G.A.M.E. over

GameSpot took its first swing at delivering a gaming trade-show atmosphere to the general public this weekend, offering attendees a chance to get their hands on prerelease games like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the GameCube and Dead or Alive 4 for the Xbox 360 while enjoying diversions like live music, taiko drumming, and lowrider hopping. According to the event's organizer, it was a solid hit.

From Friday through Sunday, thousands of people attended the Games and Music Experience (G.A.M.E.) at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center, said Peter Shaw, president of Centric Events Group, which presented the event in partnership with GameSpot and Clear Channel Communications.

"I would say that all walked away from there thinking it was just a fantastic experience," Shaw said. "They loved it. Most of them had never seen a trade show, so that was a completely new experience for them, and watching what they were doing, they were completely absorbed in gameplay the entire time."

G.A.M.E. was not the first time someone had the idea to bring the multiday gaming binge of an event like the Electronics Entertainment Expo (aka E3) and open it up to all gamers, Shaw noted, saying that event sponsors were pleased with how the weekend went. E3 is only open to registered members of the game industry, not the general public.

"There've been many attempts to do this over the last few years and for the most part they've failed pretty badly, usually because they've never actually happened," Shaw said. "I think we got incredible kudos for pulling this off at all, for pulling it off in the way we did, because we delivered exactly what we said we would, and for making it as turnkey as we did. Publishers could rely on us for all of the details and all they had to do was give us what they wanted to show their customers."

While the turnkey approach to putting the show together appealed to sponsors and publishers, it only amplified the challenges of staging an event like this for the first time, Shaw said.

"The whole challenge of managing hundreds of game stations, making sure they were all working, it was just a big logistical challenge. Unlike a trade show, where you had exhibits taking care of themselves, we did the entire thing. It was like one gigantic booth with lots and lots of moving pieces."

As for where all of gamers in attendance came from, Shaw said, "I think the biggest source of where [attendees heard] about this from was word of mouth," Shaw said. "The whole community-building effect was a big reason of why we wanted to do this in the first place and it worked really, really well. The GameSpot audience, those who were in New York or Chicago or other cities, for that matter, would want to see this in their town and we had e-mails to that effect. The determining factor in the end is going to be a business call. And in terms of what we built and the impact we had, there's a need and response to this that's very positive."

Not everything was positive. Shaw added there were lessons learned from the inaugural G.A.M.E. that would be used to make future shows that much better. In particular, he said he would like to move the music stage closer to the heart of the show floor.

Overall, Shaw said he was pleased with the weekend as a whole and cited the beaming looks on attendees' faces as the highlight of the event for him.

"My own son was there and spent a lot of time helping in the three days of building up the show," Shaw said. "But then he got to play games on Saturday and was there from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and didn't realize he'd been playing games for 10 hours without eating or drinking anything. Everybody's expression was really, really positive."