MAGfest

MAGFest
Status	Active
Genre	Video games, video game music
Venue	Gaylord National Convention Center
Location(s)	National Harbor, Maryland
Country	United States
Inaugurated	2002
Attendance	Approximately 17,000+ in 2015
Organized by	MAGFest INC
Website
http://magfest.org

MAGFest (Music and Gaming Festival, originally the Mid-Atlantic Gaming Festival) is an annual festival held in the Washington metropolitan area that celebrates video games and video game music, as well as their surrounding culture. MAGFest's primary features are a large open video gaming room, a hall of arcade cabinets, concerts by chiptune artists and video game cover bands, and a Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) LAN Party.

MAGFest's arcade hall and console room are open 24 hours a day. The hallway contains dozens of cabinets, ranging from vintage shoot 'em ups to contemporary Japanese candy cabinets. Additionally, the console room houses dozens of televisions and attached game consoles, where guests are invited to play at will and each station's game is periodically swapped with a different one from a game library.

The concert area hosts several nightly performances of video game music and related works. Many luminaries of video game music fan culture have performed at MAGFest. Previous bands include Minibosses, Powerglove, the NESkimos, the Advantage and Chromelodeon.

Other major attractions include guest panels from the video game industry such as Sid Meier, Jon St. John and Nobuo Uematsu, celebrated composer for many of the games in the Final Fantasy series. In addition, the fan remixing community is well represented with sites such as OverClocked ReMix. Filmmakers such as X-Strike Studios, Main Moon Productions, PBC Productions, and There Will Be Brawl have also appeared at the event. MAGFest has also included intellectually driven panels such as "Game Studies 101" where attendees were given a basic introduction to the manner in which scholars study video games.

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Wikipedia