Screw it; I want to go to the next MAGFest. Any protips?

Just a few.

• Get the Guidebook app for your phone to sort out your schedules and plans for MAGFest’s many, many concerts, panels, and tournaments. You will not be attending all of them as some of them will be clashing with one another; choose wisely.
• Bunk in with a friend or use AirBnB if you can. If you cannot get a hotel room in or near the Gaylord convention centre, the next best area is Alexandria. It’s a 10-minute ride to the place and it’s easy to get a rideshare via Uber or Lyft.
• You might as well make your US holiday to MAGFest a 7-day-or-more stay. You can check out the White House, the city of Washington DC, and the many memorials within the area during your MAGFest off-days.
• MAGFest happens in January, so get ready to pack warm clothes for the oncoming winter.
• There’s a ton of food places you can visit around the Gaylord convention area. Forget spending US$12 on a simple sandwich or wrap in the convention centre; get a US$9 soup and sandwich combo at the Potomac Gourmet Market. Or order a sizeable US$9 chicken tenders platter (and other bar food) in The Brass Tap complete with some cheap craft beers on tap. Or pig out on snacks & cheap sandwiches/wraps at the nearby CVS (the convenience store, not the fighting game).
• If you’re residing in the Alexandria area (10 minutes from the Gaylord), keep in mind that there’s a Taco Bell Cantina that closes at 2am. In case you’re getting peckish for simple tacos after 10pm.
• Alternatively, you can order pizza and McDonald’s to deliver to the Gaylord Convention Centre lobby. Just remember that everyone else who is attending MAGFest will be doing the exact same thing for four days straight. Expect wrong deliveries and long wait times.
• When someone does a low roar during MAGFest, respond in kind and roar back. It’s actually the famous Colossus Roar from the X-Men: Arcade Game 6-player cabinet during the early MAGFest days to pay tribute to a late arcade cabinet contributor. Context here. 

Even Nobuo Uematsu’s in on it.

Can MAGFest Work In Southeast Asia?

Level Up KL 2019.

That’s probably the big question lingering in the room right now, especially since this piece kinda doubles as an opportunity for would-be event runners and existing ones.

The short answer is “no”. The long answer is a lot more complicating than you think. Let’s break down the prerequisites that make a cult event like MAGFest work and preserve its image.

• Video game and pop culture music acts, with a sizeable amount of headliners and performers.
• Freeplay arena filled with consoles, tabletop setups, retro gaming exhibitions, and arcade machines, all running 24/7 within the event duration.
• Guests and panels relevant to gamers, musicians, and hobbyists.
• No major sponsorship and game corporate advertising whatsoever.
• An underground callsign and inside joke that it can claim on its own. Once the first four criterias above are met, this can then happen.

As you can tell, that’s already quite a hurdle for organizers to go through just to satisfy the bare minimum of a MAGFest-like experience for just a day or two. Apart from logistic costs that can get expensive, especially in places like Singapore and its cherished Suntec Expo & Convention Centre, there’s also the caveat of running a video game event 24/7.

Most Southeast Asian gaming conventions and expos close around 10pm at the latest to the public due to the rented area’s property rules and regulations. The last thing you want is having your 24/7 event shutting down halfway by some nosey authority figures.

Equipment-wise, outside of a few organizations and folks like Infinite Carnage, Retro DNA, and Kitamen who are more than willing, are there any other volunteers in Asia who would want to loan out their precious retro arcade cabinet and machines out of the kindness of their hearts?

There’s a lot more to it than what I mentioned above, but it’s safe to say that running something like this in SEA is going to be a huge, HUGE undertaking. It’s not entirely impossible to create a “MAGFest Lite” if you can get a spacious cybercafe or LAN centre to have a two-day 24/7 gaming party with a bunch of musicians playing at set intervals. Just don’t expect a humongous crowd.

In Short…

MAGFest took more than a decade to sort its modus operandi and target audience before it went big four years ago. The fact that it landed a sweet location and were able to work out a great deal between the hotel management and themselves also helped exponentially to maintain its “24/7” hook.

Most events I’ve been to in Asia start out really, REALLY strong but face diminishing returns once they peaked in their third or fourth show. Then it becomes more of an obligation than an actual fun trip.

Only a few of these events worldwide last longer than a decade, and a handful of these industry outliers rely a lot on sponsorships and some form of corporate and (sometimes) government-level investment. MAGFest is an anomaly that can only work in the country it originated from and from the people who want nothing more than to celebrate their hobby and share it in the best party-heavy way possible.

While these real issues shouldn’t deter anyone from creating their own version of a “video game block party” from scratch, just keep in mind that it’s going to be a decade-long struggle. Especially in a region which is purely dominated by mobile gaming, esports, and the need to follow the leader just to get by.