Malaysian Gamer & GamerZakh At The Malaysian Games & Comics Convention 2012

It was the 19th of May on a sunny Saturday afternoon when I met up with GamerZakh on the steps of the Kolej Damansara Utama. The occasion, the Malaysian Games & Comics Convention, the first inaugural event for the organisers. The convention aimed to bring together industry experts from the creative industry, the media, comics, and game developers with a mix of people from the community. These sort of comics and games conventions are a rare deal in Malaysia so it was a no brainer that we were going to check out this event...

Big Lofty Ambitions Start From Small Things

I arrived there with GamerZakh at about 2.30 pm. We walked to the main hall where all the exhibitions booths were located with a centre area with all sorts of trinkets and artists work on sale. There were artists who were drawing illustrations on the spot. There were about 10 booths at both sides of the main hall... which isn't much but this is their first event so it's a start.

MPH was there selling their collection of comics. Zakh immediately spotted a comic based on Robert Pattinson... yes the twillight dude, I kid you not. It seems people these days weren't just making comic based off of superheroes alone... but with real people. I saw a cool comic based off Star Wars Knights of The Old Republic. Gamers would recognise this which was a Bioware RPG game... perhaps one of Bioware's best RPGs.

Inspidea caught our eyes as they had a little TV showcasing the animation work they've done. And these are really good quality animation, stuff that you would see on Cartoon Network. They are a local company that has done animation work for other broadcasters and studios as well as their own original IP's. They had a rather  ingenious way of recruiting new people on the convention floor. They were handing out small cards to people where if you were interested you could draw you own caricature of a super hero or villain and hand it in to them.

Zakh even had the opportunity to fold a T-shirt, which isn't exactly an experience you would have in a convention. Perhaps at home, but not in a convention. Thankfully he had help in the form of the Zicco Fold by Zicco Tees. Apart from T-shirt folding Zicco Tees also allowed users to submit their own design challenge, and even earn some money from it.

We then saw a whole host of Star Wars characters, with proper armour and suits! These guys represent the 501st Legion and Zakh had a dance off with them. Cool guys that are extremely dedicated to their Star Wars stuff.

In terms of gaming, we saw a small section with World of Tanks set up on four laptops. They were giving away World of Tanks installer CD's. It's a free to play game anyway which you can download here, but I suppose an installer CD is always handy to have. We'll have a review of World of Tanks soon! So watch out for that.


Right in front of the stage there was two big flat screen TVs. They were having a Marvel vs Capcom console tournament. Some guys were rocking an arcade controller, which was pretty cool. Wow they are rather quick in their reflexes, and here I thought StarCraft player had high APM, but these fellas could hold their own.

Garena was also on the exhibition floor with a booth where they were giving out League of Legends goodie bags that had exclusive skins for your hero. All you had to do was register your email at their terminal and you got a free goodie bag with League of Legends stuff. With that, we went to the third floor to check out the League of Legends tournament that was being held at the games lab.

Yes... the games lab! And they had Alienware desktops! It was odd to have a games lab right in front of the library, sort of taunting those studying hard for their exams..."Hey! Check this out! Here we are playing games!". Anyway, it was a cybercafe atmosphere and the LoL tournament continued on Sunday.

We called it a day at that point(we left the convention at 4.30pm), but there were also talks by Ubisoft Singapore, IGDA Malaysia(the independent Games Developers Association), indie devs, and game design/animation talks that took place later that evening which we couldn't attend(our time was limited there as I had to rush off elsewhere). The convention was a success. It might not have been huge but for a start, it was a good event. Big things start from small beginnings. The people there were very friendly and the Malaysian Games & Comics Convention had the right spirit and heart... a lot of heart!