I last went to EGX in 2019 and it was a great day out, a decent sized Retro and Indie Zone, lots of new and upcoming games to play and lots of big name stands, so when I read that this year’s event at London’s Excel was to be a joint show with MCM Comic Con I feared the worst and having spent the day there at the end of October I was right to do so.
Supposedly it was split into EGX on one side of Excel and MCM Comic Con on the opposite side which you’d have thought, bearing in mind the size of the halls at Excel would have meant a good show, wrong! It was terrible, row after row of Sunday market-type stalls most selling things that had little or nothing to do with gaming (why was there a stall selling whisky?), a tiny Retro and Indie Zone, no big names and virtually no new or upcoming games to play (not even Call of Duty 6 which had recently been released!). Apart from an Asus stand promoting the ROG Ally, Modretro promoting the Chromatic and a couple of retrogaming shops selling their stock, that was pretty much it, if I hadn’t been there with a couple of friends of mine I’d have probably have left after about an hour as I’ve little interest personally in the Comic Con side of the event.
It was a very pale shadow of the Eurogamer Expo events of the past and made me feel that we were seeing the beginning of the end of EGX.
Also Excel might be big and modern but it’s really not a great venue, it doesn’t handle crowds well, it takes 15 minutes to walk from the halls to Custom House Station, and there aren’t enough toilets and what toilets there are you have to go down two flights of stairs to get to and then stand in a long queue.
If the show sticks with it’s current organisers and it’s another joint event next year then I certainly will not be wasting my money again on a ticket, it just isn’t worth it for the keen gamer.
The solution is change the current organisers to a company who actually gives a damn about gamers, make it a standalone EGX event once again, bring back the big name companies if possible and loads of new and upcoming games to play and most of all, move it to Olympia, a venue which is easier to get to, doesn’t take forever to get to and from the station and hopefully has more toilets available!
Did you go to the show? Do you agree with my thoughts, what did you think? Would love to know your thoughts, feel free to comment!
EGX organisers over to you…….
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