Originally published July 24, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
Calum Petrie reports from Insomnia X Resonate – Glasgow 2017…
The Resonate gaming festival launched in Glasgow last year and was held at the SEC (fomerly SECC),, bringing an extremely gaming focused celebration to Glasgow and was well received by those who attended. This year the festival stepped up its size and capacity by teaming up with the well known Insomnia team to bring an even larger gaming event to Scotland.
The event took place between July 21st and 23rd, once again hosted at Glasgow’s SEC arena, though the event has moved into a larger hall allowing the show floor a lot more square footage.
A complaint about last year was that the ratio of merchandise to games was about 2/3’s of the show floor. This year the ratio may have been closer to 60/40 though that in no way means that the gaming was neglected. The show floor had plenty for gamers of all ages; this ranged from a massive Minecraft area and retro gaming area to the free to play tournaments that ran all day long as well as an exclusive 18+ area with LAN play CoD: Infinte Warfare.
There was plenty of YouTube personalities from the UK at the event to participate in Meet and Greets, as well as getting up on the main stage for Q&A sessions and England Vs Scotland Rocket League tournaments. The YouTube personalities at the show consisted of Syndicate, Batchy, Terroriser and Marley 13 along with other members of the UK YouTube scene.
A hightlight of the show for myself was the retro gaming section as previously mentioned. The area had a great selection of consoles from the earliest eras of gaming all the way up to the Wii U, allowing players to try their hand at everything and anything that was available. There was a diverse mix of age groups always wandering about looking for something to play and sometimes you would pair up with a random person for a match of Mario Kart 64 or Marvel vs Capcom 2 on the Dreamcast.
The merchandise stands were extremely varied this year and had a lot to offer from small UK businesses to large franchises such as GAME. The show was a good platform to get lesser known local businesses on the map such as Glasgow’s own Geek Retreat there was also a specific section dedicated to trading card games based just outside the hall where players could learn, play and compete in the trading card area.
Once of the largest attractions at the event was any form of VR that people could get their hands on; there were a few booths that had VR readily available to test for the public. These booths were found both at the front of the hall and at the rear where the Univeristy and career options had been set up. Three Scottish Universities were on show to display their own gaming focused courses – Abertay University, Glasgow School of Art and the University of the West of Scotland. The three higher education establishments may not be well known for their gaming courses (apart from Abertay) but the display of talent and training on show would inspire any would be game developer to aim for something.
The Insomnia X Resonate festival is a little more edgy that shows in Scotland, such as Play Expo, though this is a step between the easy going events and the larger more varied events like EGX. The atmosphere at Insomnia X Resonate is a friendly one, people are generally accepting of everyone else and it is a good place to take children to as virtually everything is acceptable to children as well as adults (except the 18+ section).
With the Resonate Festival only being in its second year, it has improved a lot on its first show and hopefully going forward it will prove to be a staple of the summer gaming scene in Scotland and Glasgow.
Calum Petrie – You can follow me on Twitter – @Cetrie
