It may be early yet, but anybody who has attended a big convention knows that it's never too early to start planning arrangements. Otakon, as I'm sure many local gamers well know, is the annual three day celebration of Japanese animation and culture held in the Baltimore Convention Center, this year taking place on July 29-31. This convention is often quite a welcome sight for gamers, with an enormous console gaming area, regular scheduled tournaments, panels about or related to games and the industry, numerous game character cosplayers, and even simply the general overlap of interest between video games and anime that often occurs. Needless to say, much of the population of Otakon attendees are down with the gaming scene.
Also taking place that weekend, on July 30, is Bit Gen Gamer Fest. Bit Gen is an all-ages concert at Bourbon Street Live celebrating video game music, art, and gameplay itself. The concert features a console gaming area, arcade machines (no quarters needed!), and a merch area where bands and fans sell shirts, posters, bead sprites, knit hats, and other memorabilia a gamer might expect to find at such an event. This concert hosted 12 video game cover bands and artists last year, and with a second stage added this year, they are definitely looking to have more. An event like this is certainly a hot-spot for gamers' interests.
Now for those paying attention, you may have noticed a little snag...Bit Gen is smack in the middle of Otakon, on Saturday: the busiest day of this enormous convention. How could a mere 6-year old concert (awesome though it may be) hope to compete with the towering Colossus of the 18-year running Otakon? Well, the answer may be remarkably simple...my advice is to do both! Bourbon Street Live is not even a 20 minute walk from the convention center, certainly manageable even in the most unwieldy of cosplays (trust me on that), so gamers can spend the day enjoying the enormous event that is Otakon, then venture over to Bit Gen Gamer Fest by 4 pm to get their rock on!
With such a huge showing of gamers in Baltimore for Otakon, Bit Gen might be seeing a significant boost in attendance this year, even if most of them stick around for the aforementioned juggernaut.
That is, of course, assuming that Nobuo Uematsu's Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy orchestral concert at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall on July 30 doesn't further complicate things...
For more info on the events and venues, visit the following links:
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