Gaming Nottingham Video Game Expo 2024 - A Fun-Packed Weekend In England's "Silicon Valley"

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While many people will default to places like London, Manchester and Guilford when asked what they consider to be the UK's most significant place when it comes to video game development, the midlands is (or was) the home to the likes of Rare, Core Design, Blitz Games, Playground Games, Codemasters, Ultimate: Play the Game, Playtonic, Free Radical Design and many, many other companies – which gives us enough reason to think of it as the nation's "Silicon Valley", at least in terms of video game production.

The recent Nottingham Video Game Expo, which took place on the 20th and 21st July 2024, lends some credence to our viewpoint; the event could be seen as a small-scale successor to the mighty GameCity celebration, which has sadly been dormant for some time now, and Nottingham was the original home of the National Videogame Museum, which has now relocated up the M1 to Sheffield. Then there's the fact that so many of the guest speakers at the event can link back their careers to midlands studios like Rare, Core and Codemasters.

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Speakers such as ex-Core staffer Simon Phipps (Rick Dangerous, Switchblade, Wolfchild), the Oliver Twins (Dizzy) and Graeme Norgate (Rare) solidified the event's connections with local game development history, and these discussions – held on both Saturday and Sunday – attracted significant interest.

At its heart, though, the Nottingham Video Game Expo is perhaps more focused on bringing like-minded people together, and this was evidenced by the well-stocked and well-patronised trading room, which also had space for a selection of indie games, including the Dreamcast roguelike HarleQuest and Lowtek's incredible Light Book, a projection-mapped pop-up book game system. Retro-focused cloud gaming platform AntStream was also on hand to demonstrate its subscription service, while tournaments involving Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart took place, too.

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Traders from the likes of Parallel Universe, Sore Thumb Retro Games, Monster Joysticks, Retromania, Sega Mags, Amiga Addict and many, many more were present to ensure plenty of opportunities to splash some cash, while Manual Booklet Prints UK offered its selection of bespoke instruction books for Switch games – not retro as such, but certainly a service which harks back to what is sadly a forgotten part of game packaging these days.

Nottingham Video Game Expo might be smaller than some of its UK rivals, but the event is growing in stature with each passing year – and long may this continue. Let us know if you attended – and your thoughts on what was on display – by posting a comment below.

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