Insomnia 58 – is it the right event for families?

Earlier this year I took the girls to Insomnia 57 where we had an amazing time watching YouTubers and playing video games. So when the opportunity came to visit Insomnia 58 at the end of August we booked a hotel and headed over to the NEC for the weekend.

Now I don’t know if it was the change of halls or just the way that Insomnia 58 was laid out but we didn’t come away as buzzing as we had from the previous event however that doesn’t mean that we didn’t have fun. At Insomnia 57 I found that you could literally take a seat in front of one of the stages and be entertained all day without too many big gaps, however, Insomnia 58 seemed to be lacking on the stage entertainment which is something that the girls really enjoyed at the previous event. We wanted to watch YouTubers playing games against each other or learning new games. We wanted to be introduced to new games that the girls would go home and download. We wanted to see new YouTubers who we had not heard off before and go away and subscribe to their channels. We were disappointed. The stages were no longer the biggest draw for us so we went off to explore the rest of the event.

We soon found ourselves in the Hypixel area where we were surprised by the distinct lack of queues and we managed to try our hands at a variety of games including the classic build battle (I lost again) and a weird assault course race type game (which I lost at as well). The girls loved this area and when we were not there they kept asking to go back! We did also enjoy playing on the new Lego Dimensions where the girls got to try out the Harry Potter and Adventure Time capture the flag levels as well as see some of the other new features which will be launched soon. In fact getting hands on and playing games was the girls biggest highlight and I would have liked to have seen more games that were suitable for them to have a go on.

Lego dimensions at Insomnia 58

All in all we had a good weekend but the feeling I got from this event is that Insomnia have had a bit of a rethink about who their target audience is and after Insomnia 57 had more family/child orientated guests, shows and games Insomnia 58 was definitely geared towards the older gaming fans and with the changes announced for Insomnia 59 I think that this has become even more obvious. It is a shame as I do feel that the younger kids who are just getting into gaming need an event like this to enjoy but maybe Insomnia is not the right event for us as a family at the moment although the addition of a family hall may be the answer?

This weekend we are heading to Legends of Gaming so we will report back on our experience here next week or follow our adventures over on my social media channels.