CoxCon 2018: Part 2, which is Mostly Actually About Video Games

Even though CoxCon is a YouTube convention, it's also very much a gaming convention - and what would a gaming convention be without the opportunity to play some games? Luckily, CoxCon, as I've mentioned before, is very well organised; and they dedicate as much space and time to exhibitors, vendors, and free play games as they do to panels and meet & greets. It really did strike a great balance between watching your favourite YouTubers do their thing and giving you the opportunity to play around yourself.

Exhibition Hall

The convention featured an exhibition hall that was split 50/50 between merch vendors and game developers. I availed myself of some bracelets, a t-shirt, and some video game themed travel stickers, as well as some BioShock themed artwork (to adorn the walls of our increasingly BioShock themed house).

We had seen Prison Architect played on-stage during the panel and, though we never got an opportunity to play it ourselves, we were happy to see how popular it was proving amongst the attendees. Sadly there was no demo set up for The Unlikely Legend of Rusty Pup, the other awesome game that’s definitely on our watch-list after the Super Beard Bros. panel showed a trailer for it, but our eyes are peeled for opportunities to play it as soon as it becomes available.

It was good to see Monster Prom represented at CoxCon - hardly surprising, since Jesse is the game’s executive producer - since, as my blog over the past couple of months may have attested, I really love this game. I was a little disappointed that there was no merch for sale, since I’ll fly that flag everywhere if you let me; but we did get to see some players finally figure out the blood ritual ending, which was just a relief more than anything. (Hint: You need to buy the bloody tampon from the store, then go back to meet Vera in the bathroom on your next turn. It says so at the beginning of the quest but every single Let’s Player I’ve watched has forgotten the second part.)

A lot of the game demos were missing their music and sound effects, but luckily Just Shapes and Beats was loud enough to keep the whole exhibition hall entertained with dance music. It was also so popular I still have no idea what it is, since it was always surrounded by a huge crowd who seemed to be having a fantastic time with it. My partner played the demo of Wunderling, a puzzle platformer where you play as a classic puzzle platformer enemy; while I very much enjoyed the demo of Hamsterdam, a cutesy animal-themed brawling game for mobile devices with a stylish European feel that I’ll definitely be checking out once it’s released.

Hamsterdam is being developed by Muse Games. One of the designers explained to me that the cute, cartoonish Hamsterdam was the perfect antidote to all the steampunk artwork the team stare at all day when working on Guns of Icarus, the other game they were exhibiting. Of course, as soon as someone said “steampunk” my geekery went into overdrive, so I ambled over to check it out. I have to admit that my enthusiasm was initially diminished upon learning that it’s an online multiplayer FPS, which is not generally my jam. However, I’m extremely grateful to the booth operator who tricked me into playing by inviting me to take a seat and watch my partner play, only to then follow up with: “And I’ll just set you up as the mechanic while you’re here. You can operate the mortar guns!”

“But will it matter that I’ll be really bad?” I asked.

I was assured that it would not, and soon afterwards I was running around a zeppelin in mid-battle, keeping the engine running and hurling mortars into the enemy’s supply ships and strongholds. And It. Was. So. Liberating. I’m not someone who can pick up any game and play it well immediately, but after the half hour or so that we spent on Guns of Icarus I’d begun to get pretty good.

It was at that point I realised something pretty awful I’d internalised about myself: one of the reasons I’ve never wanted to play online multiplayer is not that I’m afraid of being harassed because I’m a woman (because, to put it bluntly, fuck those gatekeepers, I’d likely stay online just to ruin their day); but because I was afraid I’d be really bad and so tarnish the reputation of other women gamers, leading to increased harassment of women who really deserved to be there. Chronic anxiety mixed with social media fatigue can lead to some ugly thoughts, I guess, even if you consider yourself - and I do - as someone who doesn’t let other people’s bullying determine their choices.

But here I was - doing quite well, actually, at an online FPS I’d picked up for the first time maybe twenty minutes ago; that one teammate who always plays the healer or the mage, discovering how great it feels to go in as the gunner. It was reminiscent of the first time I unknowingly picked a tank character in a tabletop game and felt so much power. And I have to admit - while I didn’t run out and buy myself a copy of Guns of Icarus that very night, I have now assembled a small list of online multiplayer games that I’m looking in to buying, including that one. I’m going to play some, even though my gamertag explicitly marks my gender, because I fired that mortar at a moving enemy supply ship and saw it crumble in mid-air and I had fun doing it, and because this is a perfect example of how to challenge myself more.

OK - serious part over, let’s rewind a bit and finish off this section with a quick talk about tabletop games. As I mentioned briefly above, I’m a tabletop gamer as well as a video gamer, and my eclectic preferences as to genres and play styles hold true in both mediums. Quite a few vendors were selling them, and we availed ourselves of a few of the rarer titles on sale. The only tabletop publisher exhibiting there themselves (if memory serves) was Big Potato, who specialise in the sort of dinner party games that you need in your life now that everyone can recite every single card from Cards Against Humanity. I bought myself a copy of Weird Things Humans Search For, a trivia guessing-game built using the autocomplete function on internet search engines, which I very much look forward to breaking out next time we’ve got people over. The Big Potato guys were very cool and played a few rounds with us, and also mentioned that they also have a service where they host board game evenings at your house with their products (in the style of an Ann Summers party, I was told, though presumably somewhat different). It’s a new idea on me and one that I can see becoming popular among my friends who want something alternative for a stag/hen party or similar. I mention this here in case it may assist someone in the future. Now onto the next part!

Down to the old arcade

It was a weekend of firsts, and I can now hold my head high and say that I have played classic arcade games on real, honest-to-goodness arcade machines for the first time! I was born in 1990 and grew up in a small English village, so it was neither the time nor the place to get access to video game arcades. CoxCon hosted an arcade room with upwards of a dozen machines in various states of refurbishment, all of them set to free play. (I have no idea who owns these machines or how exactly they return on what must have been a considerable investment by operating this way, but thank you!). I didn’t even make a start in the arcade until 6pm on Sunday, but I managed to get some time in with four of the games:

1. Dig Dug - which I gravitated towards first of all because it’s rumoured to be the inspiration for Doug, my favourite character from Thimbleweed Park. Diggin’!!
2. 1942 - not a fan of WWII games but I got into this one. The opportunity to power up 4 missiles and say “Let’s show Gerry what for!” in a silly posh voice was too good.
3. Donkey Kong - the classic, featuring the first appearance of Mario… er… “Jump Man”. He doesn’t always jump so good. This game’s hard! I’d have spent a fortune.
4. Gyruss - a tricky sci-fi themed circular fixed shooter and, weirdly, the one I did best at. Man, that was empowering.

It would have been nice to get some time in with Ms. Pac-Man (sometimes cited as the first video game aimed at women players), but that machine was solidly in use the entire time I spent in the arcade. Good to see she retains her popularity. My only real regret, though, is that The Simpsons arcade game was powered down by the time I arrived, because I’ve seen some game play videos that indicated that it is batshit insane and I wanted to find out if half of the rumours were true. (Lisa’s in-game catchphrase is apparently “Embrace nothingness!”) Hopefully it’ll be there again next year - I’m sure I will.