Has rAge lost the plot?

The Really Awesome Gaming Expo (rAge) has felt a little less awesome in recent years, with each edition seeming to lose a bit of the scale and polish that once defined it. Last weekend’s 2025 event was held at Fourways Mall for the first time. The venue shift did not land well, and many attendees left disappointed.

But first, the positives

For geeks, nerds, and gamers alike, rAge offers a rare public space for those who often feel outside the mainstream to gather, unwind, and simply be themselves. This year, that community spirit still came through clearly, with the floor full of people connecting over shared interests. This sense of belonging is part of why so many attendees keep coming back. The expo carries a lot of history for the community, and has been running for more than two decades, first held at the Coca-Cola Dome in 2003.

According to the rAge website, the expo is a “powerhouse celebration of innovation and play, where gaming, esports, tech, and virtual worlds collide”. That ambition still flickered through at points, but it was harder to find than it should have been this year. Gaming and esports, at least, delivered on the promise.

The Mastercard Nedbank Summoner Tournament, a League of Legends (LoL) competition, was a clear highlight. With a R100,000 prize pool, it was the biggest prize pool yet for South Africa’s amateur LoL scene.

The finals saw team ATK take the title in dominant fashion. Runner-up Synthesis Titan stood out as the toughest challenger, finishing second as the only team to take a game off the champions. The tournament was livestreamed on the Nedbank Esports Area Twitch channel. The event represents the bank’s broader push into gaming, including the upcoming launch of a gaming-focused banking card.

The Mamelodi Sundowns Championship on FC26 carried a R200,000 prize pool, with winner Zaid April taking home a staggering R100,000 prize. Call of Duty had its own headline moment with the Black Ops 7 finals, which brought in SA’s top four teams. Varsity Esports ran a tight set of student finals across EA Sports FC25, Rocket League, and Valorant, backed by a R90,000 prize pool and teams from universities around the country. The Kasi Flare 2025 FC25 tournament held R60,000 on the line.

PDC offered a look at cloud gaming paired with Viture One AR Glasses and their 120-inch floating display effect. Across zones, attendees could test peripherals from brands such as Razer, Titan, Redragon, and Turtle Beach.

NAG had hands on demo stations for the ROG Ally X and Rokid AR glasses. The stand offered visitors the chance to play the first-person shooters Battlefield 6 and Battlefield 1942, a 2019 title aimed at reigniting feelings of nostalgia.

The RGB Gaming Schools and Student Tournaments added a youth focus, with 162 students from 32 schools competing across Minecraft, Rocket League, The Finals, and Overwatch 2. The Carry1st COD Mobile Arena gave players a chance to test a new DMZ mode. VR pods and sim rigs were scattered across multiple sections.

Where rAge went wrong

The problems began before the rAge even came into view. Fourways Mall is one of the largest malls in Africa, yet reaching the venue on level eight proved needlessly difficult. Parking itself is easy enough to navigate, but finding an open bay was another story. Some people spent up to 30 minutes circling for a spot.

From there, the route to the expo was unclear. The move upstairs left visitors wandering, confused about where to go next. I rode an elevator with a stranger from Muldersdrift who summed it up neatly. He said the maze of corridors was frustrating, and wished there were clearer signs. Complicating matters further, not every elevator goes to the top floor.

Reaching the rooftop should have been the moment things turned around, but the venue was a shock compared with previous years. The flooring was uneven and the heat was overpowering.

After the effort it took to get inside, water was not a comfort but essential. The limited refreshment options and the search to find them only added to the irritation, which rose as quickly as the humidity.

Within the first two hours, many attendees retreated to the cooler mall below, and quite a few seemed happier to grab food and drinks there than to stay in the expo itself. Another reason for this retreat was to access bathrooms which were not available on the top floor.

I can only imagine how uncomfortable some cosplayers were in those conditions. Even so, as always, the costumes were exceptional.

Even visitors who attended rAge last year at the Johannesburg Expo Centre in Nasrec, which had an empty feeling, would have been taken aback by just how different things felt. The entrance was dominated by Artist Alley and its more than 60 stands, with an esports stage off to the side that was inactive when I arrived. The first impression leaned more towards a nerdy flea market than a tech-and-gaming showcase, but it still made for a lively welcome for anyone looking for trinkets, crafts, or tattoos.

Tech

The technology offering was disappointing.

Many of the so-called special deals were not special at all. I checked Takealot prices for a handful of items that caught my eye and found that several stands were selling the same products for more, sometimes by a significant margin. It left me feeling that some exhibitors were there mainly for brand visibility, rather than to offer genuine event-only value or anything new.

At the same time, there was the lack of major brands on the floor compared with previous years. Last year, MSI stood out with a large, standalone section that gave gamers a genuinely exciting chance to get hands on with new hardware. This year, MSI’s presence shrank to a roughly one square metre patch tucked into the BT Games area.

Lenovo followed the same pattern. The year before last, the company had its own stand and offered an early look at the Legion Go handheld, giving visitors one of the first chances in Africa to try it. This year, Lenovo was also reduced to a small corner within the BT Games section.

Future of rAge versus Comic Con Africa

Comic Con Africa this year was significantly more impressive, debuting new tech like the Acer media box, hosting a stunning celebration of cosplay, and featuring international talent.

This competition, combined with a disappointing 2025 experience, has left rAge on the ropes. But perhaps not all hope is lost.

Len Nery, NAG Magazine MD and LAN organiser, said rAge has signed a contract with the owners of Fourways Mall for the expo to be held at the venue for the next five years. Nery was previously part of the rAge team, and his involvement has continued through NAG’s activations and LAN initiatives.

“From next year there is a commitment from owners to significantly bring the temperature down,” Nery told Gadget. “Solar panels were supposed to happen but unfortunately, because of government regulations and the number of solar panels, they could not put it up in time. There is a lot of red tape.”

He said the systems that include adjustable louvers, extractors and the air cushion effect from the panels, are expected to be implemented next year and will cool the venue.

“With this kind of heat, if there’s not more air conditioning coming in here, that impacts retail, because people aren’t hanging around. They’re leaving.”

He said this year is a proof of concept for the mall owners, who want to develop the rooftop into a permanent, large scale expo space. In his view, the location makes strategic sense on paper, even if the experience does not yet match that ambition.

“As long as the venue owners are going to do what they said they are going to do, this could be amazing. Right now, it’s hot and frustrating.”

Fourways Mall already draws crowds naturally, and visitors have access to activities beyond the expo itself, from go-karting to rock climbing, with potential for tighter integration between rAge and the rest of the precinct.

For rAge to benefit from that potential, though, basic infrastructure has to catch up. Nery pointed to the uneven flooring as another practical headache that affected exhibitors and staging. He said even getting stands level was a struggle, and some booths had to prop structures up to stay straight. That kind of friction adds to a perception that the show is operating below professional expo standards, which is particularly damaging while rAge is trying to compete for attention against a more polished rival.

Nery’s hope is that improvements to the venue coincide with a stronger push to rebuild what rAge used to offer. Part of his own effort this year was to inject missing energy through NAG’s Battlefield and retro activations.

He told Gadget about finding “15 Acer Predator machines from 2008” and turning them into a showcase that paired Battlefield 1942 on older hardware with Battlefield 6 on new machines. Alongside that, NAG ran its own Retro LAN, selling 38 tickets out of 40 and bundling in extras such as laser engraved mousepads, Redragon mice, magazine copies, games loaded to players’ Steam accounts, and daily RocoMamas meals.

He said the goal was to create a reason for people to come to a LAN again, not just play at home, and give them something memorable to take away. This is a small example of the kind of creativity rAge needs more broadly if it wants to recover ground.

Nery argued that rAge sits in a fragile but important ecosystem that has already lost some of the big budget showpieces it once relied on. International publishers and local distributors have thinner marketing spend than before, which has reduced the number of major game and hardware showcases that used to anchor the expo. In that environment, rAge has to work harder to prove its value to both brands and visitors, and venue issues make that task even more challenging.

Nery said he is still on the fence about the show’s longer-term direction. He can see the upside in the move to Fourways, but only if the promised upgrades land and rAge takes advantage of the new setting. If that happens, the five-year contract could become a turning point rather than a slow fade.

*Jason Bannier is a data analyst at World Wide Worx and deputy editor of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Bluesky at @jas2bann.