READY, PLAYER1 EVENTS?
Insomnia is returning after more than two years of inactivity. Richie Shoemaker talks to its creator and Player1 Events CEO Craig Fletcher about why it’s better to wake rather than shake up the venerable gaming festival
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Craig Fletcher, CEO Player1 Events
izzo’s back! Or will be, when the 68th Insomnia Gaming Festival stirs up from its enforced slumber later this month. The
once bi-annual event, taking place from 15-18th April at the NEC Birmingham (tickets still available, probably) has been snoring away for two years, for reasons that won’t need explaining. However, in spite of the extended period of hibernation and the fact that April’s event will be the first since Craig ‘Wizzo’ Fletcher reacquired the right to host it, Insomnia 68 is planned to be a more muted affair than most might expect. Rather than a reimagined next-level carnival of gaming fun and frivolity, the Player1 Events team just wanted to stir the beast, so to speak, to see if it had survived the winter. “It was a resurrection” says Fletcher, who led efforts
to acquire Player1 Events, and, more importantly, the Insomnia brand, from pandemic-battered retailer Game
last year. “The first six months was literally getting it beating again, getting it back on its feet, getting the staff back up to full speed, getting them to stop their jobs at Tesco or wherever, because, bear in mind, some of the staff had been on furlough for over a year. We had to build them back up, bring them back in and start recruiting very quickly.”
BEGIN AGAIN It was perhaps inevitable that Fletcher would return to gaming events. Having established Insomnia in 1999 as a LAN party to which players would carry their bulky PCs and CRT monitors and camp out in the field outside, the event evolved to include esports and mini expos. As it outgrew the Newbury Racecourse facilities, and then the home of Coventry City FC, Insomnia moved into Birmingham’s NEC, where it has evolved to offer a little
48 | MCV/DEVELOP April 2022
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