An exciting weekend of local gaming drew to a close as ESGS 2016 had its third triumphant day at the SMX Convention Center, SM Mall of Asia (for our coverage of Day 1, click here, for Day 2, 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 third day we have Mitch and Kasumi as our correspondents with Irene, Matt and Marvin 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.
Koji Igarashi, or better known as IGA, 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.
One of the most awaited highlights of ESGS Day 3 was the Gaming Cosplay Competition where some of the best cosplayers battled it out for huge prizes and acclaim in front of a pumped-up audience. Video games have always been a rich source of inspiration for cosplays, which was why there was a remarkable variety of cosplays here from all genres. With their intricately designed costumes, some even with moving and lighting parts, coupled with exciting and imaginative performances, cosplayers got to amaze the audience from start to finish, with arkadymac.com’s Editor-in-chief Jillian as one of the participants.
When the smoke cleared and the scores were finally tabulated, Izaiah Luke Buelos as Rizzrack the Timbersaw from DotA 2 was named champion, claiming 15,000 pesos in cash and other great prizes, with his family who was always there to support him.
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 or products, others were helping out were promotion, while others just wanted to enjoy the event in cosplay and in style. Among them was our correspondent Mitch who helped us out with our coverage.
The awarding ceremonies got to give recognition to the winners of the various contests held over the three-day event, and they got to go home with some amazing prizes indeed.
That got to wrap up what was indeed the biggest local gaming convention of 2016 and one of the biggest gaming conventions in Southeast Asia, a monstrous 3-day gaming spectacle that was exciting from start to finish. ESGS was remarkable in the breadth of its size and scope and has set the standard for how gaming conventions should be done. Our congratulations and gratitude to Gariath Concepts and everyone who had made ESGS possible as we already look forward what bigger things they have in store for the gaming community next year.
For our coverage of Day 1, click here. For our coverage of Day 2, click here. Thank you for dropping by, and do visit us again for more features here at arkadymac.com.
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