Video games and pop-culture set to collide as IGN Convention comes to Abu Dhabi

Video gaming reaches a whole new level in Abu Dhabi this weekend as the IGN Convention comes to the capital for the first time.

Jack Gleeson will attend the IGN Conference in Abu Dhabi this weekend. Courtesy HBO

This weekend, Abu Dhabi gets its first video-gaming and pop-­culture fan event, as the IGN Convention lands at the du Forum on Yas Island.

The show’s debut in the capital marks the culmination of a five-year journey, as Hitesh Uchil, director of IGN Middle East, explains. “Five years ago, my colleague, Abbas Jaffar Ali, and I started a website called Middle East Gamers,” he says. “It was the first website in the region to talk about video games. It was a ­community-based website and more than 50 people from around the region contributed articles to the site.

“For gamers in the region, it was a place to meet online and share their love for video games. To give these gamers a chance to meet in person, we created an event called GamesFest. It was meant to be a small gathering of a few passionate gamers – but we had an overwhelming response, with more than 1,000 people ­attending.”

The virtual seeds were sowed. Two years later, Middle East Gamers merged with IGN, the biggest video-games website in the world, to form IGN Middle East, and GamesFest evolved into the IGN Convention – a festival featuring the best of video games, movies and pop culture.

The first two IGN Conventions were held in Dubai, but this year the team felt it was time for a change.

“For the past two years, IGN Convention has been organised by the team at IGN Middle East,” Uchil says. “As the event continues to evolve, we decided we needed a professional events company to handle the event and, thankfully, Flash Entertainment stepped up to the task.

“It was an opportunity to bring a gaming event for the very first time to Abu Dhabi and we’re excited that the event is being held at du Forum, Yas Island.”

IGN Middle East also organises an event in Bahrain, and Uchil says that his team is working on an Oman event, with plans for further expansions in Kuwait and Egypt.

The celebrity guests attending this year's event include Game of Thrones star Jack Gleeson ­(familiar as evil king Joffrey in the hit HBO drama), and Dave Fennoy and Adam Harington, two of the voice actors from Telltale Games' critically acclaimed, interactive drama-adventure games The Walking Dead (based on the comic book series that inspired AMC's smash-hit TV series) and The Wolf Among Us, based on DC Comics' long-­running Fables series, about classic fairy-tale characters living in exile in modern-day New York.

For future events, Uchil has his sights set on a few other guests he hasn’t yet managed to bring to the region.

"I'd love to get [Metal Gear creator and former Konami VP] Hideo Kojima – the man is a legend in the game industry and a personal hero," he says.

"We also had a few people we narrowly missed getting to Abu Dhabi this year, including David Hayter [who provides the voice of Solid Snake in the Metal Gear games], Nolan North [the voice of Nathan Drake in the Uncharted Games and Desmond Miles in the Assassin's Creed series] and Harold and Kumar star Kal Penn. I'm hoping they'll be a part of future IGN Conventions in Abu Dhabi."

We’re sure that many new memories will be made at this year’s event, both for Uchil and his fellow organisers, and for fans in the capital who, at last, have an event of their own.

Looking back over previous shows, Uchil shared a few of his favourite moments.

"I remember ex-WWE champ Booker T spending time with a child with Down syndrome in Bahrain, a girl with vitiligo winning the Cosplay competition dressed as a Disney princess, or even the time [the actor who played] The Mountain from Game of Thrones carried a reporter over his head for an entire interview session – that was quite the sight."

The celebrities

Jack Gleeson

The Game of Thrones star is sure to be a big hit with fans at IGN Abu Dhabi. The Irish actor, familiar as evil king Joffrey Baratheon in the HBO smash hit, last year announced his retirement from acting to focus on academia, so this might be a rare chance to meet him. Film fans with a sharp eye may also remember him from his uncredited role in the 2002 dragon-slaying Christian Bale movie Reign of Fire. Gleeson appeared alongside Bale again in 2005, playing "Little Boy" in Christopher Nolan's debut Dark Knight movie, Batman Begins.

Adam Harrington

Harrington plays the lead character Bigby Wolf, aka The Big Bad Wolf, in The Wolf Among Us, the ­video-game spin off from DC Comics' long-­running Fables graphic novels. The comic-book series features well-known characters from folklore and fairy tales who live in a secret community in New York City, after being exiled from their fairy-tale homeland. Other characters who have had the Fables treatment since the comic was launched in 2002 include Snow White, the Three Little Pigs and Goldilocks, many of whom also appear in the game, while local characters such as Aladdin and Ali Baba have also featured. Harrington won a Bafta for Best Performance for his role in the game. DC also adapted the games story into a new Fables comic book.

Dave Fennoy

Fennoy has been lending his voice to video games and animation since the early 1990s. Early gaming roles included the voice of Robcop, and several characters in Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog series. More recent work includes the voice of Hulu's video clips and Bluebeard in The Wolf Among Us. Fennoy is probably best known to gamers as Lee Everett in The Walking Dead video game, a 2012 spin off, not from the hit TV show, but from the original Image Comics series, which began publication in 2003. Younger visitors may also recognise him as the voice of Tetrax Shard in the hit children's show Ben 10.

IGN highlights

The workshops

A host of workshops are on offer to ­aspiring game makers, established ­creators filmmakers and more. Top picks include an Image Nation ­screenwriting workshop, a workshop on guerrilla ­filmmaking with award-winning ­local ­horror and thriller specialist Faisal ­Hashmi ­(pictured, centre), and a cosplay workshop from NadiaSK.

The main stage

The IGN main stage will feature talks, competitions and concerts on both days of the event. Kicking off on Friday with a welcome address by Noura Al Kaabi, the chief executive of Abu Dhabi's media zone twofour54 and an Image Nation board member, the stage will host talks by the creators of and actors from hit local animations Freej and Mansour; panels with the celebrity guests; the Cosplay ­Catwalk; and a Friday night concert of video game, TV and movie-related tunes from Bahrain-based metal band The Experiment.

Competitions

Video games

And then there are the real stars of the show – the games. As well as showcases of some of the latest, most popular and upcoming games, for the competitive minded there will gaming contests. A host of popular titles will be on show for hands-on testing, alongside classic old-school arcade machines. Players can test their skills against fellow gamers on games including Fifa 16, Pro Evolution Soccer 2016, Just Dance, WWE2K15 and Metal Gear Solid V, among many others.

Cosplay

No comics or gaming event is complete without a cosplay competition, and IGN is no exception, with prizes worth a total of US$10,000 (Dh36,700) up for grabs. ­Celebrity cosplayer NadiaSK (pictured) will be on hand to offer inspiration. Italy's most famous player and a ­member of the Italian national cosplay team that took third place at the ­European Cosplay Gathering 2012, she represented Italy at the World Cosplay Summit in 2014, and took second place and the Best Performance Award dressed as Sora from the anime series Kaleido Star.

• IGN Convention is at du Forum on Yas Island from 2pm to 10pm on Friday October 16 and Saturday October 17. Tickets, from www.ticketmaster.ae, cost Dh100 a day or Dh500 for a VIP ticket (Friday only), which includes a gift bag, priority access to celebrity guests, two autograph tokens and a closed discussion panel for media and VIPs. Visit www.ignconvention.com