Norwich Games Festival

**Norwich Games Festival** (previously known as Norwich Gaming Festival) is a gaming festival that started in 2014. It is a six-day festival that is held annually during summer half term throughout Norwich, England, mostly at The Forum. It specializes in video games, but has branched out into being about board games and card games as well, though with a more minor role. It costs nothing to attend (however, there may be businesses with a temporary location as part of the festival that would charge for goods and/or services), and anyone can attend it without being required to have a ticket or book it (however, some events and talks require tickets or to be booked to be attended).

## History

### Origins

In 2010, Norwich Games Festival originated as Retro Arcade, an event that allowed young people and adults to play retro games on retro game consoles. It was started to give young people and adults something free, interactive and unique to do during the Easter holidays in the United Kingdom, where it was based. The event started out in The Fusion with a few consoles before later expanding to feature a couple of multi-game arcade cabinets and multimedia presentations using a multi-projector display and sound systems.

In 2014, Retro Arcade was replaced with Norwich Gaming Festival. However, the Retro Arcade component remained, remaining in The Fusion, where Retro Arcade started. Norwich Gaming Festival expanded the event to The Atrium, the entrance to the rebuilt Norwich central library, BBC studios, visitor centre, a couple of restaurants, and the underground car park. This is the first Norwich Games Festival to feature the Indie Showcase, a showcase of indie games from around the world. In this Norwich Gaming Festival only, there was also another showcase of games called the Made In East Anglia Showcase, which was a showcase of then-upcoming games made in East Anglia, the geographical area of England the festival was taking place in.

### Rebrandings and renamings

In 2015, Norwich Gaming Festival rebranded. As part of this rebranding, their website underwent a major redesign. Also, their website moved from a Wordpress domain (http://norwichgamingfestival.wordpress.com, which now gives a message saying "norwichgamingfestival.wordpress.com is no longer available. The authors have deleted this site.") to a non-Wordpress domain (http://www.norwichgamingfestival.com, which now redirects to https://norwichgamesfestival.com/, which is the current web address of Norwich Games Festival's official website)

In 2018, Norwich Gaming Festival rebranded again. As part of this rebranding, they branded themselves using a new logo base, mostly replaced their use of orange with a reddish-pink, their website underwent another major redesign, which was designed and developed by flocc (then known as made agency), and three characters were created to be mascots for the festival simultaneously: Big Daddy, Rita and Spark.

In January 2019, Norwich Gaming Festival was renamed to its current name of Norwich Games Festival. This is possibly because by then, Norwich Games Festival had started to also be about board games and card games, as well as video games, and the term "gaming" was mostly only applied to video games out of those three types of game. As such, their logo base, their official website's web address and all of their online accounts were updated with the new name.

## External links

* Norwich Games Festival's official website