GeeksAbroad Episode 3

We finally made it to Switzerland, Zurich Comic Festival. You see, in the US we’re spoiled with geeky conferences like PAX and Comic Con. And the Swiss trusted us, geeky BFFs from across the pond to kick it off for them. The stage was MASSIVE, and we didn’t have faith in ourselves.

Full Transcript Below:

Nixie  0:00
Previously on geeks abroad we arrived in London after not sleeping for 48 hours, only to miss our first train in search of coffee. Then we had another caffeine fueled insane atrocity mad dash courtesy of my bad French and a lot of really kind people that are following us right now. Don't worry, we weren't hot messes the entire time. I promise it doesn't last long. But check out how nervous we were. Cue the bumbling idiots.

So we're actually going to the Zurich Games Festival. I don't know why I want to call it a festival. There's nobody in cosplay is there?

Unknown Speaker  0:38
Yeah. Because by contrast, I can call them

Nixie & Marc  0:43
So we're going to dessert games. I'm gonna call the festival. Alright, I'll start off. Yeah. So we're here to give Zurich game show on gap. So we're here at the Zurich game show

Nixie  1:02
not necessarily game show. We're actually at an apartment.

Marc  1:06
We are in Zurich, Switzerland. We are going to the Zurich game show in a bit before our big time panel. We're super excited, a little nervous, but mostly super excited to see everybody.

Nixie & Marc  1:50
So today, we are now in Switzerland. It is the morning, there is a garden in the middle of a building. pretty baller. Over here, we have more building. And then we have the future for everything in Switzerland is Swiss master key that opens your apartment and the front door. And it's almost unthinkable. I have a question for you. Can you explain why you need 10 inch thick doors to have them to house Christmas trees and plastic storage bins.

Nixie  2:35
Is that normal? I'm very worried. We're going to desert game show. And we're going to be part of a panel of only us. And it's intense.

But I'm scared, but I'm ready, but I'm scared

hopefully we don't just show up on there. And really Hello, it's my first panel he he he adjust glasses.

Marc  2:56
Well, you know, I think we're just gonna have fun with it. And we're just gonna roll the punches and whoever it is, whatever it is, we're just gonna do it. We'll use it till she flops she flops. Anyway, we gotta go this way

Nixie & Marc  2:57
What if she flops? We all go in so wrong way. But honestly, that's like going to be insane. Just go in front of people type out what we're doing. And then ask them like quiz questions. And then tomorrow, figure out what other stuff we're gonna have them do on the panel and then Sunday, what they want to do in a panel, little little trying to find time to actually go through the event and talk with people and, you know, look at cosplayers, again, like pro gamers, it's gonna be very intense weekend, and I'm really excited for it.

Nixie  3:41
The main city of Zurich feels like what we have to say, is good enough to be on a panel. For three days, I've been to conventions, where the social skills and the technical knowledge are inversely proportional. The more they know about tech, the less they have social skills, and I kind of like fall in that category.

Marc  4:02
But I don't know anything about tech and I can talk your ear off about some other stuff.

Like video games.

Nixie  4:10
Which is Which brings us to something kind of cool because we've created a bunch of questions that are around like my weird technical knowledge and video games. And we're gonna quiz the the city of Zurich and these are game show. So.

Marc  4:24
I honestly I like to say now we are officially famous in Europe, like David Hasselhoff,

Nixie  4:30
famous air quotes famous.

You see in the US were spoiled with geeky conferences like Pax and Comicon. Switzerland has been a country for a couple 100 years now and many other historical events happened but none of geeky variety until now. And they trusted us geeky BFFs from across the pond to kick it off for them. Oh boy.

One thing that has been completely new this entire experiences have absolutely everything. And in about an hour, we're going to go up on stage and the stage is massive and huge. And it's all about doing things that you haven't done before, because it's not going to be easy. But it's going to be worth it. Come join us join the dark side

so this is it's not small. We give it that much. It's pretty impressive. In fact, I am usually here. So not very used to this sort of thing.

Unknown Speaker  5:59
And geeks abroad as basically, we're coming up onto YouTube. And we are capturing the passion. We're the world's first e travel show,

Marc  6:10
Me and her were in a Mexican restaurant many many months ago and to touch our house want to go for Linux videos to see the difference. And we talked about travel. Thank you. So we talked about travel. And I was like, well, we go to France. I don't want to see the Eiffel Tower. That's boring. I want to see like the coolest car bookstore. I want to see like the coolest like a game store was your people like miniatures and to do Warhammer and I was in places where people love what they do with their friends. And not just stare at giant tall metal statues like we got those in America. I want you to cool.

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Nixie  7:59
We did it we did the thing. Yeah, we did the thing.

Guest  8:02
All right. How did you feel after the panel? Were you nervous?

Nixie  8:06
It was super nerve wracking. But it ended up being okay at the end. And I think that's with a lot of things like you don't really realize that it's all going to be okay. And it was a huge risk. But there is a big reward. And I think that was the main thing.

Guest  8:21
How'd you feel that was on the stage? Were you nervous?

Marc  8:23
Not Not at all. It felt really fun, especially when we saw all the people there great. You may know we've won.

Nixie  9:20
Before we launch geeks abroad, I reached out to those in the community that I started called Geek beacons. So you'll actually see that we had a host from almost every country that we went to. This is Ollie. He was excited to see us and very happy that they finally kicked off a gaming conference here in Zurich. So I was curious. You have been wanting a game show to happen for a while right now.

And what about it like it's kind of have you ever seen a setup like this before?

Ollie  9:47
No, not really. It's really special because there are cultures here where you can play it's more like a comfortable zone. It is a game and another conventions I saw It's more like standing and too much people you have way too long the way no lines here. No line.

Unknown Speaker  10:08
It's so cool. It's kind of a trip that we played pub G together. And we had no pants on here. Can squad? Hashtag no pants squad? Yeah. Yeah, we don't wear pants,

Ollie & other  10:23
Okay I remove my pants here. Everyone just like toss your pants off.

Nixie  10:28
One of my favorite parts of the event was actually all the independent game developers that finally got a chance to showcase their passions, which is what Keeks abroad is all about. Let's hear a little bit from them now.

Developer  10:42
So we did a crowdfunding campaign for this game, which is called niche genetic survival game about one and a half years ago. And we were basically doing it not so much for the money, even though we really could have used the money at this point. It was more to like, give our community that we had slowly build up a chance to support it. And we also set the goal pretty low so that we were more or less sure that we could achieve it and everyone could have a feeling of success together. And that worked out better than expected we had tried to get to 15 1000s and in the end, we got about 75 And that enabled us to get the early access version ready and head to the next step.

Marc  11:22
everybody I'm Mark and I'm here with Luciano AKA Kefka from silent Gaming guys top esports team in Switzerland.

Luciano  11:31
Yes, exactly. And then we had a friend who was sacked gaming organization and they said hey, we need a Dota two team. I want you guys to win sponsorship and nice t shirt nice logo

Nixie  11:47
And it's all about doing things that you haven't done before because it's not gonna be easy, but it's gonna be worth it.

And just like that, like I said before, it really wasn't easy, but it absolutely was worth it. And we could think of no better way to help us celebrate face checking our fears than to have a good old fashioned Swiss fondue party.

Unknown Speaker  12:47
Captain American thing that ever ringer up Nintendo

Unknown Speaker  12:52
they got VHS and I'm gonna this is ridiculous.

Nixie & Marc  12:56
This is why we go geeks abroad. We're looking for places like this. Look at Stormtrooper we need to come here.

Nixie  13:09
Oh wow. That is cheaper

than we've been spending forever.