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Some of that spirit was still present at Gen Con 2021, both in me and in others. We had jobs to do, sure, but for the most part the jobs could have been done elsewhere or delayed until another time. This time everyone was uncertain whether the Indiana Convention Center would be absent life or flooded with more humans than we could reasonably stand. We recognized the folly of being there, while also wanting to connect with others, desperate to be part of something larger than ourselves and hoping that something wouldn't be a tally of the diseased and deceased.
In the end, Gen Con reported that "a unique attendance of over 35,000 gaming fans" made their way to the ICC, which was populated with "more than 320 exhibiting publishers and vendors, including more than 90 first-time Gen Con exhibitors". Many of those first-time exhibitors found room at Gen Con 2021 solely because of all the publishers that weren't on site, whether those that had cancelled prior to the sign-up deadline (such as Asmodee, Paizo, CMON, and BGG itself) or those that had cancelled later, when it became clear that the conditions for a convention weren't ideal — although who's to say at this point we're ever going to return to "ideal".
Gen Con also notes that "[p]ublishers released more than 200 new games during the convention", which is far off the numbers of years past. I barely managed to push BGG's Gen Con 2021 Preview over two hundred new titles being sold and demoed, with almost as many titles being removed from the list as added to it in the final weeks ahead of the show. By comparison, BGG's Gen Con 2019 Preview listed 635 titles.
At the show, almost every publisher had stories of games stuck somewhere in the distribution pipeline, whether due to a shortage of paper at the manufacturer, a record number of cargo ships backed up near the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, a container tagged for and awaiting customs inspection for weeks, or a lack of drivers to move goods to a final warehouse.
Publishers spoke of previously unimaginable — yet now commonplace — prices for containers, with the highest price I heard being $35,000, roughly ten times the "normal" price of 2019. Every publisher expects retail prices for games to rise in 2022, if not sooner, given that a $35k cost on a container that contains, say, five thousand big box games equals a $7/copy shipping cost, compared to 70 cents not too long ago. One publisher had hoped to bring in advance copies of a Kickstarted game to seed the market and generate buzz, but each copy of the game would have cost $70 to ship, so that plan was out, leaving only a single copy on hand to represent what was to come...some day.
Multiple publishers stated that prices have been held down relative to what's included in a box, with the $40 game of today generally containing more components of better quality than the $40 game of 2010. Now it's time to increase prices to better represent a game's components, but more for survival's sake than anything else. Few people want to increase prices as they don't want their games to compare unfavorably on the market, but given the choice of working for nothing or maintaining a functioning business with positive cash flow, the latter seems like a no-brainer.
Despite the relative lack of new games and an attendance count half that of 2019, nearly every publisher I spoke with said that sales at Gen Con 2021 were outpacing those of 2019. Apparently the folks who did come to the show were those with money to burn, those who wanted some sense of normalcy in the simple act of attending an event and taking home souvenirs, lots and lots of souvenirs. Titles from 2020 that had been featured only on livestream presentations had their first spotlight at a convention, some moving as well as 2021 releases while others struggled to overcome the impression that they were passé.
Publishers obviously welcomed game sales, but they also talked about the value of being able to talk to players in person, see people interact with their games, and experience buzz in real-time. One publisher mentioned that Thursday demoes for a new release had seemed slow, but over the four days of the show, more and more people came to test the game and sales picked up, proving in real time the value of a convention — although the hope, of course, is that those players carry their excitement for the game back home to share it with others. Time will tell.
Time was on everyone's mind for all sorts of reasons, whether it was the short window of time between Gen Con and Origins (which many publishers are skipping on the assumption that few people will attend both shows) or between Origins and SPIEL (which many publishers are skipping due to lack of product, governmental restrictions, or medical uncertainty); the thought that conventions might all be conducted this way in the future (with everyone masked and eating furtively to avoid seeming callous); or the recognition that one of the first things to do after leaving Gen Con is conduct a Covid test to ensure that you brought home only what you had intended to carry.
On that last point, Gen Con reports that "[o]ver 90% of Gen Con’s attendees were vaccinated against COVID-19 according to surveys conducted by organizers", and while the safest choice of all is to never leave your residence, once you have a Covid vaccine, your risk of getting seriously ill due to the disease falls drastically. Whether you want to take that risk, well, that decision will vary from person to person, but anyone who does, say, go skydiving will ideally wear a parachute in order to avoid risking harm to others — not to mention yourself.
What risks will future shows carry? For many first-time exhibitors, the possibility of not finding a space for themselves on the exhibit floor at Gen Con 2022. Maybe Asmodee has exited the convention business permanently, content to pitch games to mainstream audiences, and maybe it will once again lay claim to a vast section of booths. All publishers face the possibility that increased shipping costs and the uncertainty of manufacturing will become a permanent part of the business, forcing them to land items at their warehouse months ahead of a show to ensure inventory.
For players, well, perhaps you'll have to be content with less spectacle and fewer choices, but ideally you can still make connections with others across the gaming table in this hobby that we love.
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Candice Harris and I will be posting overviews of specific games and publishers over the next couple of weeks as we go through all of our notes and photos. I hope you'll keep checking in to see what we saw, played, and anagrammed.
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