Gamescom 2017 in Pictures
Another year, another Gamescom. To be honest, these shows don't really vary that much over the years, the biggest difference is that it gets somewhat bigger year by year in both the occupied area and the number of people visiting the show. I visited Gamescom on the first 3 days, where the first day it was open to invites only. That is also the day I visited the public area of the show, as it is so much less crowded on that day. I kept the number of appointments to a minimum and had almost all of them on the second and third day. These appointments were all at the business section of Gamescom, offering less noise, less people, smaller booths that also don't look as nice as the ones in the public area of Gamescom.
This year I decided to also invest more time in trying and getting some decent photographs of Gamescom and Cologne, which is what this article is about. In general the public halls don't use a lot of light. They are actually quite dark with some very bright lights from individual booths. As I didn't want to use a tripod all of the time, I ended up using a high ISO value when shooting the images, which resulted in quite a bit of noise as well. Most of the images have been processed to try and reduce the noise to more acceptable levels, but that also makes them somewhat less sharp. The images of Cologne are almost all shot at the end of the day, after I finished visiting Gamescom for that day. Note that these images are just intended to offer a small impression and are nowhere near a coverage of what is available at Gamescom.
All the big players who were present at Gamescom have big booths. Sometimes I think they are putting in an extra effort to make their booth bigger than their closest competitor. One of the biggest, both in the public and business areas, was from EA. You can play games everywhere, if you don't mind standing in a queue, but the bigger booths have more seats to play. Then again, there are also more people who want to play, so you might end up waiting just as long.
The Need for Speed Payback section at the EA area
Also in the EA area the Star Wars games
Other big players, like Blizzard were also there.
Blizzard displayed several life sized characters from their games
Obviously the likes of Sony, Microsoft, Square Enix and also Ubisoft occupied large areas as well.
Next to the above there were countless of other big, smaller and small booths, with something interesting to show.
Namco Bbandai's Project Cars 2, Nintendo's Mario, THQ Nordic with Biomutant and a head of a dragon from a game I can't recall anymore
Also Warhorse was present with both a booth and some dressed up people.
One thing that was more prominently available this year compared to previous years were the VR games. I certainly did not take images of all of them, but there is some VR gear you can invest in if you like.
I guess there are multiple ways in which you could use this VR gear in a game.
Next to all the games there is also a large are where you can buy all kinds of gaming goodies. I did not do a comparison with buying this stuff online, but I did have the impression that it wasn't cheaper at Gamescom.
Plenty of game related stuff available, but there are also plenty of occasions to get it for free, if you were lucky enough to catch something when they were throwing stuff into the audience
There was a lot more to see at gamescom, of which I don't have images. One interesting thing was that Lego made a Lego version of the Cologne Dom.
Which also brings me to some of the Cologne images I made of that same Dom and the Hohenzollern bridge, which is the way the trains cross the river Rhine, but also allows pedestrians to cross the water. Throughout the years this bridge has also been used for people to express their love for each other by clinging a lock, with their names on it, to the bridge.
The construction of the Dom started in 1248 and saw many reconstructions. It suffered a lot of damage during World War II but was restored again to its former glory, although not in the proper way, which led to further reconstructions to undo the previous ones and to repair further damage. At this time, some parts of the Dom are still under construction.
The side and front of the Dom
Someone made large religious drawings in front of the Dom.
On my way to the Dom I encountered this guy
On the other side of the bridge there were some people climbing a wall. I have been told that sometimes they even climb the stone walls of the bridge, which might not be that legal.
Obviously Cologne has many more old buildings and towers.
There was only little time available to photograph interesting objects in Cologne, but I did manage to visit the old Rheinauhafen, which used to be a harbor where boats were loaded and unloaded using a large amount of cranes. This area has been completely overhauled and a few of the cranes have been preserved, but also three large buldings in the shape of a crane were constructed.
That was all the time I had in Cologne, which leaves me with a last set of images that show the goodies I have collected during Gamescom. Most of which I do not mind to part with, but unlike last year I am not going to cover the shipping fees this time, so if you are interested in any of this, let me know.
My.com had a spinner to give away and for Warhammer 40K: Inquisitor - Martyr, I ended up with a T-shirt and a heavy coin from the game, which is also shown a bit bigger at the bottom of the image.
1C had a bag of goodies for a variety of games and a USB stick in the shape of an opener. Focus Home had a T-short and a heavy book with artwork from most of their games.
Paradox also has a bag of goodies from different games, including a Battletech cap. Warhorse gave something that could be used as a scarf, or to cover your head, an wraist band and a wooden USB stick. Piranha Bytes had a small and short comic of ELEX, featuring Nasty, who you apparently can romance in the game.
That concludes this overview. If you like, you can also check out the complete gallery of images here.
