What is MAGFest? Allison’s Adventure at the Music and Gaming Fan Convention

MAGFest is an event that evokes one of two responses in people: 1) complete and total pee-in-your-pants excitement about attending or 2) “Um, what is MAGFest?”

In other words, if you’ve been to MAGFest, you probably loyaly try to return every year, and if you’ve never been to MAGFest, you probably haven’t even heard of it. I first learned about MAGFest through my friend Ryon, who runs the Challenges booth at the event every year, and this year, he wasn’t taking no for an answer. When the tickets, which were capped at 3000, looked perilously close to selling out, he signed me up.

So, on January 13, 2011, I made the four-hour trek from my home in Pennsylvania to Alexandria, Virginia, which is right outside of DC. I asked multiple people if they knew what I should expect. Multiple people had no idea what I was talking about. What is this “music and gaming” festival? I decided to spend my weekend finding out.

So there you have it. MAGFest is music. MAGFest is gaming. MAGFest is…well…way too much crazy dancing for my taste. But mostly, MAGFest is about the people. What Eli said in the video holds true - at this convention, you can literally go up to someone new, say hello, and spend the afternoon hanging out together.

The event isn’t all sunshine and unicorns. There are a few cons to this convention, and I wouldn’t feel right neglecting to mention them:

• Parking was a nightmare. Now, the venue is changing for 2011, so hopefully this will be fixed, but the hotel lot did not have nearly enough spots for everyone and the shuttle to the overflow lots was sketch at best.

• The cap on attendees meant that a lot of people got stuck at home. To be fair, MAGFest staffers were warning for MONTHS that the event was going to sell out, so good on them, but it stinks that there was a cap at all (at least one so low). I saw 100+ posts on their forums and Facebook pages with people looking for 1-4 tickets, and I’m sure there were even more people who didn’t even write in a post about wanting tickets, too. I’m willing to bet that they could have sold 1000+ more tickets. Unfortunately, the cap was to comply with fire codes, so it was out of their control, and next year, it sounds like they’ll be picking a much larger venue.

• Registration was laughable. From the time I got to the hotel around 2 PM on Thursday to the time I actually ventured out of my hotel room to stand in line around 8 PM, the line was literally hundreds of people long, wrapping around the entire hotel lobby. Ryon said that the line had been like that since much earlier in the day, when registration started.

And now for some pros:

• There was seriously always something to do without standing in line. Yes, there were lines for more popular games, like Dance Central, but you never had to stand in line if you didn’t want to. There were always some free consoles and arcade machines, and at any given time you could also go see a panel, check out a game-related movie in their projection room, see who was playing in the concert hall, play some tabletop games, wander around the vendor area, or just hang out in the halls with other MAGFest-ers.

• The entire hotel was MAGFest. That meant you could meet people anywhere, not just on the con floor. I talked to cool people in the elevators, in the hallway walking to my room, at the hotel bar, and even in the parking lot. Best ever: During one crowded elevator ride at the beginning of the weekend, some random guy goes, “Anybody notice how this hotel looks like the Citadel from Half-Life?” and everyone started debating that point, not batting an eyelash that he just said something kind of weird. Love it.

• There was a mix of things to play. Want to play Kinect? Sure, just head over to that corner, by the PlayStation Move. More interested in pinball? They’ve got four machines set up on freeplay. They had groups of TVs set up for Halo and Call of Duty beside TVs featuring fun but random games like Katamari Damacy and Crazy Taxi. Oh, and my friend’s Challenge booth? It was 100 NES, Genesis, and SNES games all set up at specific save states so you were challenged to beat a level or boss within certain parameters (like conquering the alien lair stage of Contra with one life using only the fireball gun). They were addicting as hell, and at the end of the weekend, the people who completed the most got prizes.

• You could easily go back to your room to nap or just get away from the crowds. I’m not going to lie. There were a lot of smelly kids at MAGFest. Beyond that, I’m not the biggest fan of being part of a crowd all day. It was nice to just pop up to my room to chill out from time to time, which isn’t possible at most cons since they aren’t usually held in a hotel.

• Rates for everything were super reasonable. For the entire weekend, the price of admission was under $50, and hotel rooms were $99 with the MAGFest rate (if you booked early enough - but even if you had to purchase a more expensive room, they were super cheap for the quality of that hotel, which probably hates us all after having to clean on Sunday afternoon). After you registered, everything was free, unless you wanted to buy a shirt of course or something.

What I loved most about MAGFest, though, was the sense of community there. People generally weren’t jerks to one another; they shared, waited patiently, and walked away from potential fights because of the spirit of the event. Not a single person (from what I saw) got harassed for the way he/she looked or acted, so people could 100% be themselves, whether that means wearing a cape and fuzzy cat ears or a tuxedo and top hat or a Pikachu onesie. At random points throughout the day, you would hear people do the Colossus Yell, and it would ride like a wave across the entire convention. At MAGFest, no matter who you are, you’re among friends. And that’s something we can all appreciate.