Barely a week after the death of EGX Rezzed was announced, WASD has been revealed as part of London Games Fest 2022. WASD will be held at Tobacco Docks from 7th-9th April 2022, a familiar time and venue to the show it’s replacing, but it’s reanimating Rezzed’s still warm body so obviously that is even sounds similar when you read it out.
Wazzed, innit?
?W.A.S.D is a new game event!
?Play loads of games
?️Check out dev talks
?Meet content creatorsAnd lots more TBA!
?️7th-9th April '22 @TobaccoDockLon
?Buy tickets: https://t.co/fV1tTqqpuk #WASD pic.twitter.com/Nq4jGlUrO0— WASD (@WASDlive_) October 19, 2021
David Lilley, Roucan Founder, said: “W.A.S.D ensures there’s a consumer focus for London Games Festival, bringing both indie and big budget games together. We know that developers love to exhibit in a relaxed atmosphere and to get valuable feedback from gamers as they play. We’re looking forward to those in the trade coming down to have a coffee with new connections and enjoying a drink in the bar when the show closes.”
The vacuum which WASD has stepped in to fill was created at the end of the first live EGX since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The traditional spring-time, indie-focussed event of EGX Rezzed was no more, and in its place is EGX Birmingham, taking place at the NEC from 3rd-5th March 2022.
This year’s solitary event was a quiet and subdued show with many major publishers like Sony and Microsoft still staying away from attending large public events. With the events industry having had to essentially shut down for the last two years, EGX organiser ReedPop is surely hoping that holding a larger scale event in the spring will help to reinvigorate interest in their shows once more. They’re getting a helping hand from a games industry that has delayed a huge number of big budget game releases from late 2021 to early 2022, who might latch onto EGX Birmingham as a way to get punters interested in checking out their wares.
With that announcement, many people bemoaned the death of EGX Rezzed, even as ReedPop stated that holding the show at the NEC would give more space for indie developers to showcase their games. It left an opportunity that the original creators of EGX and Rezzed, who set up events and content company Roucan in 2019, have taken advantage of. Not only that, but where Eurogamer and the Gamer Network as a whole are the publishing partner for EGX, WASD has turned to Network N (which was created around PCGamesN) for its media partner.
Aside from the industry jockeying in the background, and that the show is actually happening and that you can buy tickets for it already, there’s precious little to know about WASD. There’s no named exhibitors as yet,
Source: WASD
