OPINION: Gamescom gets serious

Gamescom’s plans to offer 100 retailer reps free flights to its August trade fair in Cologne borders on genius.

Yes, I’m sure the offer will be over-subscribed, and leave a number of applicants disappointed – but as a statement of intent it says a lot about how seriously the show wants to be taken.

And how seriously the rest of us should take it.

When the German bosses of the games industry’s publishing legion decided two years ago that the show must go on, albeit in a different city with better facilities, the thinking was to turn the under-appreciated Leipzig into Europe’s leading games event via a change of location.

The expo days for consumers last year proved a show like that is important for demoing product to continental consumers – so much so that it is permanently on the radar of global bosses now.

The next push is to drive that further into our more parochial trade’s thinking. And it’s clear from the people MCV speaks to that things are slowly changing.

So who needs a UK tradeshow when Gamescom is going to great lengths to give us what we want?