All we do is give people a chance to
physically experience their digital hobbies
– Andy Smith
IN BRIEF
What: Insomnia Gaming Festival
Who: Multiplay, GES
Where: The NEC
When: 25-28 August 2017
any of that goes down then your event is
over. Not only have you got the challenge
of running an event but you’ve also got
technical challenges that you don’t have
with a lot of events.”
Insomnia was launched by organiser
Multiplay around 20 years ago as
Winter 2017/18 in association with GES
a relatively small LAN (local area
network) event for gaming enthusiasts
to meet, socialise and gain access to
high-speed internet. Visitors would stay
overnight and continue gaming for the
duration (hence the name).
A craze kicked off and a community
was born.
“It started to scale up in the mid
2000s,” continues Smith. “The numbers
got really big. There is a degree of right-
place-right-time, but our founder Craig
[Fletcher] was into gaming before it was
ever cool.
“Insomnia had the right to be there
when it blew up because we’d been there
long before anyone else had. We’d been
doing it for years so we were equipped
when the boom came.”
Around ten years ago, an exhibition
element was added to the event, opening
up a whole world of new opportunities
to expand and evolve.
“LAN is still at the heart of the event
you see today,” continues Smith. “But
we have this huge expo now, so there
are some mainstream, well-known
games and some console games as well
as PC. We introduced YouTubers and
streamers, which caused a big kick in
the numbers.
“It’s quite diverse; we do panel shows
and meet and greets. We’ve got a deal
with Universal Music, so last year we
had people like Years and Years and
Chase & Status and this year we put
Robot Wars in and the UK’s largest
drone race.”
Whatever they add to the show,
says Smith, the intention is always to
increase value and enjoyment for its
core gamer base. That’s not to say that
fans always welcome everything they
add to the show.
“There are times when you get it
wrong,” he admits, “We’ve sometimes
added bits that have been less welcome,
and you just don’t do it again. The
audience can see what you were
attempting to do and that it was borne
out of a desire to add to the show.”
Insomnia, perhaps partly due to its
24-hour nature, has passionate and
loyal fans. Members of the LAN gamer
community even make up some of the
organising staff, having been recruited
while attending the show.
These staff members who’ve
experienced the show from the visitor
side are invaluable when it comes to
communicating with, and appealing
to, the show’s tech-savvy audience
who avoid many traditional marketing
channels. So how do you reach a group
who don’t read print magazines and
newspapers, and who don’t own a TV?
“We’ve got our own forums, which
quite a lot of people are members of,”
says Smith. We do a really heavy social
media push, we use the platforms of the
YouTubers and streamers who attend
the event as well, and use their reach to
amplify our message.
“It’s a very digitally heavy strategy;
there are very few written publications
or adverts. But you have to have a nod to
traditional, because some of our visitors
are below 16 and the parents have to
know what we are and who we are.”
While Insomnia continues to grow
in size and scale, its core identity and
community will remain the same.
For those outside the world of gaming,
it can be easy to stereotype gamers
as anti-social or individualist, but
organisers like Smith have seen the
power of live events to bring a disparate
online group together.
“We give people a chance to physically
experience their digital hobbies,” he
concludes. “We give people a physical
forum where they can meet up with
like-minded individuals and have a
good time.
“It’s incredibly sociable; you’ve only
got to come to the event to see it.”
engage
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