Rage Expo 2022

[GregRedd]

So it seems it’s rAge 2022 this weekend. Who knew? After missing a couple of years through Covid and sponsor issues, the expo is back this weekend 9 -11 December at the Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand.

There’s a big focus on esports at this years’ event with a number of South African esports organisations hosting games including Minecraft, Rocket League, Overwatch and the CS:GO Intel Africa Masters Grand Final happening as well.

Tickets are available to buy online from 1-8 December via Howler:

• Day Pass – R180
• Weekend Pass – R400
• Tickets purchased at the door will be R190 for a Day Pass and R420 for a Weekend Pass

Expo highlights include:

• RGB Gaming will be hosting a series of competitions aimed at bringing together teams from a variety of schools where esports has taken off in popularity. 14 schools are set to take part in Friday’s Minecraft Speedrun tournament at rAge Expo, with six high schools taking on the Overwatch2 tournament on Saturday. Along the way there will also be time for Minecraft Build challenges and PvP, with Minecraft coding challenges taking place on the Sunday.
• Also making its debut at rAge will be the Intel Africa Masters CS:GO finals, which is the first of its kind on the continent. Four teams from the African continent have made it through the regional qualifiers and will be competing against each other to take home the title of African champions.
• Mamelodi Sundowns F.C. and Mettlestate are hosting a R200 000 FIFA 23 tournament with the semi-finals and finals to be held at rAge. The tournament was announced to celebrate Sundowns’ inclusion in FIFA23 and has attracted a large number of gamers, all vying for one of the top 8 spots, in four live qualifiers around the country and an online event leading up to the rAge weekend.
• There is another R50 000 on the line in the Incredible All Star Gaming Rocket League finals, which are also being held at rAge. Mettlestate have been presiding over the online qualifiers with playoffs taking place this week which will see the top 2 teams making their way to rAge.
• the Ultimate Gaming Championships are also back at rAge 2022 with rAge Drive, their action-packed, awesome fighting game tournament. Friday 9 December will see players take on the Street Fighter 5 tournament with Tekken 7 players getting their chance on Saturday 10 December. The prize? Winners of both tournaments will qualify for the Red Bull Hit The Streets national final which is taking place in Cape Town on 17 December.
• The #C3ZA Call of Duty Community Clash, hosted by ACGL and Predator, will see some of SA’s best COD: Modern Warfare 2 teams go head-to-head for a share of R40 000.
• For the gamers who will be attending the #NAGLAN, Red Bull is hosting their well-established Red Bull Flick 2v2 CS:GO competition in the LAN. Registration will take place on the Friday, and the games will take place on the Saturday.

rAge Expo, South Africa’s award-winning go-to mega event for video gaming, technology, esports, geek culture and digital entertainment, has been bringing people together for two decades. It’s the ultimate escapist destination where you can immerse yourself in PC, mobile and console gaming, digital lifestyle gear, edutainment, gadgets, creative arts, robotics, esports, smart home technology, cosplay, virtual reality, locally developed games, show specials, competitions, giveaways and so much more!

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[TechThief]

as of now, I am on leave as i am going to rAge this year, will be attending the whole weekend, also the tickets were cheaper the earlier you bought your ticket. Just the expo mind you, I also think having it in Gallagher could be interesting, as from the virtual tour I took, I could see there were multiple halls, which could help break up traffic, and allow of more specialized areas.

[oltman]

@GregRedd

esports

@GregRedd

Minecraft

Really?

[GregRedd]

Well I guess you’ll be the one giving us the report on Monday then We want pics too!

[GregRedd]

@oltman

Really?

What do I know? I just paraphrase the press release Speed building challenges? Building to a theme perhaps? Humans find a way to turn anything into a competition.

@murfle’s MC community does competitive build challenges - I remember watching him stream one where they had to build a statue of some sort??

[TechThief]

@oltman

Really?

yeah the speed running minecraft is quite a thing actually.

[TechThief]

will try my best, i’m not really one for pictures XD, I was once in one of rAge videos though, i think it was the 2013 one, only for like a split second, but hey, it counts!

[murfle]

There’s all kinds of things… Every month there’s MCC for example

[Dragonic]

Yeah I know about speed running it but can’t see the eSports. Unless the eSport is speedrunning and see who “finishes” first?
Also I absolutely didn’t know its Rage lol.

[TechThief]

yeah I don’t know what could be an esports with speedrunning either, I also just remembered that minecraft custom games exists, where there are things like “race for the wool” and I think there is a BR map/mod as well. So I guess with how much customization there is in MC they probably have like a a competitive map or something.

[TechThief]

Currently at rAge been here since opening time, about the same scale as the dome but there are is more floor space so it does not feel as crowded, but will see how it is tomorrow on its busiest day. Not a lot of homecoding booths only 3 games, dark carnival isn’t here which is a shame. Few competitions not a lot of VR, some great artists and cool merch stuff. Gonna see if i can buy myself a sword or knife as is tradition.

[TechThief]

[TechThief]

So rAge is over and in short: this was the test run to the reboot of rAge.

In relation to previous rAge expo’s this one was a bit disappointing, there were no pre-alpha games or closed beta games from developers we could play, there were too few game stations where you could play games in general, honestly this rAge could have used more games for a gaming expo.

Adding onto that, there were exhibitors there that were simply IT companies shilling their business, and had NOTHING to do with gaming, they did not even have screens playing any game footage, and in fact. most of those stands were just dead. The one company that were annoying me the most was “Itouch Technology” that badgered us every time we kept passing them, going “sir, sir, sir, I won’t take your time sir” this started annoying me so much that I stopped passing by their stand, as difficult as that was since they were right by the main stage, even if they were a company raising money for cancer in kittens, I still would not support them, just because of their poor behavior(street beggars had more manners than them).

Now let’s talk a bit about the good, predator had a BIG competition, R130K game station giveaway, desk, chair, PC screen, etc, second place also won a laptop, and not just some merch which is good on them. Artist alley was great, some really great artists there, there was also a stand that sold extremely cool mouse pads and desk pads http://artificialink.co.za/ unfortunately their website is not online yet, but I asked the guy there and they are working on it, and an online store. Another highlight was the https://eurasianamusements.com/ company that was there, with cool arcade games and machines.

Cosplay of course was also a big hit, some really good cosplayers, there weren’t a lot of them walking around though, I almost feel like they just stayed home until the competition actually started, but meh that’s probably what I would do, considering the aircon was off due to loadhsedding.

So going off that, the venue: honestly not too bad, parking was a let down, as we were parking on some fields with chain-link fences, not even undercover, yet we had to pay R25. Food there was incredibly expensive, 2 waters were about R42, which makes me miss the Dome to no end, as being able to park for free in the mall parking and then just go eat at wimpy or whatever was always great, but I digress. The scanning of the tickets and getting into the halls were dead easy and really fast, even with just one entrance, once those doors were open, we were moving like mince in a sausage maker, and we were in before we knew it. Unfortunately as I said before due to loadshedding the aircons were not working, they did have generators for the rest of the venue though, so that was fine, although saying all this, even when there were no loadshedding, we had noticed that it would only be on in some places of the venue, and not throughout for some reason. One massive good point was that there was ample floor space, unlike in the dome, there weren’t like two rows of people as if we were on some kind of roadway, there was ample space to really move around ( of course only when people didn’t stop in the middle of the way) also the one section was an exception, because for some reason two rows of stands were crammed into a corner.

Something I forgot to mention, on the first day of rAge there were still stands not open yet, with some of them still downloading games from playstation, battle.net and steam, which was really bad, makes me think either they did not plan correctly, or the venue did not give them like a day to just set everything up, which I would doubt, but I though that was very poor from them.

So will I go again next year? probably yes, this rAge felt like they were trying to get the feel for the new venue and trying to see if people are still interested, the NAG LAN, seems to be getting smaller each year, which makes sense since less and less games have local multiplayer and why bring your PC and sleep on the floor, when you can just play the games from home and sleep in your own bed. I would still like to go simply to see how it grows and changes, I am not annoyed to the point of not going, and until I see it do so bad, that I leave rAge not wanting to go back even for a day, I shall go back and check how they do next time.

[TechThief]

Won the mouse in the treasure hunt, bought the knives since the swords were too expensive.
Got the mugs from thugmugs stand there, only 150 each

[LazyDemoni]

Thanks for your detailed writeup! I love that mouse btw, I had one which developed a glitchy scroll wheel, then immediately bought another. Cool knives too.

[Weasley]

Thanks for the write-up. I wish I could go but sow the advert far too late. And had other arrangements over the same weekend.

[TechThief]

So the guys that were selling desk pads/mouse pads at rAge have their website online now, check it out, some incredibly cool designs
http://artificialink.co.za/