Insomnia 52 Concludes After a Weekend of eSports, Indie Games and Harribo
Over the August bank holiday weekend thousands of people, myself included, arrived at Coventry’s Ricoh Arena for Insomnia 52.
The primary focus for many of the attendees was the Bring Your Own Computer LAN event and all the eSports tournaments associated with it. BYOC ticket holders had the chance to take part in Dota 2, League of Legends, Counter Strike: GO, Team Fortress 2 and StarCraft 2 tournaments.
The Asus Rog Dota 2 Cup offered up a prize pool of almost $11,000. Aftershock Gaming took first place after defeating Team Fureur 2-0 in the final. Dwayne The John Rockson was perhaps the favorite team heading into the event but could only manage third place.
FM eSports Toxic managed to walk away victorious in the iyama & Mad Catz CS:GO Challenge Cup after beating Rasta Gaming in the final.
Froyotech beat Epsilon in the final of the Emerge Team Fortress 2 cup to walk away as winners.
In the YoYo Tech Starcraft 2 UK Masters [FM] Boombox took a 3-1 win over [FM] Ourk to be crowned the winner.
The Razer League of Legends Cup was won by FM eSports who managed to beat the brilliantly named Best UK Team Kappa in the grand final 2-0 to take home first place.
However eSports was not the only thing on offer for attendees. The Expo hall was packed with upcoming releases and indie games. Games such as Borderlands The Pre Sequel, Evolve and FIFA 15 were all playable alongside tons of great indie games such as Tiki Taka Soccer, MagNets and the always-entertaining Gang Beasts.
Elsewhere the Yogscast had a big presence with signings and panels, which were massively popular. One of the people I travelled with queued for almost 2 hours to meet them. Other YouTubers such as Syndicate and AliA were also present.
Retail stalls, a retro zone and a selfie booth offered even more ways to keep you entertained, along with all the events that were taking place on the main stage, which was right in the middle of the Ricoh’s pitch.
The main stage played host to lots of amazing events such as the opening ceremony where the event sponsors threw out loads of free stuff including games, t-shirts and tons of Harribo as well as panels from the Yogscast and other YouTubers along with all the major eSports finals from the weekend.
Overall Insomnia 52 was a great event, and if it sounds like the type of thing you would like to attend you can already purchase tickets for Insomnia 53, which takes place at the Ricoh Arena in November.
