Brasil Game Show returns after three years with more influencers than video games

Videogames are not the only focus of the 13th edition of the Brasil Game Show, the biggest event of its kind in the country, which takes place until next Wednesday (12) in São Paulo.

Today, the fair is divided between testing games and personally experiencing the culture that revolves around this subject on the internet. Influencers, youtubers, streamers and sports athletes attract even more public attention than companies like Nintendo and PlayStation.

Not that these are still not recognized and acclaimed. On Thursday (6), an exclusive day for press and influencers, a crowd gathered around the Nintendo booth to watch, to applause, the trailer for the animation of Super Mario, which debuts next year.

But most of the time, the audience seems more interested in winning freebies, taking pictures with internet personalities and creating their own content. According to Marcelo Tavares, CEO and founder of BGS, this is a reflection of how the video game industry has transformed in the last three years.

“We tried to balance the two things. It’s a movement that we follow and there’s no way to stop it. The industry is growing and the content is now being propagated beyond the walls of the pavilion”, he said.

At BGS, it is common to come across influencers producing videos for social networks and streamers walking through the aisles with cell phones broadcasting live.

Tavares cites as an example the number of accredited influencers, which almost doubled between 2019 and 2022, and the presence of booths for brands such as TikTok.

“It’s a visiting card from the Brazilian market to the rest of the world, because this is serious, it generates work and fun. We can’t just talk about Lula or Bolsonaro all the time and not have fun.”

The 13th edition of Brasil Game Show takes place between October 6th and 12th. The last fair took place in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic, and brought together about 326,000 people over five days.

According to Marcelo Tavares, this year’s BGS is the biggest in terms of investment and work, and it should break a public record.

Unlike 2019, however, the lineup has fewer well-known industry figures. That year, the fair hosted Hidetaka Miyazaki, creator of “Dark Souls”, and the trio of actors who play the protagonists of “GTA V”, Steven Ogg, Shawn Fonteno and Ned Luke.

This year, the guest list revolves around internet personalities. The international presences are Takashi Iizuka, director of Sonic Team, responsible for the Sonic games, and Takayuki Nakayama, director of the fighting franchise “Street Fighter”.

With or without influencers, video games resist. As in previous years, indie game developers were restricted to an avenue of small booths separated by partitions. Discretion, however, did not prevent them from attracting the attention of onlookers.

One of the producers in this corridor does not bet on youth, nor on state-of-the-art graphics to attract the public at the event. This is Bitnamic Software, a company specialized in releasing games for obsolete platforms.

The company produced an unprecedented game for the Atari 2600 almost 40 years after the console was launched, the “Alien Holocaust”, created by programmer Fernando Salvio.

“There are people who are crazy and buy,” said Salvio, who also directed a short film with the same title.

“People who were children at the time of Atari are now adults and have money. And creating games for these platforms is much easier than it was back then”, explains Marcus Garrett, the company’s founder.

While at the PlayStation stand it is possible to test newly released titles for PS5, such as “The Last of Us: Part 1”, at the Bitnamic stand the public can learn more about “Incidente em Varginha”, released in 1998 for MS-DOS.

At Nintendo, games like “Mario Strikers: Battle League”, “Splatoon 3” and the never-before-seen “Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope” entertained the brand’s dedicated fans. On stage, the audience could still play “Nintendo Switch Sports” and “Just Dance” on a big screen, the same one that showed the movie trailer of the company’s mascot.

As this Friday (7) was the first day open to the public, queues were part of the fair’s landscape. Not only to test games and state-of-the-art computers, but also to win gifts and participate in promotional activities. In the Twitch space, enthusiasts of the platform were left waiting up to an hour to receive gifts.

“To get a freebie, sometimes you have to post a picture with the brand on Instagram and prove you follow the brand. So it’s a freebie, but it’s not free,” says Nathan Kussler, 31, a video game and political streamer.

“But it’s an event that brings together a lot of cool people. What I like the most is meeting new people, who before you only knew on screen”, he explains.

Brazil Game Show 2022

• When: Thursday (6) to Wednesday (12), from 1 pm to 9 pm
• Where: Expo Center Norte
• Address: Rua José Bernardo Pinto, 333 – Vila Guilherme, São Paulo
• How much: From R$ 99.50 (half price). Tickets available on the event website