Insomnia Gaming Festival 2023 – Convention Review
This past Easter weekend saw the return of Insomnia Gaming Festival to the NEC in Birmingham. Sophie and I headed up on Good Friday to check it out and report back.
We arrived just before 10am when the show was due to open, picked up our press badges and then headed in. The show took over halls 1-4 of the NEC, which is a massive space. The main event areas were in halls 2 and 3, with the weekend long LAN event taking place in hall 4, and weekend camping in hall 1.
Lay of the Land
We took our time first to walk the entire show floor to get the lay of the land. As you can see from the map above there was a lot to take in. Unlike other events we’ve been to at this venue the main Insomnia Stage was not screened off from the rest of the show floor. This meant that there was a lot of noise overspill (like, a lot) from the panels and events taking place on the stage. I felt a little sorry for anyone trying to check out the retro and indie gaming areas which were right next door.
Insomnia Gaming Festival Arcade Gaming Area
Credit: Clare Hemsworth/ FANdemonium Network
Insomnia Gaming Festival Retro Gaming area
Credit: Clare Hemsworth/ FANdemonium Network
We were definitely impressed by the range of games on offer at Insomnia Gaming Fest. It’s not just a video gaming event, although that does take up a large portion of the show.
There was also a big area for tabletop gaming, with tables available and game demos being held throughout the day, and the retro and indie gaming sections. There were also lots of spaces with seating, either bean bags, chairs or sofas, so you could have a break and take a load off for a minute. That’s definitely something a lot of other events could learn from.
Insomnia Gaming Festival Tabletop Gaming Area
Credit: Clare Hemsworth/ FANdemonium Network
We were both blown away by the scale of the BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) section. One entire hall was devoted to the folks who had brought their own set ups and were playing (and often streaming) from the event. This hall was actually something of a relief to enter. After the sensory overload of the main halls, walking in to the hall with almost no lighting, and no blaring speakers, was absolute heaven. My camera decided to lighten the picture below, but it really was almost pitch black in there. This event has definitely come a long way since the original LAN parties at Newbury Racecourse (according to Clare’s boyfriend who was familiar with them back then).
Insomnia Gaming Festival BYOC Hall – This was about half the occupants of the room. Credit: Clare Hemsworth/ FANdemonium Network
One thing we definitely appreciated, especially as the day wore on, were all the freebies. There were goodies on offer from Monster Energy and Red Bull, Pringles, even Yorkshire Tea (which made our day).
Credit: Clare Hemsworth/ FANdemonium Network
Nothing quite like being handed an energy drink at 3:30pm when you’ve been on the go since 7:30am. That spiked the energy levels again and let us power through to the end of the day. Special shout out to the guys that were giving out eyedrops (for tired gamer eyes), they’ve come in mighty handy since I’ve been back at work!
Smaller Scale
We did talk to a couple of regular attendees who told us that this year’s event was smaller than previous years. One said that a lot of that was down to the fact that XBox and Playstation still aren’t touring/doing events after the recent pandemic, although Nintendo still had a huge presence.
Nintendo @ Insomnia
Credit: Clare Hemsworth/ FANdemonium Network
Sophie was particularly put out as this meant a lack of Final Fantasy related stuff (her favourite game). I don’t know how attendance this year compares to previous years, but certainly on Friday we never felt over-crowded in the halls. There was plenty of room to move around, even in the shopping area, and as I said before, lots of places to stop and take a break if needed.
One thing that was lacking was any kind of schedule. I don’t know if regular attendees got given anything along with their passes that told them where/when things were happening, but aside from the Festival Stage which had TV screens showing the schedule of panels on that stage, we didn’t see anything else. We only found out when the cosplay masquerade was happening by talking to some of the cosplayers who had entered!
The Community Cosplay Masquerade entrants
Credit: Clare Hemsworth/ FANdemonium Network
There were some incredible entries from all manner of games in the Community Cosplay Masquerade and it was awesome to watch.
Credit: Clare Hemsworth/ FANdemonium Network
Credit: Clare Hemsworth/ FANdemonium Network
The Winners!
Credit: Clare Hemsworth/ FANdemonium Network
The one area we didn’t really get involved in was the celebrity signings. They had several of the voice actors from the Resident Evil games, as well as Doug Cockle, the voice of Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher games. We did pass by and noticed that there was a terrible bottleneck in the area caused by having to queue up at one entrance and purchase your autographs before you approached the actors’ tables. Either move the booth to purchase to a side area and just have someone checking tickets, or allow attendees to purchase their autographs at the tables which would spread them out.
We would definitely attend Insomnia Gaming Festival again, which is good news since they just announced that the event will be back for i71, September 7-10th, at the NEC. Tickets aren’t on sale for the next event yet, but we will keep you posted as soon as they are.
