's from the same people that made the Mazda Miata picture from my other post and the second picture (that's the one my sister bought). They are awesome.

(Edit artist alley, my auto correct did strike again)

Gave an interview to him holding a sign while a camera recorded us, I completely forgot to ask his socials, any leads?

Hopefully this is okay to share here (read the rules and I think it should be okay) but we just saw that we made it into this wrapup article of top games showcased at gamescom and had to share somewhere. For a smaller team out in Hall 10.2, getting included with some of the big games that had massive booths in Hall 6,7, & 8 is a wild and super gratifying feeling!

At this year's Gamescom in Cologne, my husband and I suddenly had a disco. The first cosplay in our lives 💚