Another Orgins Game Fair has come and gone. I am incredibly tired, but pleased. I’ve spent 4 days wandering around the exhibit hall looking at new titles, talking with manufacturers and gamers, and just generally observing the market in action. GAMA was brilliant this year and came up with the idea of selling simple fair passes. These were priced at $3 per person (or $10 for a whole family). The passes admitted people to the exhibit hall and let them wander around Origins to see what it was all about. A full badge was required in order to play games or do anything special, but the goal of the fair pass was to get people who were interested in games to stop by the fair. Though I have no numbers to back it up, it felt like this was a huge success. At one point on Saturday, I noticed a whole lot of people with the fair pass and many of them were buying. So many of us gamers got a chance to share some tips and love of games with folks who had only a vague knowledge of anything beyond the standard discount store titles and a whole lot of them went away with a new found game and I suspect an idea to look in to this some more. This is good for our hobby and the game industry in general. Hat’s off to the staff at GAMA.
Noticeably missing from the floor this year were WotC, WizKids, and Days of Wonder. All were apparently far too important to be in attendance at Origins this year. Sad that such icons of the game industry chose to snub the very people who helped make them in the first place.
I also spent a lot of time talking with various manufacturers and even did a little buying. We picked up several new titles from GMT and an order of dice from Crystal Caste. Beyond that I spent some time talking with the folks from Avalanche Press and Twilight Creations about their new releases. I have some ordering to do on these, but we should have newer titles in from these companies soon. And of course, I never fail to say hello to Lou Zocchi from Gamescience when I see him (a fantastic guy who is easy to talk with and knows tons about the game industry).
I took a few other photos as well and posted these to Flickr, you can see these here.
On the personal front, I attended a few seminars in areas of my own interests and I looked around a bit for my collection as well. I did manage to find a few more Shadowrun titles to add to my already overburdened Shadowrun RPG shelf. Beyond that, most of my money went to parking and buying Buckeye Milkshakes from the Krema Nut Company (awesome stuff).
All in all, it was a good year at Origins. I would highly recommend if you have never been to Origins to make it here to the 2009 game fair. Pick up a milkshake too. You will not regret it.
Steve @ g2ch