I first stumbled upon the (COMPLETELY AWESOME AND MAJORLY GEEKY) 4-day festival of goodness that is MAGfest last January.
It was dumb luck, like picking up a lottery ticket that someone left on the ground, if the lottery ticket was a winner and paid you once a year in good times, comedy, excitement and all sorts of geek paradise. What is it? Okay, let’s cover that first, and then we can get in to the silliness of how I found MAGfest right in my back yard.
What is MAGFest?
As they say, Short for “Music And Gaming Festival,” MAGFest is a four day-long event dedicated to the appreciation of video game music, gaming of all types, and the gaming community. The event runs 24 hours a day, and offers consoles, arcades, tabletop, LAN, live video game cover bands, chiptunes, vendors, guest speakers, and much much more.
That’s the official description but that just doesn’t do the event any justice. Take somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 gamers, drop them into the Gaylord National Harbor (which is monstrous), give them music to play, listen to, or create. Give them hundreds of video, table top, dancing, drumming, pinball, racing and fighting video games to play. Invite them to meet the indie gamers who are working on the future of gaming. Have an entire track on gaming design (MAGES – the Music and Gaming Education Symposium.) Then, add on a live zombie tag game, thousands of amateur and professional cosplayers, and artists. Give them the ridiculousness of “Super Art Fight”, along with panels on the history of video games and the importance of character building.
Toss in gaming musicians and live actors like Ninja Sex Party, Extra Credits and LoadingReadyRun. There is no shortage of things to do at MAGfest for the hardcore and casual gamer alike. Attendees could spend the entire four days in panels, movies, discussions and autograph lines. They could shop at one of the several hundred vendors offering everything from custom etched glassware to Pokemon hats. They could just engage in LAN gaming tournaments, or go watch the talented musicians party it up.
The MAGFest Arcade
The arcade is like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life. We were exposed to tons of new games that used cameras to match dance moves and score points. There were a dozen Dance 
Dance style of games. At one point, we watched one of the bloody nurses from Silent Hill dancing along to some K-pop music. A hole opened in space and time and laughed at us. Along with the modern games, we had a chance to play some of the games that were mainstream decades ago. They were all there, set to free play: Dig Dug, Joust, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., Pole Position, Zaxxon, Coors Light Bowling, Tron, and a hundred others. In other words, the games I spent my entire teen years and beyond mastering.
Equally cool was the computer museum that had everything from the old Tandy, Commodore 64, Atari 800 XL (my favorite), Intellivision, Atari 2600, and everything in between. For the first time since we visited the Art of Video Games exhibit at the Smithsonian, I saw 30 years of my gaming life in one place. It was humbling and nostalgia-inducing and the organizers are cool people for putting this together.
One of the other areas was filled with pinball machines. Some were free-to-play and others were reserved for a pinball tournament. Yes, I said pinball tournament in 2016. Welcome to MAGfest! I had the chance to play some of my favorites like Johnny Mnemonic, The Twilight Zone (one of my top three all time games), Star Trek, and more.
They had Gorgar! YES, Gorgar! What’s Gorgar? Oh, come on. It was the first talking pinball machine. It inspired a song by the metal band, Helloween. Gorgar will eat you, that’s what! The last time I played that game, I was surrounded by kids my age who were on roller skates. The cool ones could even skate backwards. The DJ would announce “couples skate” and “Faithfully” by Journey would start playing. Get the picture? Well, let me reminisce for a while. The only thing that would have taken it over the top would have been Silverball Mania or Mata Hari. That would have kept me in the arcade for the full four days.
I know it all sounds silly, but the other payoff to MAGfest was time with my son. He is a gamer through and through. He wanted to come to the fest dressed as a character from Fallout 4 (and yes, there were plenty of those). More importantly, he is set on becoming a game designer as a career. Seeing where gaming originated and how it has developed is important to that education. The MAGES panels were valuable lessons from those who are in the profession. He got to speak with indie developers, listen to some of the voice talent and programmers who created the games he enjoys playing. STEM careers are obviously wildly important to the next generation, and studies on education through gaming are coming back with positive results.
Plus, it’s a chance to geek out with my kid!
So, here’s the silliness of how we found MAGfest which is roughly 20 miles from my house. We went to Sweden. Well, we didn’t GO to Sweden. I was working on one of the stories in the Leon “Catwalk” Caliber novels, and when I write cyberpunk, I like to listen to aggressive music. I was typing away to a band called Machinae Supremacy, and I was excited to find out that they had a brand new album out. I bought the album and the I figured I would search to see if they were coming to the States on the tour. Imagine my surprise when I looked and found they had one U.S. date on the tour.
MAGfest.
And so a tradition was born. Last week was our second trip to MAGfest and we will be going back every chance we get. Our buddy, Tee Morris, even hosted a presentation on the history of soundtracks in movies and games. (We’ll post links to the video when it’s up.) Expect to see us as a MAGfest for as many years as we can. It’s an incredible event and hopefully we get a chance to share it with you!
One love!
nK
