I am inferring that a convention just happened, and that some Europeans here saw other Europeans here.
So:
Quick answer:
I have just been three times to our local one in Hawkeās Bay (Baycon) which is medium sized for NZ, which I guess is small size for Europe (except Essen) and minuscule for USA. This year we had roughly 150 attending over the Sat and Sunday (mostly Saturday) and we are outgrowing the venue big time, so there is a challenge there for next year. Victims of our own success, I guess?
We have Wellycon every June in Wellington and a lot of local gamers go to it every year, but it tends to fall around my daughters birthdays, so I have not been able to go it yet. I believe the numbers might be around triple or more the local one.
To the second question I cannot answer, but if I tried t convince anybody, Iād say:
Games, people wanting to play them, raffles with games related prices, shops, possible discounts, why not giving it a try? Also I have sold it to friends that are into social games and RPGs, as our local con hosts several sessions of D&D and other RPGS and several sessions of Blood on the Clocktower on adjacent rooms.
Do you attend conventions? If not, do you want to?
Yes. Iām a regular at DunDraCon and Kublacon. These are local tabletop gaming conventions of a few thousand attendees with rpgs, board games, card games, and miniatures to varying degrees and plus other stuff. They have decent dealers room, but no one goes to these for the vendorsā¦
How would you distinguish the different conventions? Do they have different feels, clientele, subculture, etc?
There are anime cons, furry cons, sci-fi cons, comic cons, etc. While you can find some gaming in these, that is not their focus. In contrast, gaming cons donāt have much of a cosplay scene and the panels/seminars tend to be sparse (and lame).
What stories would you tell to either sell the idea of conventions to someone or to warn them off forever?
The cons I mentioned are generally good at letting you see and sign up for games in advance so that you donāt have to rely upon the pot luck of open gaming. This is especially true of you are more into rpgs. If you do want to do open gaming, I recommend going with a friend you can game with in case you canāt find what you are looking for at the time you are looking for it. The cons have good board gaming libraries so that you donāt necessarily have to bring your own or be limited to only playing games that you (or someone else) owns.
I have attended three kinds of conventions over the years. Back in high school I went to a number of Strategicons, just to the dealers hall, though at that time it was easy enough to wander through the rest of the con to look at games being played, you just couldnāt participate. This would have been pretty much right at the beginning of modern board gaming, and Magic the Gathering was brand new.
Being mostly in the dealers hall, it was just fun seeing the wide variety of games and minis, and the whole thing pretty much just felt like a very focused flea market, just with some painting and game events in neighboring rooms of the hotel.
After college I got into anime, and started going to Kumoricon in Oregon, starting with the second one in 2005. This was a very different feel and culture, as there was a ton of cosplay, internet memes, music videos, and guest voice actors and directors. There was a lot of silliness but it was just normal there. And being such a young convention, it was easy to get to know some people. I met my wife there, and we volunteered with the con for a number of years, getting to know a lot of the staff. We had to stop after we had kids with their level of special needs, but it was fun while it lasted.
I have been to Emerald City Comic-con once, which was a little like an anime con in that there was a lot of cosplay, but the focus felt a lot more on trying to meet guests to get stuff signed, and just feltā¦less zany, I guess, than the anime convention. Much bigger vendor hall, as well, but there were so many webcomic artists in addition to standard comic vendors and publisher booths, I guess that makes sense.
Finally, I have been to three SHUXās, which of course are focused on board games, but have a very different feel than the old Strategicons. Maybe nowadays they are similar, but back then there was no board game library (that I ever saw, anyway) with a large gaming hall for people to just set up games and put up a ālooking for playersā sign. There were no publisher demo tables with people showing off the latest games. And since they predated YouTube, there were no celebrity game reviewers! So definitely a different feel than the older gaming conventions.
So yes, each type of convention has its own culture and feel, but I donāt think I have been to one that I would warn anyone away from.
Iām afraid theyāre not my thing at all. I donāt enjoy meeting new people, I donāt enjoy playing games with people I donāt know, and Iām liable to spend too much money on games Iāll regret buying and end up selling.
Iāve been to Airecon a few times, but only to sell games Iāve spent too much money on and regretted buying. I havenāt really enjoyed myself - although I can see that lots of people are having a great time, itās just not for me.
I used to go to SF conventions and now I go to boardgaming conventions.
In the UK, theyāre all about playing first except Expo, which has such an expensive venue that it has to be about sales first. For many years Expo was cutting back its playing space, though it seems to have recovered a bit now. Apart from Expo, Airecon seems to have a lot of influence over other medium-sized cons, and unlike Expo they havenāt let themselves grow so big that the dealers are the point of the show and the scruffy gamers need to be hived off to the side somewhere.
The only non-UK show I go to is Essen Spiel, which is really its own thing; itās absolutely a sales-first show, to the extent of having no playing space at all, but itās big enough that you can find some really obscure games.
Good fun on oneās own, better with a friend, and at most shows now there are friends I donāt see for the rest of the year. Sometimes I set up a game and wait for strangers, but that doesnāt have to happen as much these days.
I rant about this a lot, but the current UK bring and buy model (check in your games for sale, they get dumped randomly on shelves) really breaks down when you get to 1,000 people or more, but nobody seems willing to try anything else.
Iāve done RPGs at conventions, often running them, but Iām not a fan: venues big enough to have role-players often donāt have enough small rooms, so your atmospheric horror game is crammed in with two noisy D&D games.
The great thing about RPG and boardgame cons (and SF to some extent) is that you donāt need to over-organise them: tables, chairs, a toilet, somewhere to get food and drink nearby, thatās pretty much all you need. Some organisers want lots of other things, live events and game sales and quizzes and all the rest, and fair enough some people enjoy them, but Iām there primarily for the games.
And then there are cons that exist almost entirely on Facebook (Gridcon, Handycon) which I simply donāt find out about because they canāt be bothered to update their own websites or announcement mailing lists until itās too late.
When I was at uni I would go to a variety of RPG cons for a mix of live action rpg and random sessions of new-to-me rpgs. It was good fun and I always went with a group of known people.
Other than that I have only attended a couple of local-ish boardgame events and a few live action rpg cons I went to with friends.
Mostly, Iāve been to SPIEL aka Essen these past years. Iāve been meaning to attend BerlinCon and to a more local one in Stuttgart. But somehow I never find the time.
SPIEL is more of a trade fair than a con really. It is mostly known for being huge (50.000 people there every day this year, and all of them have to get to the Messe every day and leave again. 9-10 am and 7pm are the worst times to be on the move in Essen during the fair) and having very few tables to play games at. Every major and a lot of not-so-major publishers of boardgames is there. And everyone wants to sell their games.
These days I go to SPIEL less to discover new games but to a) try the few I pre-determined to be āworth itā from the previews and b) buy stuff that might be otherwise unavailable (Nokosu Dice, I never managed to snag a copy, Playte games, Dicetree Reprints).
I also go to see people. I have a few more people every year that I want to at least say hello to (waves to @RogerBW and @lalunaverde) and we often meet up there with our local gaming friends and then try to find tables for 4 or even 5 people.
Main Reasons to go:
Other Reasons to go
Reaons not to go:
Finding a new venue can be a challenge, but otherwise I think thatās a very pleasing kind of problem to be having.
Definitely āor moreā :). Wikipedia says Wellycon 2024 saw 2,600 attendees over the weekend.
(The move to the TÄkina convention centre in Wellington CBD has almost doubled the numbers, from the looks of things.)
And one more thing.
Going to a convention means that there are a lot of people there and each and every one of them has something in common with you: a passion for boardgames.
Imagine spending a few days with 50.000 other boardgamers and ā¦ then the smell, the virus you catch and the cost may not be the most important thing anymore.
Btw in this aspect I would absolutely count metal festivals as cons for metal fans 
This is the same thing I experience at a festival: I immerse myself in a hobby, spend days with other people who share this passion and donāt think about anything else. Also: beer.
To answer the questions first.
Iābe been to UK Games Expo once for the day. I doubt Iāll ever go back. I couldnāt get a table at a vendor booth to play the games I wanted to try and (almost) everything available to buy was
I try to get to Bastion every year, a 110 (ish) person con in North Wales in January every year. The organisers have maintained a welcoming space so Iām happy to jump in on games with random players. It sold out in the previous attendees pres-sale this year. Took 6 minutes, I got in after that as they processed the tickets and had a few going spare
The Bastion organisers have pretty much said they are not interested in finding a biiger venue. The youth hostel they use is fine, and theyhave achieved their goal of a small welcomong con.
When people moan, I think about this and wonder how could it be better. UKGE limited people to 20 games this year, which I think was smart. Maybe just an online marketplace with a designated meeting zone?
Yup. I really donāt do crowds; there arenāt any other 50,000-person events Iād want to go do. But the crowd as Spiel feels friendly.
Bring and Buy problems as I see the situation are
The Essen auctions (not organised by Spiel, done on BGG a few weeks before time) work pretty well. For an in-person event, Iād like to see counter service: you look up the thing you want in the online catalogue (this already exists), then go along and say āitems 5578 and 9981 pleaseā. Then you look at them, and buy or not, and if not they put them back in the specific bins where those items are held. This optimises for getting a specific thing you want, at the cost of browsingāand Iāve been to Hay on Wye, browsing in a completely unsorted collection simply stops being fun after the first hour or so.
Counter service does ask more from the volunteers (and you probably want it very parallel, so each counter bod has tickets that they can leave when they take a game for inspection). I think Expo in particular asks too much from its volunteers already: it isnāt 2,000 people in the Masonic Halls any more, you can afford to pay your staff and GMs whose job is to make the con better for everyone else.
Yeah, there has been the whole problem with dealers dropping off 20 copies of Unsaleable Game.
Not that I was packing our Mystery Boxes on the Wednesday afternoon before Essen or anything. (I mean, not bad games for them as likes 'em, and you buy a mystery box for the discount not because you expect something amazing.)
I do think that the halls (especially hall 3 with all the hobby games) get extremely crowded during certain times. And of course there are people with no spatial awareness blocking the crowds everywhere. Anyone who might be afraid of being crushed by a crowd should maybe go in the afternoons of the less busy days. Some of the halls are never all that busy.
But why go to SPIEL and then skip Hall 3 (CGE, Feuerland, Stonemaier, Spielworxx, 2F, Aporta, Matagot, Pegasus, Portal, Mindclash, Lucky Duck, Ludonova, Artipia, Mighty Boards, Board & Dice, Plaid Hat, DLP, Queen, Alley Cat just to name a fraction of the publishers in there). Even the Dice Tower had their booth in there. BGG is elsewhere in the more obscure corners of Hall 5 or 4 I think.
People are friendly.
And English-speaking! I sometimes end up speaking English to someone only to ask a few minutes into the conversation if German would have been okay.
It can be a little harder on the teenagers we bring with us who havenāt had a lot of chance to practice there English outside of the classroom. But it turns out this is an excellent opportunity for them to forget being self-conscious about speaking another language.
We try to keep our games quick. We played 2 of 3 rounds of Saltfjord to let the next group enjoy the game. Between my turns I explained the game to a couple who had been watching. Because sometimes that will be enough for me to have someone playing explain what is going on on the table.
And itās not all cash now. You can even get food without cash these days. Just no overpriced spiral potatoes this year.
I have attended with some regularity a local gaming convention here in Kansas City called Kantcon. It was founded by my partnerās sister, her partner, and their friends.
Originally, it focused on tabletop roleplaying and miniature gaming, but, easily, the last few years have had at least 50% of the space ear-marked for tabletop board gaming. I wasnāt able to spend much time there this past year, but Allplay (the local publisher) was a sponsor and had a big presence there with demos and inventory for sale; otherwise the vendor representation generally consists of indie roleplaying companies, indie roleplaying accessory makers, and local/regional gaming stores.
However, it also has featured a pretty good Play-to-Win for board games the last few years, as well as a Math Trade and a āgarage saleā, where you can buy and sell (mostly boardgames) on consignment.
Iāve been to one, so Iām reminded of a line from Futurama: "My species has only a single gender, known as āneuchacho.ā"
Iāve talked to other people about attending and generally preface by saying Kantcon is better as a place to meet up with your friends and/or strangers and play games all day long than anything else.
I mean, thereās the odor, obviously.
But there is a lot of potential for camaraderie and the joy of play to justify an amount of time, effort and expense to attend ā the exact amount for each of those would vary person-to-person.
Ohā¦ so itās not a Philosophy conference? 
I mean, it can be anything you want if you pay for the badge and you find the right table.
The name is originally a clever[1] play on words because the first Kantcon was because one of the founding members was not able to attend Gencon that year, a.k.a. he ācanātā con, but also itās held in Kansas. I think. I guess
Iāve heard that thereās a good chance itās going to be absorbed into the much bigger local convention, Meeple-a-Thon, soon because the original founders are all pretty much done with the headache of running it.
for some value of clever ā©ļø
I should probably write a new Essen Guide. My impression this year was that the hall layout was something like:
Hallf 1 CCGs (and a few RPGs)
Hall 2 some bin publishers
Hall 3 most of the interesting ones
Hall 4 game manufacturers and some small publishers
Hall 5 mostly small publishers, heavy on the party games
Hall 6 AsmodƩe and companies that want to get bought by AsmodƩe.
I donāt generally go for the Hot New Thing because even with Mess Preis it often ends up cheaper in England. But I will buy the things that wonāt be shifted by the thousand which will cost more at home, or the things with good promos.
Yeah, I grew up in London and commuting, so the idea that there is a passage and you keep moving along it, not stopping to natter to your friend because there are lots of people behind you, is very much ingrained. Many fewer backpacks this year though.
Really surprising just how much positive feeling I generated just by asking āwould you prefer cash or cardā. Many places took both but they really liked having the choice.
This sounds like a very efficient system that I donāt really like. I think a bring and buy allows you a chance to get away from Internet shopping for games. This is too similar so removes the slightly random happenstance of what you bump in to and it often being cheaper than retail. Itās easier to try something for fun cover or whatever that is slightly free of internet consensus. I purchased RushānāCrush because it was made by Rackham and I saw it as it was moved from checked in to the stocks. Cover was unusual and for a small amount of Ā£ās it would do for a laugh with the people I used to play Confrontation with. Of the games I bought in 2015 itās one of 2 I think that remain in my collection. I doubt I would have bought it on a list. I like how a bring and buy is neither online buzz/lists nor what a publisher/retailer is pushing.
Fair point, but if it takes an hour to get in and another hour to find anything interesting among all the drossā¦
(Your dross may be my beloved game, or vice versa.)
Airecon has a system that lets you search or browse the bring and buy online, so you can at least theoretically go in there with the intention to pick up a particular game that you know is there. Still no guarantee that someone isnāt wandering around with it though, and finding things on the shelves is still tricky