What’s On at the London Games Festival?

That’s an excellent question and one that I was asked many times over the Eurogamer Expo weekend. The London Games Festival is run by the association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE). Historically, it’s been a week long but for 2010 they’ve gone all out and made it a full month long. There’s a good range of events happening, both for us gamers and for industry types.

Events for Gamers:

The Eurogamer Expo has just gone, as was a Ben 10 preview event in Leicester Square.

• 7th October: The BAFTA Annual Video Games Lecture, this year by Media Molecule.
• 8th October: Sony PlayStation Game Runners. Click on the Game Runners tab for the details.
• 9th October: Busy day with the unconference BoardGameCamp, and Nintendo’s Wii Party at Chessington. Sorry, tickets for both of those sold out weeks ago so check out Citizen Game’s first ever public game review instead, featuring FIFA 11 and Pro Evo 2011.
• 16th-17th October: GAME and Gamestation are hunting for Britain’s Best Nintendo Gamer with the winner being crowned at the Golden Joystick Awards.
• 27th-28th October: Upcoming shooter Breach will have a residency at GamerBase in London. Gamers will have a chance to face off against all comers to see if they have what it takes to survive in the adrenaline-fuelled game of guns, traps and destructible cover.
• 30th-31st October: The London MCM Expo, featuring a games expo.

Industry Events:

Games Invest and the GamesAid Eurogamer charity party were also on during the weekend.

• 7th October: Duke Nukem Forever will be shown to the UK for the first time. Ubisoft’s Just Dance 2 launch is on the same day.
• 11th October: Preview of Activision’s upcoming helicopter combat game, Apache Air Assault
• 12th-15th October: Power to the Pixel’s Cross-Media Forum will showcase the best international stories that can span a combination of film, tv, online, gaming, live events, mobile.
• 14th October: The Games Media Awards will recognise the best in specialist and mainstream games media in print and online. Sadly, we were not nominated :( Perhaps next year?
• 21st October: SpecialEffect, a charity to promote access to games for disabled people will hold a session on accessible gaming.
• 27th October: TIGA are running a session on self-publishing: Advice on selling and marketing to your audience
• 29th October: The Golden Joystick Awards will honour the games voted by for by us gamers
• 4th November: The London Games Conference will close out the festival with a theme of “Survival And Profit In A Changing Industry”

I’ll be at most of these, blogging for the games festival itself and you’ll get plenty of coverage here at The Average Gamer. I’ll also be tweeting with #lgf10. Follow us on @TheAvgGamer and say hello if you’re at any of the events!