events
BlizzCon
Anaheim, USA
3-4 November
BlizzCon is an annual gaming convention held by Blizzard
Entertainment to promote its major franchises including Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo,
Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch.
The first BlizzCon was held in October 2005, and since then, all
of the conventions have been held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California, in the same metropolitan area as Blizzard's headquarters in Irvine. The convention features game-related announcements, previews of upcoming Blizzard Entertainment games and content, Q&A sessions and panels, costume contests, and playable versions of various Blizzard games.
Evo Japan
Tokyo, Japan
27-29 April
The Evolution Championship Series, commonly known as Evo,
is an American annual esports event that focuses exclusively on fighting games.
In 2010, the Evolution Championship organizers announced an
official spin-off to the tournament series called "Evo vs Godsgarden", to be held in Japan the following year. However, the tournament was called off following the Tohoku earthquake and postponed indefinitely. During a Nico Nico livestream following Evo 2013, Cuellar stated that he was still interested in holding a Japan-based tournament.
It was announced at Evo 2016 that a separate event simply titled
"Evo Japan" is to be held in Japan. Japanese media companies Aetas , Hearts United Group , and Shochiku Broadcasting together invested a total of US$1 million into the event. During a presentation at the Tokyo Game Show in 2016, the Evolution organizers announced that the tournament is to be held in January 2018, while some form of "pre-tournament" took place in 2017.
At Evo 2017, the Evo Japan 2018 lineup was revealed to consist of Street Fighter V, Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2, Tekken 7, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, BlazBlue: Central Fiction, The King of Fighters XIV, and ARMS; the event took place from January 26 to 28. The lineup is known to emphasize titles that are popular in Japan, as titles such as Super Smash Bros. Melee, Injustice 2, and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite are notably absent mostly due to their lack of popularity in the region.
Events:
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Evo Sai (May 20-21, 2017), Akiba Square, Tokyo:
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Tekken 7: Fated Retribution
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Super Smash Bros for Wii U
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Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2
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Dead or Alive 5
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The King of Fighters XIV
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BlazBlue: Central Fiction
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Evo Japan 2018 (January 26–28), Akiba Square/Sunshine City, Tokyo:
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Street Fighter V
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Tekken 7
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Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2
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BlazBlue: Central Fiction
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Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
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The King of Fighters XIV
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ARMS
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Pokkén Tournament DX
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Ultra Street Fighter IV
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Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R
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Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite
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Vampire Savior
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Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike
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Garou: Mark of the Wolves
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Soulcalibur V
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Street Fighter Alpha 3
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Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel
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Koihime Enbu: RyoRaiRai
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Capcom vs SNK 2
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Evo Japan 2019 (February 15-17), Fukuoka Kokusai Center/Fukuoka International Congress Center, Fukuoka
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Evo Japan 2020 (February 24-26), Makuhari Messe, Chiba
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Evo Japan 2023 (March 31-April 2), Tokyo Big Sight, Tokyo
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Evo Japan 2024 (April 27-29), Ariake GYM-EX, Tokyo
Evolution Championship Series (Evo USA)
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
26-28 July
The Evolution Championship Series, commonly known as Evo,
is an American annual esports event that focuses exclusively on fighting games. The tournaments are completely open and use the double elimination format. As with Super Battle Opera, contestants travel from all over the world to participate, most notably from Japan. The first Evolution was originally held as a Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Street Fighter Alpha 2 tournament called the Battle by the Bay. It changed its name to Evo in 2002.
Evo was founded by Tom Cannon, also known for his work
on Shoryuken.com, a fighting game website. The tournament started as "Battle by the Bay", a 40-man Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Street Fighter Alpha 2 tournament in 1996 in Sunnyvale, California. The event changed its name to Evolution Championship Series, or EVO for short, in 2002. Over time, the tournament grew, recording over one thousand participants in 2009.
Events:
The Game Awards
Los Angeles, USA
7 December
The Game Awards is an annual awards ceremony honoring
achievements in the video game industry. Established in 2014, the shows are produced and hosted by game journalist Geoff Keighley, who worked on its predecessor, the Spike Video Game Awards, for over ten years.
The Game Awards has an advisory committee which includes
representatives from hardware manufacturers Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and AMD, along with several game publishers. This committee selects around thirty influential video game news organizations that are able to nominate and subsequently vote on the video games in several categories. The advisory committee otherwise does not participate in the nomination or voting process. During the nomination round, each of the news outlets provides a list of games in several categories; games for the esports-related categories are chosen by a specific subset of these outlets.
The committee compiles the nominations and selects the
most-nominated games for voting by these same outlets. Prior to 2017, there were 28 industry experts and representatives that selected the winners, while the awards from 2017 onwards have used over 50 such experts. In 2019, non-English media publications were added to the jury. Winners are determined by a blended vote between the voting jury (90%) and public fan voting (10%) via social platforms and the show's website.
Generally, only games released before a specific date in
November are eligible for being nominated in the year's awards. As the jury must make their nominations in the weeks prior to this date, this may leave some anticipated games that are scheduled for release just before that date to be underrepresented in the nominations, since the jury must go by pre-release review copies and not the final version. Any games releasing after the November deadline (which varies every year) are eligible for the next year's ceremony.
2023, December 7
Best Fighting
Game of the Year
Game of the Year
Game of the Year
Best Performance (2023): Christopher Judge as Kratos (God of War: Ragnarok)
Statuette designed by Keighley and Weta Workshop
Statuette designed by Keighley and Weta Workshop
Nominees
Game Developers Conference
San Francisco, USA
18-22 March
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is
an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival, and a variety of tutorials, lectures, and roundtables by industry professionals on game-related topics covering programming, design, audio, production, business and management, and visual arts.
Originally called the Computer Game Developers
Conference, the first conference was organized in April 1988 by Chris Crawford in his San Jose, California-area living room. About twenty-seven designers attended, including Don Daglow, Brenda Laurel, Brian Moriarty, Gordon Walton, Tim Brengle, Cliff Johnson, Dave Menconi, and Carol and Ivan Manley. The second conference, held that same year at a Holiday Inn at Milpitas, attracted about 125 developers. Early conference directors included Brenda Laurel, Tim Brengle, Sara Reeder, Dave Menconi, Jeff Johannigman, Stephen Friedman, Chris Crawford, and Stephanie Barrett. Later directors include John Powers, Nicky Robinson, Anne Westfall, Susan Lee-Merrow, and Ernest W. Adams. In the early years the conference changed venue each year to accommodate its increases in size. Attendance in this period grew from 525 to 2,387. By 1994 the CGDC could afford to sponsor the creation of the Computer Game Developers Association with Adams as its founding director. Miller Freeman, Inc. took on the running of the conference in 1996, nearly doubling attendance to 4,000 that year.[3] In 2005, the GDC moved to the new Moscone Center West, in the heart of San Francisco's SOMA district, and reported over 12,000 attendees.
The CGDC changed its name to "Game Developers
Conference" in 1999. The GDC has also hosted the Spotlight Awards from 1997 to 1999, the Independent Games Festival since 1999 and the Game Developers Choice Awards since 2001. The GDC is also used for the annual meeting of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA).
The Independent Games Festival (IGF) is the first and
largest competition for independent games, and highlights the innovative achievements of developers ranging in size from individuals building PC titles to studio teams creating console downloadable titles. A pool of judges from the game industry selects the finalists and winners, and the individual creators are named as the recipients of the awards. The IGF is managed and developed by UBM TechWeb, the organizer of the GDC.
The Game Developers Choice Awards is the game industry's only
open, peer-based awards show. Any member of the IGDA may nominate games, and then the membership votes on the finalists. As with the IGF, the individual creators are named as the recipients of the awards. Specialty awards such as Lifetime Achievement and First Penguin are determined by the GDCA committee, and all are revealed at the Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony at the GDC. The IGF and the GDCA are presented back to back, in an awards show produced by UBM TechWeb, typically on the Wednesday of the GDC.
Gamescom
Köln, Germany
23-27 August
Gamescom (stylized as gamescom) is a trade fair for
video games held annually at the Koelnmesse in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Since 2018, it has been organised by game – Verband der deutschen Games-Branche (English: Association of the German video game industry); and before that, by the Bundesverband Interaktive Unterhaltungssoftware (BIU). It supersedes Games Convention, held in Leipzig, Saxony, Germany.
Gamescom is used by many video game developers to
exhibit upcoming games and game-related hardware.
Alongside Gamescom is Devcom, a portion of the
convention dedicated to video game development, though activities of Devcom continue year-round.
Gamescom is the world's largest gaming event
(measured by exhibition space and number of visitors), with 370,000 visitors and 1037 exhibitors from 56 countries attending the show in 2018.
Nintendo Live
Seattle, USA
1-4 September
Nintendo has announced Nintendo Live 2023 Seattle,
an in-person event that will be held in Seattle in September with “fun gameplay, live stage performances, exciting gaming tournaments, memorable photo ops, and more.”
The Nintendo Live event initially debuted in Japan in 2017 as a
way for Nintendo fans to experience a wide variety of Nintendo game-inspired activities.
“Fans of all ages can currently experience the unique
games, characters and worlds of Nintendo on Nintendo Switch, but we want to expand that scope with a new experience,” said Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser in a press release. “With Nintendo Live 2023, we’re giving attendees a chance to celebrate together with family, friends and the broader Nintendo community in the spirit of fun and creating long-lasting memories.”
Pokémon World Championships
Yokohama, Japan
11-13 August
The Pokémon World Championships is an
invite-only esports event organized by Play! Pokémon. It is held annually in August and features games from the Pokémon series such as the Pokémon video games, Pokémon Trading Card Game, Pokémon Go, Pokémon Unite and Pokkén Tournament (until its 2022 edition).
Players earn invitations to the World Championships
based on their performance in qualifiers and other tournaments held throughout the season and compete for scholarship money, prizes and the title of World Champion. With the exception of Asia, invitations to the World Championships are administered by the Play! Pokémon program.
The qualifying process for the
Pokémon World Championships varies each year and is dependent on a player's age division and the country in which they are located in. Players may also qualify to play on different days of the World Championships based on their performance in their respective qualifying programs.
Players located in a country with a Play! Pokémon program
compete in a regular schedule of tournaments for Championship Points and receive invitations when they meet a predetermined threshold of points at the end of the season.
Pokémon announced in October 2021 that Pokémon GO
would be added during the 2022 World Championships, along with it a qualification system through the Pokémon GO Championship Series, where the top two head to the World Championships. Any trainer who reached Legend rank during Season 9 of the Pokémon GO Battle League would qualify for the GO Championship Series.
In January 2022, Pokémon Unite producer Masaaki Hoshino
confirmed that the game would be part of the roster of games to be played at the World Championships in London. For the first season of the Pokémon Unite Championship Series, there will be eleven supported Regional Zones: North America, Central America, South America-East, South America-West Europe, Oceania, Japan, South Korea, India, and the Asia-Pacific region. These events will only be open to players aged 16 or 18, depending on the region or country they are from.
QuakeCon
Grapeville,Texas, USA
10-13 August
QuakeCon is a convention held by ZeniMax Media every
year in Dallas, Texas, USA. The convention celebrate and promote the major franchises of id Software and other studios owned by ZeniMax, including a large, paid, bring-your-own-computer (BYOC) LAN party event with a competitive tournament.
The event, which is named after id Software's game Quake,
sees thousands of gamers from all over the world attend every year to celebrate the company's gaming dynasty.
The event is highly dependent on volunteers to cover
many aspects of the organization of the event. QuakeCon has historically had a reputation as the "Woodstock of gaming", and a week of "peace, love, and rockets!".
The first edition of the event took place in August 15, 1996
and was held at the Best Western hotel in Garland, Texas, near of the id Software company offices. Since then the event was held every year at several locations in Texas, except the 25th edition which had been planned for August 2020, but due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, was cancelled by Bethesda Softworks and id Software on March 31, citing difficulties in planning with vendors and exhibitors at this stage. An online QuakeCon has been announced in June 2020 to replace the live show in August 2020. A return to a live event is scheduled for August 10-12, 2023 in Grapevine, Texas.
Summer Game Fest
USA
June
Summer Game Fest is a live video game event organized and
hosted by game journalist Geoff Keighley. The event takes place annually over multiple live streams during the American summer period.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ESA canceled the
physical event for E3 in 2020. Keighley began working with numerous developers and publishers to run a four-month Summer Game Fest from May 1 to August 24, 2020, helping developers and publisher to host live streams and other events in lieu of the cancellation of E3 and Gamescom.
Tokyo Game Show
Chiba, Japan
21-24 September
Tokyo Game Show (東京ゲームショウ,
Tōkyō Gēmu Shō), commonly known as TGS, is a video game trade fair and convention held annually in September in the Makuhari Messe, in Chiba, Japan. It is presented by the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association (CESA) and Nikkei Business Publications, Inc. The main focus of the show is on Japanese games, but some international video game developers use it to showcase upcoming releases/related hardware.
The General Exhibition Area is the heart of the show, taking up
the largest amount of space, and is held where digital gaming entertainment or any related products or services are showcased. Many well-known companies such as Namco Bandai, Capcom, Sony Computer Entertainment and Square Enix have demo areas here, in addition to emerging companies. The Tokyo Game Show includes also other areas like:
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Game Devices which covers gaming devices such as headphones, controllers, furniture and other devices associated with home-use gaming consoles and portable gaming devices;
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Asia New Stars introducing emerging game developers from Asia;
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Merchandise Sales of game-related goods. Vendors include Konami and Square-Enix;
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Smartphone and Social Games focused on games for smart devices (smartphones and tablets) and social games;
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Personal Computing which houses major Japanese computing companies, showcasing products such as Japanese desktop and notebook computers;
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Children area with new games that are aimed at a younger audience. Companies such as Taito and Sega are housed there;
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Game School which showcases information on Japanese universities and colleges offering information about digital art, animation, computer programming, and other programs of study related to the video game industry;
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Sales area which is the main area in the games convention where most of the sales and business transactions between companies and consumers are carried out;
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Cosplay area dedicated to the cosplay community;
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Busines Solutions which is the main business area but not open to the public;
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Cloud/Data Center Pavilion, dedicated to improving infrastructure and environment of social and network games;
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Street Fighter Tournaments where the Tokyo Game Show has featured a Mad Catz-sponsored Street Fighter tournament since 2014. The competition is part of Capcom's official Pro Tour, making it a qualifying event for the Capcom Cup;
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Sense of Wonder night which is a presentation session held yearly at the TGS for showcasing innovative and experimental computer games mainly made by small game studios and independent game developers from all over the world.
