Who’s your favourite superhero? Wonder Woman? Spiderman?
Time to dust down that uniform! It’s been announced that Ballywire Media, one of Ireland’s leading content creators and live event producers, has teamed up with Ireland’s Gaming and Pop Culture Market to help deliver an action packed event in County Meath next month.
Visitors from the four provinces of Ireland will descend on the City North Hotel for a day of gaming and celebrating some of the world’s major super heroes.
The Irish Gaming Market is the brainchild of Kildare native Seamus Fanning from Kilcullen and Matthew Martin, who established the event to provide opportunities for fans and vendors to buy and sell merchandise related to old video games and anime, as well as celebrate their favourite pop-culture characters by dressing up in their likeness, known in the comic world as cosplay.
The event also provides opportunities to compete in tournaments and buy a range of game merch from vendors who will be at the show.
The last event in Kildare, for which tickets were only on sale online in advance, was a sellout.
Among the many stands in attendance will be sellers of vintage electronic games, comics and graphic novels, arts and crafts, badges, posters, t-shirts and more. According to Seamus Fanning, the show is an attempt to fill a gap in the market for gamer interests.
“With Gamestop and Argos taken out of the country, we set up this to show that there are venues possible where you can still buy this stuff, since there’s a bit of a void now with those stores gone.’’
But it’s not all buying and selling, this year the organisers wanted to develop the experience of attending the event and that’s how the partnership with Ballywire came about, says company CEO Paul Collins.
‘After a few team calls with both Seamus and Matthew it became clear that the lads would be great partners and have an incredible vision. Given our background in live event streaming and broadcast production, supporting the Irish Gaming Market and community is something we are excited to do.’
Irish Gaming Market Spring merges the world of gaming and cosplay to provide attendees with a place to shop, game and cosplay.
Hosting a wide range of Ireland’s best artists and traders, there will also be some free play areas featuring games from old to new, with thanks to one of the event sponsors BigFootGaming’s arsenal of top of the range Gaming PCs. IGM has a very beginner friendly approach where attendees can dive into the world of Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer for the first time, so many leave with a new hobby.
For their Spring Event, IGM is doubling down on cosplay, hosting a cosplay masquerade with a total prize pool of €500 attracting some of the best cosplay talent in Ireland.The masquerade will be directed by the IGM team in collaboration with Ballywire. Not only will Ballywire provide AV and content creation services on site, the company also has exciting plans of it’s own.
‘We have been working on our own comic universe and are proud to say that we will introduce our own Maeve of Connacht live experience at the show. I don’t want to give too much away but for the first time the Irish public will see our vision for a character brought to life by Thurles artist Jennifer Ryan Kelly in the first episode of her story “A Destiny Unfolds’’. We will also debut a specially commissioned VR experience which features original Irish poetry and music, and we can’t wait to get feedback from the first users. Not only that, we organised a surprise guest to entertain attendees into the witching hours! See you there.’ says Paul.
Tickets are available here. For more information visit irishgamingmarket.ie and to contact IGM, email hello@irishgamingmarket.ie or on drop them a message on Instagram @IrishGamingMarket.
