Well, I’m off to GenCon in a few days and I’m pretty excited about the trip!  I’m going to be heading out on Wednesday and returning on Sunday.  Hopefully with lots of new games and news about what went on at the Con, including some news about the MMOs I see there.  That is if I can beat the crowds – see geeks colliding here during last year’s opening day:

So what the heck is GenCon?  Good question!  GenCon bills itself as “The Best Four Days in Gaming”, and once you’ve been there, it’s hard to dispute the claim.  GenCon has a long and storied history, with none other than Gary Gygax as its founder in 1967.   To quote from Wikipedia:

Gen Con began in 1967 as an informal gathering of war game enthusiasts at the Lake Geneva, Wisconsin home of Gary Gygax, later termed “Gen Con 0″. A year later, Gygax organized the first formal convention at the Lake Geneva Horticultural Hall with roughly 100 attendees.

Gen Con’s name is a derivation of “Geneva Convention,” given the convention’s origins in Lake Geneva. The name also is a play-on-words, as the “Geneva Conventions” are the name of a set of important international treaties regarding war and the earliest Gen Cons had a focus on wargames.

During the following decade the event grew and was hosted at a variety of southern Wisconsin locations, including an American Legion Hall, George Williams College, and the former Lake Geneva Playboy Resort. In 1978 the convention moved to the University of Wisconsin-Parkside campus in Kenosha, and in 1985 it moved to the Milwaukee Exposition & Convention Center & Arena (commonly known as the MECCA) in Milwaukee. Attendance steadily rose from 5,000 paid admissions in 1985 to a peak of 30,000 in 1994, making Gen Con the premier event in the role-playing game industry. Gen Con moved to the Midwest Express Center (MEC, now the Midwest Airlines Center) in 1998 when the MEC replaced the MECCA.

For the first nine years, Gen Con was sponsored by the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association.^[2] Beginning in 1976, Gen Con was managed by TSR, Inc., original publisher of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. In 1997, TSR was bought by Wizards of the Coast, which in turn was purchased by Hasbro in 1999. In May 2002, Gen Con was purchased from Hasbro by Peter Adkison, the founder of Wizards of the Coast. The Midwest U.S. convention moved to Indianapolis in 2003.

 Fore more detailed GenCon history, you can visit the Wiki entry or the Keeper of Ancient GenCon Lore. 

For me, this will only be my second trip to GenCon, 2006 being my first.  Last year I kind of had the wide-eyed, deer-in-the-headlights look all through the convention.  It’s massive, and I was a bit overwhelmed!  So much to see, participate in, and tons of exhibitors hawking their wares.  Throw in lots of pop culture costumes, good food and drinks, and all the gaming you can handle, and it’s a vacation that dorks like me dream of.

I’ll definitely be checking out the board/card/rpg scene this year, as that is and remains GenCon’s focus.  Most notably, I’ll be hitting the Fantasy Flight booth pretty hard, as I love the board games they produce (a love that someone else in the blogosphere shares).  I saw the launch of Dreamblade last year, and even though I bought it and played it last fall, I just couldn’t keep up with it.  We saw the WoW TCG launched as well which looked nice, and were able to watch various tournanments including Versus and Magic.  One thing I didn’t get to look in on as much last year were miniature games in general.  When you see a huge piece of plywood, covered in all kinds of foliage and buildings, with all these miniatures running around, you can’t help but geek out a bit.  I didn’t know most of the games but I think I may try to sit in on some this year and learn. 

I also noticed last year that there were several MMOs and other computer games being showcased at GenCon.  These included Pirates of the Burning Sea, The Burning Crusade Expansion, Eve Online, Neverwinter Nights 2, and others.  With the demise of E3 as we have known it, it appears that GenCon will pick up the pieces and incorporate more electronic gaming into it’s show, per this news release on August 8, 2006 (bold mine):

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Aug. 8, 2006–Gen Con, LLC today announced its plans to expand the offerings of the company’s gaming shows. Gen Con will increase venue space and change a location to better incorporate the video game business as a focus of the Gen Con shows. This will give video game manufacturers, developers, publishers and others, who traditionally attended E3, a place to feature their products to the trade, media and consumers alike.

“When the news came out about the drastic changes at E3, we began to hear from some industry players about Gen Con increasing its capabilities to better accommodate the industry,” said Peter Adkison, CEO of Gen Con, LLC.  “With our vast experience in producing quality gaming shows, it is a natural extension for us to make Gen Con a place where the electronic industry can show off its products. The video game business has always been a part of our shows, now they will have a greater presence making Gen Con the nation’s premier gaming show, period!”

In order to better accommodate the video game business into its existing shows, Gen Con will expand its venue space at the Indianapolis show in 2007.  An additional 43,000 square feet will be added to the exhibit hall with additional space expanding into area hotels as well to accommodate the thousands of games taking place over the four-day event.

 Later last year, Gamasutra announced that GenCon had hired on a former E3 Director to assist in this expansion:

November 30, 2006

Organizers of the annual Gen Con gaming hobbyist conventions have announced the appointment of former Entertainment Software Association (ESA) executive Bill Creonte as the new senior vice president of business development.

In his new role, Creonte is tasked with expanding Gen Con’s business, including building upon the previously announced plans to add video game-related content in the wake of the changes made to the E3 convention earlier this year. In its newly expanded form, Gen Con organizers hope to provide a venue for video game manufacturers, developers, publishers and others a place to feature their products to the trade, media and consumers alike.

In his previous role at the ESA, Creonte worked as the director of exhibit sales and business development for E3, which the ESA owns and manages. Prior to joining the ESA, Creonte was the national sales manager for E3 at IDG Expo Management, the company formerly responsible for E3’s management. In total, he has spent nine years involved with the industry trade event.

For someone that loves “gaming” in general, whether it be on the PC or around the kitchen table, this is welcome news indeed.  I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing an expanded MMO presence at GenCon this year and in the years ahead.  However, with developer specific events like BlizzCon and FanFaire, I don’t know what kind of presence or announcements those companies will have at GenCon.  I am hoping to see several of the upcoming MMOs there this year, with such companies as SOE, Blizzard, Atari, Flying Labs, EA/Mythic, Eidos, Fallen Earth LLC and NC Interactive confirmed on the exhibitor list.  I know it’s too much to hope for that EA/Mythic will have Warhammer there, but I’m sure hoping!!  For someone like me, going out to CA for cons and such is a pretty expensive endeavor.  So to have more of the MMO developers coming to GenCon is a good thing.  I can get all my gaming goodness in one place and much more affordably.

So I will be out of pocket August 15 – 19th and will be sure to take plenty of pictures and perhaps even some video.  I’ll be sure to have a post-GenCon report when I return and let you guys know how it went.  If anyone reading this is going to the Con this year, let me know.  Would be happy to meet up with you at some point and put a face with a name.