Folks from USA tell that Gen Con is biggest board game convention on this planet. Folks from Europe say „Phew! Essen is bigger”. Tom Vasel pours oil to the flame and says that Gen Con not only managed to catch up Essen, but grew up bigger.

What can I say. I am one of these lucky bastards who attended both Essen and Gen Con. Let me add more oil and tell you what I think.

***

Let’s start with numbers.

Gen Con 2014 new releases? Eric W. Martin listed exactly 300 games. Not all of them were actually released. Not of them were actually new releases. But well, screw it. Let it be 300 new games.

What about Essen 2014? Eric W. Martin listed 502 games. Huge number but… Essen was cheating for years… Let me look into this list with a magnifying glass. There is more than 50 games on that list that – as far as I know – were already released at Gen Con and now are just listed again.

It’s more like 300 to 450.

Still, in terms of number of new releases, 1:0 for Essen.

What about number of visitors?

This is tricky part, Essen counts entries, not actual people. They say 150 000 people visited fair for 4 days, and it might mean about 37 000 unique visitors. It might mean that. We don’t know.

Gen Con says they had more than 60 000 unique visitors.

Looks like it is 1:0 for Gen Con…

***

What about gaming?

When exhibitor hall closes at Essen, gamers go to hotels and play all night long at hotel lobby, at hotel restaurant, at hotel rooms.

When exhibitor hall closes at Gen Con, gamers go to Open Gaming Area and play all night long. Or go to one of many game rooms at convention centre. Or go to any restaurant or pub around Indiana Con Centre and play. And in hotels too. And everywhere.

This is amazing – whole Indiana downtown around Con Centre changes into Game city for this 4 days. This is freaking awesome – you walk the streets and there are gamers, all around, playing, talking, having fun.

Gen Con wins 1:0

***

Anything more?

Essen fair is games fair – huge, insane huge exhibitor hall. That’s all.

Gen Con fair is games convention. It has huge exhibitor hall. And it has insane number of other attractions. Game nights, tournaments, panels, larps, RPG… Thousands (yes, you read it right – THOUSANDS!) of events that take place there. This con runs 24 hours without a 5 minutes break.

Gen con wins 1:0

***

Exhibitor hall – closer look.

Gen con is all about new releases. FFG is bringing all their best. AEG is bringing all their best. And IELLO, and Stronghold and Plaid Hat and Portal Games too. We put best stuff we have and we make US gamers feel like in heaven.

Essen has new releases too, but this list of new games is more diverse. You find here super rare gems. Games from Japan, games from Poland, Spain, Italy, games from Taiwan and games from Russia, games from all different parts of the world. Many unknown companies, many small gems that you can browse and try and hopefully find a treasure designed by new designer.

I would call it a draw. I love those hyped games like Dead of Winter, Five Tribes or Imperial Settlers (yes, I am doing product placement here). But I also love to walk around those all small booths at Essen and look for games and publishers I have never heard of. This feels like a gaming adventure. Gen Con vs Essen – 1:1

***

Exhibitor hall – second closer look

Gen con is mostly about game publishers.

Essen is also about game stores and second hand games stores. OMG! You can find there old games like El Grande or Tikal. You can buy games with super prices. You can negotiate prices. There are so many games on sale, there are so many chances to buy great games for 5 euro! Man, you just walk those corridors and you can not resist – special offers and discounts on every corner.

Essen wins. If you want to buy not-new-releases, Essen wins. Much wider selection and much better prices.

***

We may go on and on.

At Essen people believe I can actually speak English.

At Gen Con I can go and watch Indiana Colts match without even leaving convention center.

At Essen you can easily find grocery store with huuuuuge selection of cookies, chocolates, sweets…

At Gen Con I have wi fi on every corner of the street, in every store, pub, everywhere. Except exhibitor hall…

At Essen I meet gamers from whole Europe, from Spain, to Russia, from Italy to Hungary, from Norway to Croatia…

I love both conventions. I think I might fell in love with Gen Con lately. But Essen is still my good old love…

I plan to write a series of articles about organizing a game conventions. Without false modesty – I am pretty good at this stuff. I am doing cons for my whole life. I created and run many conventions, big ones, and small ones. I also attend hell of cons every year. I know much about mistakes, I know much about cool ideas.

But before we move on to this, let me just make a shout out to… myself!

Tomorrow I go to miniPionek (miniPawn). This is con I created few years ago. It is held twice a year in Gliwice. It is con for 50-80 gamers. Most of them are my friends. I would invite them all to my house and play games, but my house is too small. So we have this small con. We meet in Cultural Centre in Gliwice. One huge room, 20 or so tables and 2 days of gaming with friends.

I packed my car with games. That will be an amazing weekend. Shout out to me. I invented this con. And that was one of many brilliant ideas I had 😉

I am huge sf fan. Which is a tricky thing these days. There is so many sf movies in cinema. Every damn month we have more new sf movies than we had per year when I was a kid. The problem is – well, at least from my perspective – that when I was a kid we had Blade Runner, E.T., Terminator, Alien, Abyss, Total Recall. Great stories with poor special effects.

Now we have the opposite – awesome special effects and no story at all.

That’s why a good sf movie deserves a post. That is why good sci fi makes me happy as a kid. That’s why once again this weekend I was proud to be sf fan.

Edge of Tomorrow, baby!

So we were playing Sail to India and even though I liked the game, I had these moments of lack of concentration – when Merry and Ralph were doing their turn, I was checking my Twitter and Instagram feeds. At some point Ralph poked me in the arm. „It’s your turn, man” he said. „Oh, sorry. What did you do?” I asked him.

In response he gave me that look. He looked at me with his eyes telling me: „You were not paying attention and you were twitting all the time and now you want me to kindly describe you what I did in my turn?”

That look.

So I shut up and I did my turn. And then I put away my Iphone. No more twitter feed during the game.

***

I am active user of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, I post photos of games I play, I banter about games on Twitter and I love the fact that I can discuss games with people from all over the world.

But…

At some point I might forgot that playing games is a social experience that involves real people sitting right in front of me. I might forgot that I should talk with them not with my Twitter feed. I might forgot that it is good – waiting for my turn – interact with them and have fun with them, not with my smartphone…

It’s cool to make a photo of the game and post it on Instagram. It is cool to post something interesting or funny about the game and share your thoughts with the world.

But it is not cool to sit with 4 friends at the table and stare at your Iphone all the time.

***

When I was at Gen Con I saw that sadly it was not only my problem. I saw that many geeks were distracted by their smartphones. I saw geeks who hold cards in one hand and their iphone in the other. I saw people checking their FB/Twitter/whatever every time they were done with their turn.

That sucks, people.

I say it loud and I say it honest – I was there too. I was social media freak too (well, I still am!). I was acting like jerk. But I am acting better now. Still, when I play board game, I take a photo at the beginning or at the end of the game. I post or tweet funny comment or my thoughts about the game after it is finished. But for the whole game I try to keep my smartphone in the pocket. I try to not get distracted. I try to be social… to people who sit with me at the table.

What can I say more. I poke you guys. It’s your turn to act.

For the past 30+ years I played football at least once a week. As a kid I played every day, in college I played twice a week, nowadays I play every Monday. I can’t say that about board games – every year there is a few weeks, when I take a break and I play no board games at all. There was no single week of break from football in my life.

I love board games, I am huge board games fan, but let me be honest with you – in my heart I am sport dude. If there is an offer on the table to play my beloved Mall of horror or to play football, I will choose football. Sorry to say that.

I also watch sport. I watch football (Premiere League) and I watch all mayor events in sports that involve team sports. That is why I was so excited and so freaking happy when Rob and his friends invited me this Gen con for a American Football match (Indiana Colts against NJ Giants). I believe they did not realize how huge it was for me and how happy I was that evening.

But let me tell you something. Let me tell you about yesterday evening.

Yesterday Polish volleyball team won World Championship. It is second gold medal in Polish history. We won it only once in 1974, two years before I was born. Yesterday we defeated Brasil, team that won 3 gold medals in a row and was World Champion for the past 12 years.

Watching our team reaching their highest skills, watching their determination and their will to defeat Brasil was something I will remember for years. Pure emotions. I was shouting, I was clapping, I was cursing, swearing, I was acting like a madman. And I was witnessing history – Poland won World Championship.

You sport freaks do understand me, huh? It was some about 20 hours ago. And I am still shaking…

What a feeling. What a night!