MICE and Men: "Only an Event Can Create These Emotions"

Vienna event agency MICE and Men are organising Game City Vienna since 2007. In our interview at Game City 2025, managing partners Milena Riedel and Tarek Sharif talk about the fair’s success, their plans for the future and the Austrian event landscape.

Event agency MICE and Men is carrying their aspirations in the name: originally from the tourism industry, MICE stands for Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events. The Vienna agency are the capable hands behind Game City Vienna, Austria’s biggest gaming convention. They are organising it since 2007. We talked to founders and Managing Partners of the agency, Milena Riedel and Tarek Sharif, on-site at Game City Vienna 2025 about the fair’s success, their plans for the future and the Austrian event landscape.

How has Game City Vienna 2025 been?

Milena Riedel: It's been incredibly good so far. There have been a lot of visitors, with more on some days than last year. On Friday, we had ten percent more visitors than in 2024. So the topic continues to be interesting for people; they like being here and spend a lot of time here. You can also see that in people's faces; they look very happy.

What was new this year?

Tarek Sharif: We have some new features, as we do every year. Of course, there are the latest trends and games from the exhibitors, who bring their current titles with them. This year, we have a brand new drone area where you can fly drones with or without VR glasses and experience what the town hall square looks like from above. This year, we had almost 200 participants in the cosplay parade on Saturday, who marched through the city and celebrated and had their photos taken. As the number of cosplayers is constantly growing, we have enlarged the entire cosplay area this year and dedicated much more space and services to the theme, such as a repair station and a separate cloakroom. A big new addition is the Red Bull Tetris Austria final on Sunday, whose winner will fly to Dubai to take part in the world final, where they will play Tetris with drones.

MICE & Men has been organizing Game City Vienna since 2007, so you've been following the entire history of the event. Based on this history, what are your hopes for the future of the event?

Sharif: I've been personally involved since 2008, Milena since 2013. Game City 2025 is the 16th since the beginning. I would like to see many of the exhibitors who were very active in on-the-ground marketing and community work here before Corona do so again in the future and do more of it. You can already see that the trend is moving in that direction again. We don't have a problem with exhibitors, but what we are seeing is more and more non-endemics, brands from outside gaming. It would be nice to have even more brands from the gaming industry here. We are already seeing an increase in exhibitors from the gaming scene again since the end of the pandemic. You can also see it in the visitors: they appreciate playing games on site. Making a brand tangible is different from doing it digitally. Of course, digital is great and you have a wide reach, but the emotions you see here, the smiling faces, the crying when they lose, only an event can create that. I would love to see even more great brands here, and the community would really appreciate that too.

What’s going to be different or even better next year?

Sharif: I don't want to give too much away yet. But it could be that a lot will change, because we have some big plans that could have a massive impact on the entire structure. What I can already reveal is that we want to reach beyond Austria's borders and integrate our neighboring countries such as Czechia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Slovakia. Austria is a landlocked country, after all, and we see an opportunity to integrate Central and Eastern Europe. There could be some big news on that front, and I'm looking forward to when we can make it public.

As an event agency, you don't just do Game City. What else is happening at MICE and Men over the course of the coming year?

Riedel: It's going to be exciting. Next week we have the Digital Days in Vienna, a digital conference, which is something completely different from Game City. We generally do a lot of different things. We are responsible for more and more trade fair constructions, which is how Game City originally started for us. We are currently doing this for Samsung, accompanying them with trade fair constructions throughout Austria. We look after Sky Austria and organize cinema premieres throughout the country. We work very closely with MediaMarkt, also due to our proximity to Game City, for which we organize various events and promotions. And next year, we'll be adding some completely new things that we're doing for the first time and are currently developing. For example, we're currently working on taking over an existing franchise. We are looking forward to it, because 2026 will be a very interesting year for us. A lot is changing, and that's great for us, because we still remember the Corona period well, which was of course not a good time for events. We used this time to focus on ourselves and put our own mental health first. And now we are entering a phase where we are returning to pre-coronavirus levels. We can see that this is what people want: events, getting together, places like Game City. The community is simply important. And this has also been recognized by companies and our partners.

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