Multiplay Insomnia 50 officially kicks off

The 50th ever (at least officially) Insomnia, iSeries, i50, gaming mecha festival has now begun for real, with the opening ceremony as always disseminating freebies to the early arrivals.

Taking to the stage to kick things off we had Paradox video producer Matt “A_Spec' Hoving, along with Multiplay head and founder of the iSeries LAN, Craig “Wizzo” Fletcher, who talked us all through some of the LAN's history, from its humble routes as a Quake II LAN party of old, with a bed sheet in a stairwell for a main stage, to the biggest gathering of BYOC gamers in the UK.

While the last iSeries event, i49, may have had a much bigger turnout with upwards of 5,000 gamers attending, i50 is still doing very well, as it's managed to pull in over 1,000 so far – that's discounting anyone that may show up over the weekend. This is the largest number of gamers that has ever showed up at a winter iSeries too. So it's big. Just not that big.

Of course with this being the opening ceremony, free swag was on offer. Tshirts, caps and even the boxes that carried them were thrown into the suddenly standing and expectant crowd. This was followed up by a few exhibitors with their own giveaways. Our pal Mark Purdy from Overclockers, decided to honour the resident emasculator himself, 8Pack, by having gamers do as many pushups as they could to win gaming peripherals.

To their credit, the nerds that went up there gave it their all, but only one was clearly prepared for the ordeal and walked away with some nice gear.

Monster, the company behind Dr Dre's Beats, was also giving away a £200 gaming headset. To win it, you had to do your best monster scream. The girl won in the end and deservedly so. Everyone else's roar's were terrible.

KitGuru Says: Beyond that, it was merely tournament schedule changes and news about upcoming events – nothing that would be pertinent to a fine KG reader like yourself. Still, any of you attending this weekend? If you're showing up later today, feel free to say hi if you spot me about. 

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