Extreme gaming action reached fever pitch as ESGS 2016 had its second successful day at the SMX Convention Center, SM Mall of Asia (for our coverage of Day 1, click here). Already on its third straight revolutionary year with thousands of attendees and featuring an amazing lineup of exhibitors and attractions from all over the world, ESGS, E-Sports and Gaming Summit, came back bigger than ever in 2016 with even more things to enjoy and love. As one of the biggest and most anticipated e-sports competitions and gaming conventions ever in the country, ESGS 2016 got to thrill game enthusiasts from all over at this exciting three-day event.
arkadymac.com has been a media partner since the very first ESGS, so we’re excited to bring you the action again as we did this year’s coverage as well. On the coverage team for ESGS’s second day we have Mitch and Vanessa as our correspondents with Irene and Matt as our photographers.
Organized by Gariath Concepts and co-presented by PLDT Home Fibr, ESGS is an epic celebration on everything that is gaming. Now made into a 3-day event, ESGS got to showcase even more great things in the world of gaming, ranging from games on PC, consoles and mobile whether from top game publishers or independent game developers. Stage programs and segments got to feature the best and latest in the industry as well as entertain the crowd and give away great prizes. Not only that, attendees got to see furious gaming action from professional players competing on a large line-up of E-sports tournaments.
Establishing itself as one of the biggest gaming conventions in Southeast Asia, ESGS got to have some of the biggest game publishers and E-sports bodies in the world. ESGS; Bandai Namco Entertainment got to host the very first Tekken 7 tournament Philippine Qualifiers for a spot in the King of the Iron Fist Tournament 2016. Sony PlayStation, Capcom and Ubisoft featuring some of their new titles for 2016 and 2017, with huge playing areas for attendees to try out the demos. Super Evil Megacorp got to host a tournament for their hit game Vainglory aimed towards competitive mobile gamers. MSI hosted a rig modders competition to showcase some of the best PC rig mods created by the rig modder community. A dozen other high-profile exhibitors were also on hand to showcase their latest wares.
We got a chance to meet Koji Igarashi, or better known as IGA, who was at ESGS to showcase his upcoming game project Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Igarashi is better known as the assistant director of the famous PlayStation game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and producer to the succeeding Castlevania games starting with Castlevania Chronicles up to Castlevania: Harmony of Despair. Now continuing his new project in a new company, Igarashi launched a crowdsourcing campaign for Bloodstained last year and it became the second most funded Kickstarter project for video games.
Also at ESGS was the reutrn of Brawl Fest, the gathering of the country’s biggest fighting game communities (Cosmic Gorgons, Imperium, Pinoy PlayStation and Playbook) where they hosted a series of fighting game tournaments including Street Fighter V, Mortal Kombat XL, Super Smash Bros., The King of Fighters XIV, Gundam Extreme Vs. Full Boost and many more.
An admirable and noteworthy aspect of ESGS is the Indie Arena where a select number of independent game developers from both local and international communities got to share with attendees their current projects and finished games to the public. It was the ideal venue for gamers to experience some of the finest independent games created by our local talents in game development. With the rise of the gaming in the country, a special section will be handled by The Game Developers Association of the Philippines (GDAP) and Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) where it focuses more on business and academic for both gaming and IT.
ESGS 2016 was the fist time in the series to have merchandise booths, and a wide variety of goods were there up for purchase, like great game and anime apparel from our friends at Perry in Disguise as well as Cosmic Bytes Cosplay Shop.
Day 2 of ESGS was made extra special by the special appearance of world-renowned cosplayer, artist and gamer Miss Alodia Gosiengfiao. She was well received by the attendees as she got into the stage to promote PLDT Fibr. She also got to hand out some great prizes, much to the delight of the audience.
After her stage segment, she went to the PLDT booth where she got to try out Fibr, as well as to take the opportunity to have photos with her many fans.
We were there for the cosplayers of course, and ESGS did have a lot of them. Video games have always been a rich source of inspiration for cosplays, which was why cosplayers felt at home here. Some were ambassadors for games, others were helping out were promotion, while others just wanted to enjoy the event in cosplay and in style. Among them was our correspondents Mitch and Vanessa who helped us out with our coverage.
But this was only the second day of the monstrous 3-day gaming spectacle that was ESGS. For our coverage of Day 3, click here. For our coverage of Day 1, click here. Thank you for dropping by, and do visit us again for more features here at arkadymac.com.
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