My thoughts about Gamescom 2024

Yesterday, I went to the Gamescom 2024 in Cologne.

Here’s the things that I liked:

The organisation was impeccable, just like last year. Me and my wife went inside in a matter of minutes, and when we wanted to move between areas, it never took too long.

The Cologne Koelnmesse.

Monster Hunter: Wilds was on full display for everyone to see. Considering that it was one of the main highlights of the event, that meant not necessarily having to queue for several hours to try the game.

The Capcom booth at the Gamescom 2024.

Luckily, some games had accessible queues, like Unknown9: Awakening , which I really wanted to try, or Enotria.

The Unknown9: Awakening booth.

There was also a super giant worm straight from the new Dune: Awakening MMO!

This worm looks way more interesting than the trailer of Dune Awakening itself!

Finally, let me share my loot from this event: a limited edition, numbered print of The Witcher III (only 300 worldwide in this format). I'm really looking forward to framing it and hanging it!

My The Witcher III: Wild Hunt print, numbered 211/300.

Now, coming to the things that I didn’t like, two spring immediately to mind.

The first was the enormous quantity of highly anticipated games behind closed doors , meaning: "get in queue and waste half of your day if you want to see something or GTFO".

The very private The First Berserker, Khazan booth.

Really, it's a pity that so many of them had such marvellous booths from the outside, but nothing else to see unless you showed up at 10 AM sharp.

These included Civilization VII, Star Wars Outlaws, The First Berserker: Khazan (extremely long queue), and Monster Hunter: Wilds itself, just to name a few.

The Ubisoft booth.

The other aspect I found concerning was the overwhelming prevalence of gacha games and multiplayer titles with addictive mechanics. While the booths of these developers were beautifully decorated, seeing them surrounded by so many people really made me question if this is really the direction we want to go with video games. I think, everything was relatively balanced until Genshin Impact came out, but now it's really starting to feel like things are spiralling out of control.

The Hoyoverse booth was immense as expected, which gives you an idea of how much they're investing on their game, but also how much money they make.

All in all, it was a pleasure visiting Gamescom again. Contrary to the 2023 edition, this year my wife and I had very limited time, so we decided to go to Cologne in the morning and return to London in the evening.

So just one day in total, which is absolutely fine, provided you temper your expectations of trying every trending game!

Khazan had such a long queue, it was impossible to try it.

See you next year, Gamescom!