Rage is probably the hottest esports event in Japan organized by CyberZ. Rage is held every quarter and thanks to some folks that we knew from CyberZ, they kindly invited us as a press.
The venue was Makuhari Messe, probably one of the biggest conventional hall in Japan located in Chiba, and the access wasn’t that bad at all for a driver like myself. Now I was surprised by the size of the Rage venue and the sheer number of people gathered up for that day (a good 6-7,000).
The main event was hands down their title Shadowverse, which is a turn-based digital card game, for which I didn’t get to understand fully of the rules and the nature of it but it was entertaining enough just to compare with games like PUBG or starcraft. There was a huge area just across the main stage where hundreds of people were competing on a tryout and I never seen such a silent gathering as most were speechless and just staring at their mobile device facing one another. No bluffing or small talk whatsoever as you would imagine for a normal Poker scene.
To my surprise, Rage was not only about their own game, namely Shadowverse, but also other titles like PUBG, Smash Brothers, and so on.
Promoters were there of course, giving out goodies (kitkats), flyers, or asking people to try their new mobile phone etc. The place was surprising loud, kudos to the DJ booth at the middle of the venue but also felt extremely lively. Pizza stand, the ultimate nutrition for game lovers (or engineers), was there too!
Most of the attendees were very young, maybe teenagers or close, but I was pleasant to see some family participants who brought there children or even newborns in their baby cars with them, enjoying the festivity.
Now that we are getting into eSports event business at work as well, I think I kinda get a feel for what sort of effort will be needed for throwing a decent eSports event with thousands of visitors, not to mention that even for Rage to reach this level must have been at least months of effort with tons of trial and errors.
Way to go Rage!
Just eSports 