Generation of gamers

If the 60s of the twentieth century were associated with the beatnik subculture, the 70s with the hippies, then our generation will definitely be associated with gamers. Despite the fact that video games were popular thirty years ago, it is in our days that this industry has reached its peak. The best proof of this is the Igromir exhibition, which took place last weekend. They say that about 200,000 people visited it in four days, which is too much even by Russian standards. So why do people go there, buy expensive, in general, tickets, stand in lines? What attracts crowds of visitors there, who can just as well play at home? There is only one answer: atmosphere.

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1. One of the guests of Igromir, with whom I talked in line at the Sony booth, noticed that the gameplay of many modern games is much more interesting than cinema. And he admitted that he cried over the plot of some games.

2. We often hear that computer games are entertainment for children and adults should not get involved in this. But what people miss is the fact that the games industry has become much more profitable than movies these days. Developers have long ceased to release just games, they create their own universes, their own unique worlds, where you want to return again and again.

3. A vivid example of this is the worlds of World of Tanks, World of Warship, World of Warplanes, which were created and successfully supported by Wargaming. You can play mega-popular “tanks” not only on a computer, but also on Xbox and mobile devices, and the company’s revenue for 2013 amounted to $372 million. I myself heard how Wargaming was called the Belarusian Blizzard. By the way, popularity depends not only on profitability, but also on successful marketing. There were rumors before Igromir that this year the company would raffle off a real tank. And what is most surprising - the majority believed!

4. All four days at the exhibition there were incredible crowds of people. People were not stopped either by ticket prices (1,500 rubles for a day and 5,000 rubles for four), or the queue. By October 1, 170,000 tickets had been sold, and they were also bought right in front of the entrance! All this confirms my theory that the games industry is more than just making and selling games. This is a separate world in which you want to get at any cost.

5. The fact that even the world's largest corporations timed some high-profile premieres to coincide with the exhibition speaks of the significance of Igromir. Sony, for example, introduced new characters in the next part of the fighting game Mortal Kombat X. This is the previously known necromancer magician Quan Chi, the appearance of a female dwarf Ferra, a giant in the mask of Thor, the mistress of insects D'Vora, the Aztec god Kotal Kahn and daughter Johnny Cage Casey Cage.

6. The gaming industry is moving forward and its sister - the computer industry. New games reveal all the richness of graphics only at maximum settings, and for this you need a top-end video card, a high-performance drive, a powerful processor and, of course, “fast” RAM. It is not surprising that the manufacturer timed the Russian premiere of the new-generation Crucial DDR4 BAllistix RAM to Igromir, where potential consumers gathered in one place. The novelty will provide data transfer up to 24 GB / s, execution up to 3000 MT / s, as well as high fps in games, which will take the gaming experience to a whole new level.

7. Especially for Igromir, Deepcool has assembled a steampunk-style gaming computer based on the Deepcool Steam Castle case. Such a rare PC deserves a separate post, but, it must be admitted, all computer equipment manufacturers participating in the exhibition presented something exclusive, and the most enterprising of them created such conditions at the stand that they didn’t want to go anywhere further.

8. For example, at the HyperX booth (the American company Kingston represented this game line here), of course, as at any exhibition, products were laid out - headphones, mouse pads, SSDs, flash drives, and the latest DDR4 memory - HyperX Predator was presented, and employees gladly told and showed what for what. But! Along with this, it was also possible to test the headset here: feel the comfort of fit, evaluate the brightness of the sound, check the comfort of the ear cushions. Several times a day, master classes were held on replacing a hard drive with a solid state drive, the HyperX SSD crash test, USB drive speed races (everyone can bring their own flash drive with 2 GB of free space and compare its speed with HyperX), as well as quizzes on brand product knowledge. The most active participants were awarded flash drives, SSDs, t-shirts and caps.

9. In general, it's not about new products, not about competitions, and not even about prizes. Here, at Igromir, you can be yourself, everyone here shares your hobbies and no one will point the finger if you want to dress up as your favorite character. The atmosphere of a children's holiday reigns here, where you can take a break from the problems of adult life and feel like a child again. I heard a lot of people line up at 4-5am to get in first to try new games. And this fact alone says that we are definitely a generation of gamers.

10. And Igromir also gives you the feeling that you are not just an ordinary office clerk, student or schoolboy. It starts to feel like you can do anything. Beautiful girls in amazing costumes smile at you and want to be photographed for memory.

11. By the way, this year they decided to combine Igromir with the first Comic Con in Russia, thanks to which many participants appeared at the exhibition dressed as their favorite characters from games, movies, comics, TV shows, and anime. There was cosplay at Igromir before, but this year it has reached a completely different level. Perhaps in the future ticket prices will rise significantly, because even now Crocus Expo cannot accommodate everyone (and this is the largest exhibition center in Russia!).

12. Be that as it may, while "Igromir" remains the most spectacular exhibition in Russia. This year, for example, real fights of professional wrestlers were held at the Defender booth - an event by no means ordinary for such events. A crowd of fans gathered around the ring every day, which, not without pleasure, watched such a Mortal Combat in real life.

13. I was also pleased with the concert of the hip-hop artist Noize MC - a person whose music, perhaps, fits best into our era of virtual reality. However, this is not the first time the musician has performed at Igromir, and each time the concert goes off with a bang.

After Igromir 2014, I had the same feeling that the generation of the 70s probably had after Woodstock. Now I don’t mean the scale of the event, I’m talking about the atmosphere of unity that arises only in this very crowd of like-minded people, in line for a new game or stand of your favorite brand. We are called infantile, but it is unlikely that we seek to escape from the world more than our parents did in their time. We are a generation of gamers, and in forty years we will be written about in textbooks on the history of culture. And only time will tell what our way of thinking will bring to humanity.