DIGITAL NATIONZ is on at the Vector Arena in Auckland over the weekend of the 28th and 29th this month. Unfortunately here in NZ we have a habit of presenting everything in a way that says “here’s the product, and also, it’s NEW ZEALAND!” and the name reflects that complete with entrenched all caps.

It’s also often used as a way of justifying something being laudable despite actually being sub-par when compared to the rest of the world. It’s like your friend makes something average and everyone feels obliged to say it’s pretty good. Happily, in this case DIGITAL NATIONZ actually looks to have a pretty sweet lineup and a lot of effort put into it. They’ve got something like 12 Oculus Rifts where at PAX Australia they had maybe two. They’ve got hands-on play with both the XBox One and PS4, where PAX kept its XBox in a glass case for us to gaze at with museum-like reverence (and no PS4).

Anyway there’s a section for indies and small-time players like myself called Homegrown, where we get a little booth for a half-day slot from which we can accost strangers and yell at them to play Super New Zealand Adventure 5 or whatever. This is the first year of the event and they seem to be in a bit of a mad rush to get everything sorted, so I haven’t got final confirmation of the times I’ll be able to exhibit yet. I have got confirmation however that I’ll be able to exhibit.

Reasons you should come to Digital Nationz:

– There’ll be lots of stuff there that’s way cooler than the current version of Scraps

– I’ll be there

– There’ll be a playable build of Scraps that’s a little updated from the one currently available