rAge

This Sunday G and I made our merry way to the rAge expo at the Coca Cola Dome as general observers. I was told that although the expo is usually dominated by gamers, there is a small anime, and other fanboy (think star wars) presence. The dome was transformed into a gaming wonderland, with gaming booths, dance mats, karaoke and a huge LAN in the middle. My cousin was at the LAN on Saturday until the early hours of the morning and again on Sunday. I asked him what it was like and he described it as "like the twilight zone but with gamers in instead of aliens". There were an army of gamers in the LAN, around 2000 at its height. I've never seen anything like it. Luckily, the air-con was working valiantly to balance the stench of the unwashed hoards. LANing is definately not for the faint hearted (or for those with an acute sense of smell).

I am not a gamer, but was pretty impressed by the spread. Yes, there was the general kitchness and commodification of gaming culture. You could buy anything, and even sign up to an online gaming lessons. This is the dark side of capitalism. It had to happen. Whenever someone finds something cool, someone else tries to make money from it. Maybe if I was a hardcore gamer I would be a little annoyed. But I just enjoyed the overall madness of noise, lights and wall-to-wall screens. There were kinect games, online games, console games, dance mats, sing-star-esque games... anything your could think of!  It was overall very fascinating.

The undoubtable highlight of the day for me was seeing two people dressed up as the Akatsuki from Naruto. Their costumes looked great and I would have loved to see more Cosplay. Come on fellow anime fans, we need to represent! I might even dress up myself next time!

As promised, the day was dominated by the gamers. There was a little anime and star wars memorabilia on sale,  but a little more would have been nice. I will keep a look out for anime and other fanboy forums (yes, star trek as well. Come out fans, I know you're there!)  I bought my sister a robot mouse who kinda looked like R2D2.  Check it out. G thinks its a bit weird but I think its a riot!

Well that's my rAge experience. Not bad in all.