Gamescom: “The Heart of Gaming.” An enormous convention-cum-phenomenon that takes place every summer, and this year was the first time attending the event for many of us at Glowmade. But attend it we did because, in a spectacular trailer hosted at Opening Night Live, we finally unveiled King of Meat to the world!
More than just that, we hosted two booths for playing the game all week long – one for the general public at the Xbox wing, and one in the Amazon Games business lounge for press and creators. Our always-amazing team were switched on for the community practically 24/7, ushering thousands through our little patch of Loregok; to teach them the controls and watch them cause untold mayhem in the Koliseum!
It was a wild and wonderful week, so here’s just a glimpse of what we really got up to – and which food-stops in Cologne are best for hungry, hungry game devs…
Monday ~ Bugs on Tour
Our grand and wyrd odyssey begins Monday morning, right as everyone else in the Glowmade slack is sending their usual (somewhat unhinged) ‘good morning’ messages. QA Sophie and I grab the coach together to Heathrow, arriving at noon, and already feeling the odd liminality of airports – which is also when we run into Jonny, Mike and Adam. The girls grab a nice smokehouse luncheon, whilst the dads opt for sushi
We take the traditional Glowmade airport team selfie, and cram sporadically onto our flight. Sophie and I are the only ones to book seats next to each other, but it’s a fun Where’s Wally? of trying to spot the backs of heads around us. Jonny immediately kicks it off with a pair of streamers next to him, chatting almost a full hour – which is just as well, because our flight’s delayed!
Hilariously, though, once we finally get in the air, the flight lasts maybe half an hour? I wish I was exaggerating, but that pilot must’ve had the accelerator full-throttle. I barely got 27 minutes into my podcast (I checked!) and we were touching down in Germany.
We leapt in a taxi and instantly found that – yes – it was indeed techno that crowns all Cologne radio stations. Our hotel was relatively close, and just across the river from the expo centre – still a thirty minute walk, but guess who all collectively forgot the tram existed…? I should also mention it was a sweet hotel. My room had a giant greyscale print canvas of a courgette, so that’s how you know it’s ART. Not that any of us were complaining!
Around an hour of soaking in the environs passed, before all heading together on a shamefully long quest for Thai food. It was just the craving. Impossible, apparently, to find any that take cards – so let this be a lesson to a cashless world! Eventually, after crossing several cobbled squares and doing a solid couple blocks of the general area, we landed ourselves at Sausalitos. In a hunt for Thai, we found tacos – with impeccable vibes and utterly enormous cocktails – on other people’s tables, of course!
Looking for a final stretch of our legs, we crossed the square again for one of the nearest pubs. Amidst a hearty collection of tiny Kolsch beer and Aperol spritz, Mike switched out his order of a half pint for a full pint last minute… and got his mind blown by the pint to end all pints! Evidently it amazed the wildlife too, as we were divebombed by moths almost the entire time. That’s what you get for sitting under a streetlamp, but they were very cute little guys, so it’s hard to feel too mad at them. Maybe they knew we were about to be famous? Who knows…
Tuesday ~ The Big Reveal
Today’s the day it all goes wild. T-minus 12 hours to announce!
We start bright and early, around 7:45am for breakfast. And what a breakfast of kings – a frankly immeasurable selection of meats, cheeses, pastry, bread, fruit and more. KOMtinental as it comes!
Following more salami than should probably be right for human consumption, we all sat together in the lobby in hardcore silence while we prepped for the day ahead on our laptops. Our third coffees of the day arrived as I was setting up the updated website and announce articles. Any one of us could have been astral projecting from caffeine as we began the long walk across the river to start setting up at the Koelnmesse. The heat didn’t help, nor did seeing just how BIG the building was! Walking through the labyrinthian halls really impressed on us just how real it was all getting, as we finally found ourselves at the Amazon Games press lounge. By now, Ine, Sam and Jonathan had also arrived in Cologne, and met us there for a truly delicious lunch.
We got acquainted with the space and promptly headed once more unto the breach to try and find our public booth on the Xbox floor in Hall 7. It took just about 20 years to walk there. But our booth was almost smack in the middle of Hall 7.
We began rehearsing our demo guides for all the many players soon to experience King of Meat in the flesh! The team were almost instantly in their element, running through controls, little bits of lore, and making sure no player was left behind — all really heartening to watch. We took some team photos in front of our enormous art wall, and headed out to the hotel to prepare for the hours ahead.
We settled into the hotel courtyard and almost immediately ran into our friends at Liquid Crimson, who helped make our announce trailer a reality! We were stationed on thumb-twirling duty till around 6pm, at which time we ascended to our shared hotel room to count down to announce.
There we and our publishers sat, all armed to the teeth with laptops, press embargoes, and plastic crowns for kickoff. A bunch of our Glowmade cohort had tickets to Opening Night Live, and so were watching the show in-person – sending selfies all the while.
It was an intense atmosphere – all sorts of last-minute bits going on – but one filled with support and excitement. We were finally going to be announcing our game, and we had so many people who were excited to make it happen!! We were heads down for a good while, getting everything you can possibly thing of in order – including, of course, custom KOM temporary tattoos.
It’s around 8:30pm when the moment hits, and time STOPS. Everybody is almost totally silent to watch our trailer unveil, and we all just SCREAM when it’s over! Then, almost instantly, we’re furiously publishing articles, updating social bios and banners, posting the website, pressing ‘go’ on everything; and for the next two hours we’re fielding press and social media. I don’t even think we thought about eating until maybe 9pm, at which point we order pizzas to the room. Mine goes almost cold before I even touch it – there was so much going on!
But it was brilliant! The feeling was utterly indescribable, and everyone was just so happy at how well it had gone – and how well people were receiving it! Eventually we decide it’s safe to leave the media alone for a moment, and head for the main square by the Glowmade hotel. Everyone on our team is there to grab a quick nightcap and celebratory drinks, though without the moths this time. Shame.
Wednesday ~ IT BEGINS
Wising up to the ache of our feet, we got the tram to the Messe. Yes, we finally remembered it existed, and cut our journey from 30 minutes to just under 10. Essentially, we hacked the walking system – take that, pesky navmesh!
The grind immediately starts at 9am, both in the B2B lounge and Hall 7. The doors are open to the masses, and good looooord there are a lot of them! Fortunately, when not on the show-floor, we had the Amazon lounge and some sofas for a bit of relative calm. Which I definitely needed! My hours monitoring socials the night before clearly were insufficient for the influx of messages I now needed to catch up with, so the first hour or so passes in a blur of scheduling up articles and responding to our new excited community members.
By around 10:30 I’m out on the show-floor for real, heading straight to Hall 7 to check up on the bugs manning the booth. They’re doing amazingly, and we already have a solid queue to get into the game – which was so crazy to see! I get to work taking photos of the event, roaming the halls and trying not to go wild about that accursed wifi coming and going… There were insta stories to update, dammit!
Most exciting of the day was the emergence of our very own King of Meat Contender – a giant mascot, 7ft tall, who roamed the Messe with me to pose and give out merch to all the budding knights we found along the way. From what I can tell, he gives a mean high five, and was a huge hit with a lot of the cosplayer hordes that came through all day!
The evening was another cracking night out, celebrating with friends and fellow developers alike – and it was EVERYTHING ✨
Thursday ~ Rising Stars
Business as usual, which here means wading through thousands of gamers to whack skeletons to death with sausage hammers. We played some ridiculous matches all throughout the day, and the Glowmade demo team was truly thriving.
It was so interesting to see the different ways our crew got into the role of game-runner. Ine totally came alive, very much an e-sports maniac mixed with Total Wipeout commentator, while Sam was channelling his inner Greatest Showman at all times. Even though I was only there to take photos in the booth, I hung around way longer than I needed to just to watch them whirl people up into the spirit of things, over and over as groups of players came in and out and tried the game for the very first time. There was such a sense of pride for what we were doing, and how the whole team wasn’t going to let up for even a second!
Thursday passed so much quicker than the others, perhaps because we were anticipating the arrival of Jim and Mike D. A couple of us were leaving on Friday, so these two legends were coming in to switch out for us.
To while away the evening before they flew in, we settle ourselves with some other Guildford Games greats in the main square by our hotel. The beloved Sausalitos was just across the way, whilst we downed an awful lot of pizza and extremely peachy drinks. We only discovered they were non-alcoholic after our fourth… perhaps fifth? And to that I say: thank goodness!
Joining us were Liquid Crimson, Ben Huskins (Design Director of Two Point Studios) and the marvellous Will Byles (of Until Dawn and The Quarry fame). Top that off with a live jazz band playing the Star Wars Cantina, and the passing round of a truly phenomenal fidget toy snagged from the business lounge, and a wonderful time was had by all! We raised many a glass of mocktails to a week well spent – and only getting better!
The rest is a blur…
Friday, Saturday and Sunday are all one giant meringue of madness! We broke out our new and fancily embroidered KOM Team shirts for Friday (the best day of the week) and went out on the floor with renewed pride and excitement for the play sessions ahead.
And we were right to be excited: within two hours we’d run out of our 1000 giant foam fingers we’d had in stock for the whole day! Absolute insanity! Fortunately, the Xbox staff who were assisting on our booth were absolute rockstars, and rushed to get our restock into Hall 7 in no time! It was a full-throttle race to get them unpacked whilst a team of four Contenders were playing the game right next to us, but we managed it just in time for them to wrap up their match and go – foamies in (or on) hand!
Come the afternoon, half the team waved goodbye to Germany and made our way home to England. Though sadly this flight wasn’t the miraculous half hour the first had been, we did at least get to spy the massive wind farms across the Channel with pure fascination for a solid ten minutes.
By Saturday, we had found our superfans! One pair of Contenders had been through the booth and our big ol’ queue FIVE TIMES, even winning the extremely difficult gold dungeon trophies twice – which is pretty darn impressive for people who’d never seen the game until now! We got some great photos with them, and it was so lovely to chat a while and talk about what kept them coming back.
Things quieted down somewhat around Sunday, affording those team members still there to watch the giant Xbox games banner cycle through its titles until showing King of Meat in all its blazing glory. An incredibly proud moment for all of them, and for us back home. It was truly an unforgettable week, and only the first in so so many more moving forward for Glowmade.
So… same time next year?
