I was about to say “Well, the lackadisical gaming press have of course not picked up on this yet” but I failed to reckon without the lightspeed fingers of Pat at VG247, naturally. He chooses to lead with the fact that we’re showing Aion to press during Develop later this month (right here in the office, actually) but the real news is in the press release below…

… we’re going to the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany. And yours truly will be there.

[dramatic pause]

OooooOOOOOoooohhh.

It’s actually a pretty big deal for us. GC, or the Games Convention, or more often around here just “Leipzig” (as the place is pretty much synonymous with the event) is a massive, MASSIVE show.

People don’t usually quite get that – unless they’ve been there – so let me break it down. Imagine a show that’s physically about five times the size of E3. That gets three-or-so times as many visitors as E3 ever got. That’s ten times the size of Penny Arcade Expo (which is now pretty much ‘The Daddy’ in US video game show terms, and well done to ‘em). That does, in fact, tower over the San Diego Comic-Con in terms of visitor attendance.

Five days long. Close to 200,000 people coming through the door – press, trade, retail and probably the biggest demographic of all, plain everyday gamers just like you.

It. Is. Huge.

We were there in 2006 and it was… really quite hard to explain, actually. It was a military operation, save the camo and guns. Now we’re going back. It may surprise you to learn that I’m not planning it… which honestly, I’m thankful for. It’s been one person’s near full-time job for about six months, and now I’m in a meeting every week in which about 16 people are chipping in, all of us with our different bits and pieces.

Apart from the casting, which you sorta know about, I’m also working on several video based projects, and helping the community team with lots of fun community style stuff. Some of which you’ll see before the show, some during the show, and some after.

If you ever thought “Oh, I do wish there was a MASSIVELY HUGE SHOW JUST ABOUT VIDEOGAMES, right here in Europe” well surprise – there’s one right on your doorstep. Assuming you have a house that stretches to Germany.

It’s worth the trip. (Even if you don’t speak German, but if you do, even better.)

Oh, and in case you were wondering… the main focus of the show and our stand is undeniably Aion. And that’s what I’ve been casting for. More on that, and all of this, later….