Getting out and about::The Social Gamer

June 30th, 2007

If there’s one thing that I sometimes feel guilty about is not being social enough. This is normally a result of me focusing too much on one particular thing and whoring it out until I am satisfied. Now I must admit, for the last 2 weeks I have been doing this for my Chinese study. I guess its a good thing though as I have made some astounding progress and am very proud of it.

Fortunately for gamer nerds like me(and probably you) I can have a great social life and game at the same time. I wanted to bring this up as I am now officially on holidays an there are a slew of great gaming events going on that are going to keep me constantly busy. Plus I had one of our regular gatherings with the boys yesterday, so it reminded me to post this. Here’s a list of what is on this holidays:

Avcon Adelaide’s Anime and Video game Convention
LPC Lan Party Central(meant to be more consoles than PCs)
Nintendo Connection Tour
O-LAN Street Geek(prolly won’t go, but its likey that my brother + friends will)

Now add to this a few general gaming sessions with the usual friends as well as catching up and doing non gaming social stuff and you have a pretty packed 3 week holiday. Don’t even let me get started on the 60+ list of games that I need to finish or future blogging plans.

I decided to post this to prove that gaming can also help out in your social life, there are plenty of great gaming events going on in your community, so I strongly recomend getting some mates together and taking a look. Even if there isn’t something on in your area create something, its not too hard to organize this sorta set up.

If you need some ideas of what events go on then here are a few suggestions:

LAN Parties

There are piles of these on all the time, everywhere. They are definetly not too hard to find. If your into your PC games then this is the event for you. Personally I’m not really much of a PC gamer(just ain’t my vibe) so sometimes they have a few consoles set up for the softies like me.

Promotional Events

These are definetly more popular in large/important places in the world. And down here in South Australia we don’t get enough of these. But in America they do, basically these events are to plug games to the public. So stuff like the Nintendo Connection Tour, the Fusion Tour or the Final Fantasy party that I mentioned in the last entry. You can also get freebies, so go there!

Expo’s/Concerts

Expos are like promo events but much larger. There are a few down here in Australia, so if we have them then everywhere else in the world must have at least a few per country. I also added concerts here for game music concerts like Eminence.

Community Regulars

Basically like LANs, but they happen on a regular basis. Usually weekly/bi-weekly. These are pretty popular at places like Universities or community centres, so look around to see whats going on in your area.

Get your mates around

Probably my favourite as everyone that attends is your friend. All that you need to do is get some mates around(usually at least 3 + yourself), get the gear and game on. This is cool as you get to choose what systems you want to play, the food etc etc. Plus there’s no sponsers. You can also mix and match, have people playing some consoles while others are on the PCs in a LAN, have a Singstar/Guitar Hero/whatever themed party.

So there you have it, go out there are get socially active fellow gamers. And be sure to drop us a little comment to tell us how you use gaming as a tool for social activity. I’d be totally interested to hear what other people do.