In a continued effort to unite the gamers of Johannesburg and bring them all together under one roof, JHBGamers hosted another fantastic event this past week on January 18th at TSG4Ways, a great restaurant that just so happens to house a balcony area with space to allow roughly 60 people (or ‘gamers’) to mingle, chat and play some of the latest EA games.

There was also room enough for a variety of highly entertaining presentations to take place as JHBGamers organiser Jarrod Lane, El33tonline’s Lisa and EA’s Brad Pidgeon (all the way from Australia) stepped up to the plate to deliver interesting talks on their work, as well as their future endeavours.

The evening kicked off the split-second the clock turned 18:00 (maybe even a few split-seconds before) as attendees for JHBGamers and EA South Africa’s community gathering began to spill into the balcony seating area of TSG.

There were plenty of tables and chairs to go around, but everyone soon began to gravitate towards the stations set up to play FIFA 12 and Need For Speed: The Run, challenging one another to better their times or beat them in a round of footie.

The room was also brimming with the babble of chatter and laughter as the gamers quickly came together, with overheard topics ranging from the latest games and gadgets to upcoming releases and exciting new happenings in the world of gaming.

JHBGamers organiser Jarrod Lane got everyone’s attention at the front of the room and welcomed attendees with news of a new logo for the group, which was then proudly displayed on the projector for all to see - a very striking logo indeed! (Check it out at the top of the page.)

Lane then introduced El33tonline Editor-in-Chief Lisa who presented a brief, very well received primer on the history of the site, our current goings-on (with talk on competitions, our online gaming sessions and more) and an invitation to join El33tonline and participate in the community - Lisa did El33tonline very proud!

It wouldn’t be an El33tonline-attended event without some great prizes and thanks to Afrihost, we were able to give away an ADSL router and a R750 gift card. Not only that, but we peppered all of the tables with 2GB Afrihost ADSL bandwidth vouchers - free bandwidth for everyone thanks to Afrihost!

EA South Africa also let us give away a few games, including Mass Effect 2, Battlefield 3 and NHL 12 - the recipients were very pleased indeed!

It was then that we handed over to the night’s special guest, EA’s Brad Pidgeon who had flown in all the way from Sydney, Australia to do a tour of gaming duty in and around South Africa. His first stop was in Johannesburg so it was only logical that he stepped up at JHBGamers’ community event to talk about his role at EA and his vision for the future.

As the social media and community manager for EA in the regions of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Japan (and the general region of ‘Asia-Pacific’), Pidgeon is the first point-of-contact for gamers in the social, customer and community space - if you’ve read an EA Twitter message or Facebook post in the regions under his control, there’s a good chance he was on the other side of the world typing that message.

Pidgeon delivered a highly entertaining and informative talk spiced up with videos from Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning as well as The Sims 3: Showtime (featuring Katy Perry), before the attendees were let loose on some pizza, drinks and games.

(Note: We’ll be looking at Brad Pidgeon’s presentations in more depth soon.)

The noise levels in the room reached record highs once again as laughter and chatter bounced around the walls (and flowed down into the main area of the restaurant) and Lisa and I managed to meet a bunch of interesting gamers, some of whom we know online.

Thanks go to Jarrod Lane and EA South Africa for putting the event together, Brad Pidgeon for presenting such an interesting talk (and continuing to be lively and enthusiastic well into the night), Afrihost for sponsoring such great prizes, and Lisa for presenting El33tonline to the audience in extremely fine fashion!

We’re sure future JHBGamers events will be just as successful and exciting and we hope the gatherings grow from strength to strength in the coming months!

Follow JHBGamers on Twitter over here and Facebook over here for announcements on future events.