HMV have been making very deliberate moves to strengthen their position in the games world recently, having already launched their Re/Play trade-in service to rival Game/Gamestation/CEX, they have now joined forced with UKeSA (the United Kingdom eSports Association) to bring GameOn! to the London Olympia this summer.
GameOn!’s site describes the event as the “premier exhibition for Video Gaming, eSports and Gaming Entertainment in the UK” and on top of promising the standard gaming expo fare of developer show-and-tell and upcoming releases, competitive gaming features very high on the agenda. Visitors to the show can watch the grand finals of the UKeSA Season One Grand Finals (with the best of the best competing for a 40k GBP/59k USD cash prize), the Dell XPS Premiership and UKeSA Championship (the Championship to Season One’s Premier League, with the winners promoted to next year’s Season One).
More interesting for your casual gamer are the pro-am events, though. The ‘Play with the Pros’ zone will allow any visitors to the event to wander up and have a match with gaming’s elite on titles such as Call of Duty IV: Modern Warfare, FIFA ‘09 and Team Fortress 2. Even better, the UKeSA Cups allow Joe Public to enter these ‘Open Championship’ events and compete with aforementioned professional gamers in a knockout competition for cash prizes. UKeSA are pitching this event as “just like the FA Cup, anyone can enter and anyone can win”, so prepare for some unlikely match-ups, and hopefully some giant killings.
GameOn! should go some way to fill the void left by Play.com Live this year, and the pro-am element of competition could definitely capture the imagination and spirit of the everyman gamer. The event is being held at the London Olympia on the 20th and 21st of June 2009, and tickets are available from the GameOn! website and from most HMV box office stores.
Source: GameOn
Filed under: News | Tagged: competetive gaming, contest, GameOn, HMV, league, London
