Video Games

Civilization 7 and Monster Hunter Wilds to get Opening Night Live 2024 reveals

Two major highlights to look forward to

Marco Wutz

Koelnmesse / Gamescom / Marvin Ruppert

Gamescom 2024 is creeping ever closer and with it the now traditional Opening Night Live, a showcase hosted by Geoff Keighley. 

Unlike Keighley’s other events – Summer Game Fest and The Game Awards – Opening Night Live is a bit restricted when it comes to which publishers and studios can show their products, since only companies with a presence on the Gamescom showfloor are able to book slots.

Some games may be lucky enough to get picked for editorial reasons, freeing them from paying for their time on the show, but most titles we’ll see at Opening Night Live will have to pay a juicy fee of €265,000 Euro for their two minutes of fame. Alternatively, the 30-second slots available during the pre-show can be booked for €57,000 Euro – high prices, yes. However, with ONL’s wide reach and highly valuable target audience, many publishers find it worthwhile to open their marketing coffers for an appearance at Keighley’s show.

What matters to fans, in the end, is a good show with exciting entries – and in that department Gamescom Opening Night Live 2024 is already starting to look promising.

Geoff Keighley already announced that Firaxis and 2K Games will show off the world’s first-ever gameplay trailer for Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 at the event – a moment strategy game fans have long been waiting for.

If you’re more action-oriented, then you won’t be disappointed either: Capcom indicated that it’ll have something brand-new to show at ONL 2024 in regards to Monster Hunter Wilds and has begun hyping fans up by showcasing fresh footage every day running up to the event.

Naturally, it wouldn’t be a Keighley show if there wasn’t some dose of “WORLD PREMIERE” as well – one completely new reveal has been confirmed to come from Tarsier Studios: The makers of Little Nightmares 1 and 2 will present their upcoming title, published by THQ Nordic.

Opening Night Live is set to take place on August 20, 2024, and tickets are currently on sale for those who want to attend the live show in Cologne, Germany. For online viewers, the show will be available to watch for free via the usual channels.

Gamescom expects to break new records in 2024 with new areas and partners being added to the event.

Published
Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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