rAge Wrap Up- Part 1

The weekend of the 4th of October saw the rAge expo in full swing. So much was happening, so we’re going to release articles in a series.

At the event, we were lucky enough to sit down with Michael James to get a few questions on what was going on.

Where do we begin? Do we start with the new games from Megarom and their secrecy policy (more to come on this later), or the new hardware that was released or the most astounding developers that were brought in to show off their games? No, we’re going to start off with an interview…

Michael James Interview Wrap-up

First up: My interview with Michael James – the legend himself, the man behind all this.

As I sit down with Michael; I realize why many love him, he has a one of a kind personality and is just an all round nice guy. I spoke to him about couple a different issues, where the first and utmost important one was how would he compare last year’s rAge to this year’s rAge. He said that there was not as many people as last year due to that whole big economic crunch going. However they did manage to secure help from their suppliers, the media and publishers to pull off a great event by any standards in these times.

What is his vision with rAge? He said that the games end of the show is pretty much ‘all set’, where he would now like to see is more companies with innovative and new technologies become involved. He has vision beyond you and me, he has literally got a rough trajectory on where he wants to see rAge in a few years time. A small bit of awesome info is that in the future we could see not one, but two domes being used for rAge. However, on a more immediate front, he did mention that there are 2 things (surprising developments) that will change gaming in South Africa for the better. Unfortunately he could not tell us about it yet.

Where does he see the future of the Nag LAN going? One thing we can all look forward to is the fact that all of the knowledge from previous LANs will be used to improve future events. As he says it is a logistical nightmare, regarding the seating and player arrangements, so as it gets more streamlined we can expect more and more greater things.

How do you feel the about gaming in S.A? As an emerging market South Africa is doing very well and the standards are high. One hampering factor is that there is not enough sponsorship. He does however say that “we will get there”.

How is the NAG magazine doing in this current economical climate? Well, he spoke about a scheme that their distribution company ran a test for 6 months. The test saw the removal of NAG Magazine from areas that weren’t doing so well, where they gave it areas that were selling out. The result was that they needed to create 2,000 more copies to sell. Overall, I would say NAG is doing pretty well and that gaming in South Africa is getting more coverage than expected.