A Pilgrimage to Mecca... Er, The Midwest Express Center

GenCon.

The very name fills gamers hearts a-flutter. For some, it's a long-desired dream, not yet achieved. For others, a fond memory. For still others, a yearly sojourn. It is the game industry's biggest party of the year, and try as I might to be cynical about it (witness my suppositions regarding it in my ORIGINS column... suppositions, I might add, that were echoed last week in Scott Haring's column on PYRAMID), I can't help but unleash my inner fanboy as the date approaches.

So, what is GenCon like? Imagine thousands of people who like the same stuff that you do, taking over an entire city center for about 6 days. The influx of gamers begins in earnest on Wednesday (yes, as you read this, the invasion has begun), and finally peters out as the last of the stragglers leave on Monday.

Glorious.

Imagine a place where you can game 24 hours a day, finally try out those games that you've heard of but never got your lame-ass friends to give a shot, and then take a break while shopping in a game store the size of a couple of football fields filled with literally everything that the industry currently produces, as well as swords, videos, models and scads of other treasures. Plus, you get to buy the stuff from the guys who actually make it, rather than some counter-monkey who swears that the game you're looking for hasn't been printed yet, or is out of print, or just is something he's never heard of.

Imagine a place where you can party in the street with a few thousand of your closest friends, eating free food. Every Thursday night, there's a block party that allows you to do just that. Every other night of the show, there are restaurants, bars, and clubs to go to&with gamers filling every one of them. Argue mechanics over a couple of beers with a guy who turns out to have designed some of your favorites, or finally get to put faces to the handles of online friends.

Cram every waking our with enough gamerrific activities to fuel your interests for the next 365 days, only to take a couple of hours of sleep before getting up and doing it all over again. I mean, sure... you'll eat horribly, get little or no rest, and generally ravage your immune system... but it's worth it.

For those of us who work behind the booth, the experience is a little bit different, but the essentials are the same. We don't get a big chance to do a lot of gaming, since we're in the Exhibit Hall for around 8 hours a day, and afterwards tend to spend a lot of time schmoozing, at various company parties and other get-togethers. These are where we make contacts for future freelance assignments, or begin negotiations between companies, or generally just take the chance to see folks that we only get to see at conventions. Gaming for us is often limited to demos of our own product, although getting a chance to play someone else's game is always a possibility& but, in general, we get to game at shows much less than you guys do. That's OK. We make up for it with hard liquor.

So, as you read this, the madness has begun. Somewhere around 26,000 gamers are at this minute converging on the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The manufacturers, having arrived Tuesday or early Wednesday, are currently setting up their display booths, ready for the crush of bodies that will mark the opening of the Exhibit Hall doors at 10am on Thursday.

26,000 gamers, with fire in their eyes, money in their pockets, and, hopefully, enough clean clothes to last the whole con.

Glorious.

Sorry this week is short... like I said, man... GenCon.

This week's recommendations—I'm reading FIVE STAR STORIES by Mamoru Nagano, and I'm listening to BEFORE THE STORM an album by Darude.

See ya in 7.