I'm doing this again this year. It used to be at the hotel down the road from me but since that three-letter-agency moved in across the street the whole neighborhood's gone to hell.What is MAGFest all about?
In short, MAGFest is a music and video gaming festival run by fans, for fans. In more verbose terms, it's an annual event dedicated to the celebration of video games and video game music. Every year offers 24-hour console, arcade, and PC game rooms, live video game cover bands, a vendors area, and guest speakers from the video game industry and fan scene. It also features a "JamSpace" available to all attendees for impromptu music performances. Numerous other events are scheduled each day.
What makes MAGFest unique is that it's an event run by fans for fans. There are no corporate sponsors, no over-crowded showfloors, and no top-secret-behind-closed-doors showings. MAGFest is built from the ground up to be a party-like atmosphere with focus on community and fan creations, which creates an environment that no other expo or convention can ever recreate.
Where did MAGFest start and where is it now?
MAGFest is currently headed by Brendan Becker and his crack team of specialists. The first MAGFest was held September 27-29, 2002, at the Holiday Inn Tanglewood in Roanoke, Virginia. We've had a total of nine MAGFests so far, and they've been a blast! We have grown rapidly to our current size, and sold out at 3,000 people during MAGFest 9 in January, 2011. MAGFest will be held in the Gaylord National Hotel & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, and we hope to see you there!
So it's going to be at the Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center at National Harbor this year and I'll probably get me a room just to keep from running back and forth.
They have table top gaming, random contests, a LAN party room, and vendors selling tshirts, Japanese imports, and vintage games.
But the main reason to go is the the nightly concerts. Different bands who do rocked out and remixed versions of video game music. They even had an 8-bit Concert where people jam out to midi music composed on Gameboys.
This year the headliner group is Earthbound Papas. A group created by Nobuo Uematsu, the music composer for Final Fantasy 1-9.
Registration ends at the end of Dec 16th so if you want to go, hurry up and buy.
Continue? 9... 8... 7... 6...