The 17th annual Vodacom rAge brought fans another year of awesome

JOHANNESBURG - Oct. 23, 2019 - PRLog -- Vodacom rAge 2019 saw four days of setup, 69 solid hours of LAN gaming, an entire day to break down and many kilometres worth of fibre, network cable, power cables and steps walked all over the Ticketpro Dome, as well as over 30,000 cold drinks and 1,635 kgs of chips consumed.

South Africa's biggest annual video gaming, computer, technology and geek culture exhibition once again transformed the Ticketpro Dome into a 17,483sqm galaxy of geek over the weekend of 27-29 September. With an increase in visitor numbers, 35 615 people found their happy place among the stands, stalls and stages.

There were many firsts for South African gaming and geek culture this year. The first ever NAG LAN Super Pass was introduced, allowing 150 die-hard gamers early access on Thursday evening, before the rest of the LANners joined them early on Friday morning.

There was also an exclusive Streamers' Zone – an online sharing hub for fans to broadcast up-to-the-minute video and content in streamer booths. For the younger members of the family, there was the vibrant Kidz Kage play area.

Counter Strike: Global Offensive fans got to see South Africa's CS:GO elite competing for a prize pool of R 150 000 and the ASUS ROG Invitational Trophy. Eight teams played their hearts out, but only one could emerge victorious. And after one of the toughest challenges ever, Goliath Gaming walked away with the ultimate prize in front of a capacity crowd.

For the first time ever, the World Robotic Olympiad (WRO) came to the expo and brought together some of the smartest young minds in the country, to show off their amazing brain power and problem-solving skills at the WRO robotics competition. Locally, five provincial events took place and the top-nine national qualifying teams who won across the different categories at Vodacom rAge this year will head off to compete at the WRO International in Hungary.

NAG LAN sponsors Nutanix, MWEB, Aruba and My Sky Networks made sure the NAG LAN was consistently connected and glitch-free. Collectively, 3,252 Counter Strike: Global Offensive games were played for 2,925 hours, 1,838 DOTA games were played for a total of 2,281 hours and 645 Playerunknown's Battleground games were played for 522 hours over the weekend.

Exhibitors at Vodacom rAge this year saw record attendance and sales at their stands.

Belinda Marais, Marketing Manager from Acer Predator commented, "Vodacom rAge Expo 2019 was every gamer's dream! The energy was electric, and the gaming experiential stations were world-class. Predator will definitely be back next year!"

Thank you to Vodacom and all the sponsors and exhibitors for their part in Vodacom rAge's #17yearsofawesome.