This Gaming Festival Actually Encourages Camping

Glastonbury for Gamers: Insomnia gaming festival. Screen Shot by: Nathan Ernest Olupot Glastonbury for Gamers: Insomnia gaming festival. Screen Shot by: Nathan Ernest Olupot
Glastonbury for Gamers: Insomnia gaming festival. Screen Shot by: Nathan Ernest Olupot

As first-person shooter aficionados are all too aware, camping is seriously frowned upon online.

At the Insomnia gaming festival, on the other hand, it’s actively encouraged. Not the kind where you crouch in the corner of the map waiting to ambush people, of course, but the sleeping-in-a-tent variety.

Currently held at the NEC in Birmingham, UK, Insomnia (or iSeries) is the gaming equivalent of Glastonbury, one of England’s largest music festivals. Tens of thousands of gamers flock there every year with a tent on their back and a PC under their arm.

After duking it out in multiplayer gaming sessions by day, attendees retreat to their tents at night to drink beer and swap tales of legendary battles and hard-fought victories.[related-posts]

Or go to sleep – one of the two.

Craig Fletcher, founder and CEO at MultiPlay, staged the first Insomnia in March 1999 with just 300 PCs. The event now hosts thousands.

[TechRadar]