Re: Origins Game Con

On Tue, 24 Apr 2001 17:03:00 -0700, Sean Bayan Schoonmaker
<s_schoon@pacbell.net> wrote:

>Over time, GenCon has begun to offer a broader range, and the 
>miniatures events there continue to grow. However, I believe Origins 
>still has it beat in the non-RPG department.

Except that historicals have been fading rapidly at GenCon.

I had an interesting e-mail from the board game and minis co-ordinator
at
GenCon. He pointed out that there are more board game and miniature game
events in total than all the other games combined. Now, I figured this
is an
unfair stat. A Magic: The Gathering tournament with 500 people, or a
Call of
Cthulhu Masters tournament with 50 people are each one event. A game of
Squad
Leader with 2 players is one event. Also, Hasbro now owns WotC, and
Hasbro is
big into board games, so you can expect a bigger board game presence. I
would
suggest that GenCon probably has Origins slightly beat in all
categories, and
major in some.

That having been said, I thought GenCon was the largest game con in the
world
with 25,000 attendees last year. (That number is odd: I was there for 4
days
so I was 4 people. If you think this is dishonest, ALL multi-day events
do it
this way, including things like the Toronto Molson Indy and the
Olympics.)
Spiel -- the huge board game convention in Germany -- however, had well
over
100,000 attendees. 

Allan Goodall		       awg@sympatico.ca
Goodall's Grotto:  http://www.vex.net/~agoodall

"Now, see, if you combine different colours of light,
 you get white! Try that with Play-Doh and you get
 brown! How come?" - Alan Moore & Kevin Nolan,