If you haven't heard, I'm Thai and I'm living in Thailand. For a developing Southeast Asian country, there weren't many opportunities for budding developers such as myself. Until this year, that is.

We held the first major game convention about 2 weeks ago. To be honest, by global standards, I'd say that it was complete crap. However, it was still a huge milestone, considering that nothing of this scale was ever pulled off before. There was the "Thailand Games & Animation 2006" convention early last year, but it was 90% animation and 10% games. Pretty pathetic.

So, what's there in the convention? Game competitions, game booths, presentation of next-gen consoles (we're pretty late), and cosplay. Much of it wasn't remarkable, so I'll just skip to the stuff I was nterested in.

First of all, I headed to the Thai game developers section. Talked to a few of them and checked out some of their latest games. With the police running the various "open" black markets in this country, making profit from PC games is difficult. Thus, much of the focus is on developing MMORPGs or small games for mobile phones. Despite that, there were a couple of half-decent projects that are going to be shipped locally this year. Not bad, especially considering that there was "absolutely nothing" only a couple of years earlier.

As it turned out, there's a strong level of nationalism even amongst the pirates. For example, if you upload a Thai movie or software on most Thai online communities, you'd be banned, period. At least, that's what I've heard from our sound guy, who is also an ex-hacker and "super lurker". After this convention, he said that the Thai game development industry does have some hope afterall.

Next, "Afterburner: Climax". It's THE BEST arcade flying shooter I've ever seen. I don't remember how long I stood there, admiring the game. Simple, accessible yet frantic gameplay, with a powerful tactical touch thrown in - in the form of the Climax ability. Innovative arcade machine. Excellent limited-nonlinear level progression, along with secret levels for replay value. And its graphics... absolutely breathtaking.

Finally, there's the cosplay. Well, I'm not that much of a fan in this regard, but my friends are. The expression of seeing the cosplay of your favorite female character is... disturbingly hilarious. That girl won the "Most Popular Female Cosplay" award for the show.

Other than that, there isn't much else worth talking about. I can go on and on about noise pollution and overpopulation in regards to the convention, but nah. Overall, it's not too bad. The show was as poor as I predicted, but I was surprised to see that Thai developers are finally making PC games that aren't horrible.

Cosplay.

There's always cosplay.