Ava Jarvis: There and Back Again: BGG.con Headlines

Wednesday, November 8th

Boardgame geeks invade Plaza of Americas!
Claim they come in “peace and gaming”

An unexpected and early invasion of BGG.con attendees filled up half the tables in the sizeable food court of the Plaza of Americas, a large atrium connecting the Westin hotel, the Adam’s Mark, and an office building containing rentable event space.

The fact that BGG.con attendees would be coming in droves the day before the convention was expected; that they would set up camp and start playing boardgames into the late hours of the night of their initial arrival something else.

BGG.con staff and volunteers yodeled down from a fifth floor balcony to the impromptu gaming tables, but all below seemed too involved to hear them.

In order to not upset the food merchants and restaurants downstairs the next day, Aldie, the head honcho of the BGG.con event, declared open gaming to start in the main convention rooms the next morning rather than the afternoon.

Rumors are that this strong early showing may influence the length of next year's BGG.con.

Essen games discovered in disarray in suitcase
Arts and crafts skills come to the rescue

A suitcase full of Essen games arrived late Wednesday night, transported overseas from their original country of Germany by Derk Solko. Unfortunately, quarters were cramped, and of necessity sacrifices were made. Boxes were carefully cut at the corners and folded down, inserts removed and compacted when possible, bits placed in bags, and boards protected from the bits and each other by layers of clothes.

Upon arrival, it was discovered that the various components had shifted during transit, resulting in a terrible scene of unmatched wooden pieces, tiles, boards, and rules scattered willy-nilly---a sight of carnage enough to send the OCD of many geeks into overdrive.

Thankfully, on the spot BGN editor and reporter Rick Thornquist was present on hand to help piece the Essen refugees back together. With his unmatched Essen experience, the island of Essen 2006 in the library was restored in one night.

Unfortunately, some scars were too deep to mend. The Khronos box was never found, although an intriguing printed insert remains, as well as the rest of the bits.

Thursday, November 9th

BGG.con officially opens
Registration room overrun

20 minutes before registration began at noon, BGG.con attendees were already lining up outside the doors. 10 minutes later, that line was already stretching down the hallway past the elevators, around the corner, and into one of the back gaming rooms.

Attendance is unprecedented this year---the number of registrants doubled from 200 to nearly 400, with most participants scheduled to trickle in over the days to come. The Westin room block filled so quickly that an extra block had to be provided by the nearby Adam's Mark, which was very gracious about the whole affair.

The initial opening was no mere trickle, but a flood. Within minutes of the registration tables opening, attendees had nearly filled the room and were browsing over their pick of the door prizes. Nevertheless, registration continued at a speedy pace.

Hopefully next year's convention space will allow for more elbow room at this stage of the game.

Enormous game library stuns gamers
Overwhelming choice leaves many in awe

A virtual branch of a gamer's Alexandria opened up in the vendor room, featuring over 1200 games of all shapes, sizes, and mechanics, from old classics to new shiny ones fresh from Essen (perhaps with a little tape in some areas). Expanded from last year's two small rooms, the library occupies a space equivalent to a third of the vendor area.

The library system is unusual among conventions: a library card is given to each attendee, which is taken by the librarians upon checking out a game. The only way another game can be checked out by the same person is to return the previous game, and the librarians can easily keep track of who has what. As a result of this system, even rare games like Black Vienna are relatively safe during convention play.

Library contributions came from Aldie and other convention attendees.

With literally hundreds of choices available, gamers were more often than not spending some time wandering from table to table in a state of overload.

Gamers teaching gamers
Demo-cracy in action

Thanks to a voluminous library of unknown games, most games played would be new to at least half of the players involved. Like last year, official BGG.con demo-ers were available and on hand for any teaching needs.

With such a wide convention audience that includes experienced gamers in most every category, and among them recent Essen travelers, many games were also taught directly from member to member. A bewildering variety of games were being played, and watching this mass knowledge transfer migrate through the crowds was amazing.

Vendors and publishers were also actively demonstrating various games, including the frequently requested Mission: Red Planet. Mark from Days of Wonder was showing off BattleLore. Mattel's first "gamer" games were presented by Brian Yu with large deluxe versions of Desert Bazaar (with terrain-flocked hexes and wooden pieces) and Voltage (featuring switches and lights).

Some of the best in the game teaching field were also at the convention, including Rick Thornquist, Valerie Putman, Scott Nicholson, Scott Tepper, and others.

Prize drawings return with a vengeance
Midnight madness!

BGG.con attendees from last year may have wondered why an additional gold ticket was given alongside the red/blue door prize tickets.

For BGG.con 2006, Thoughthammer donated many games to be prizes as part of "Midnight Madness", where every midnight gold ticket numbers would be called out by Derk "The Megaphone" Solko and lucky attendees would get their choice from this night's table. Offerings ranged from Leonardo Da Vinci and what could only be called "The Wall of Alhambra", to the full-sized version of Pitchcar (plus expansion) and the super-deluxe edition of Settlers of Catan.

And this was before the yearly grand prize drawing on Saturday evening.

Thank you, Thoughthammer!

Friday, November 10th

Geeklists Galore on BGG
The news gets home

Free wireless in every room at the Adam's Mark guaranteed that many convention goers, some of which were attending their first gaming convention ever, would be logged in and punching away at the Geeklist editing interface every night. Many new lists for just BGG.con were generated and swarms of pictures uploaded throughout the convention.

BGG members located in the Westin hotel would have had to pay $15 an hour for the same privileges, partially explaining the lack of such early Geeklists last year.

Puzzlehunt takes over hotel
"Ugeek! Ugeek!" declares mad scientist Dave Arnot

When signing up in teams for the Puzzle Hunt, participating attendees were perhaps underestimating the sheer brilliant madness of the puzzle hunt organizers. After hearing the rules and before receiving the first packet of puzzles, a mysterious figure in a labcoat and Groucho Marx disguise ran around through the crowd, crowing "Ugeek! Ugeek!" before climbing on the table, giving a pep talk in gibberish, then shooing the puzzlers on their way.

The sheer variety and number of puzzles to be solved was amazing---on the order of 30 or so. Some puzzles were a means to an end, used in deriving one of the multiple "goal words" needed to get the final phrase for the next stage of the hunt. Still others would not unlock their mysteries until two or even three stages later. Many contained red herrings.

While most puzzles only required teams putting their heads together at the table, a few required excursions to specific rooms in the Adam's Mark and the Westin---including one with 26 red balloons hanging from colored ribbons on the ceiling, and each balloon had a six-letter word starting with a unique letter of the alphabet. Puzzles even included items such as listing various Knizia games to decode a message (surprisingly difficult), translating photo-shopped pictures into popular songs, extracting palindromes from cartoons, and many anagrams.

By the fourth hour, many teams had tossed in the towel, though a few wanted to keep going. The final stage contained---of course---a puzzle involving the names of Groucho Marx movies.

In the end, the winners were the puzzle-smart teams who asked for hints early and at the right times.

Final reactions to the puzzle hunt were somewhat mixed. Many agree it was a spectacular endeavor, but a surprising time drain---some teams were still going six hours later, and all teams put in large amounts of effort. The puzzle hunt is sure to undergo revisions for next year, and hopefully expectations will be more accurate at BGG.con 2007.

Snockered gamers relaxed afterwards with well-deserved pizza, poker, and Werewolf.

Saturday, November 11th

Family feud, BGG style
There are 26 different ways to spell Carcassonne?

The Game Show, brainchild of Peter Sarrett, was a big hit in 2005, and returned---in a different guise of embroidery on a cheery yellow background with a Family Feud show effect! It was amusing to see the team names squish themselves on the screen as brown cross-stitching, including the inimitable Weaselpenis Circus, champions from last year's trivia version of the show.

However, this year the results of a survey carried out months earlier on boardgamegeek.com were used, adding an extra dimension of fun as teams contested to see who could out-guess the BGG group think. Points were given for guessing the most popular answers, and decreasing points for each entry in the top ten lists.

Survey questions included the following:

If you could play a game with any person, alive or dead, who would you choose?
(There were a fair amount who chose their grandfather or other relative, many who chose Lincoln or Einstein, and quite a few who apparently chose Jesus of Nazareth.)

What is the best gateway game?

Name a game that has expansions.
(This is also where they found the 26 different spellings of Carcassonne.)

What is your favorite gaming accessory?
(Dice, poker chips, dice tower or tray... but really, people's favorite accessory was a table.)

A good time was had by all, even non-participants---who could also participate in a non-competitive way by making their own lists.

Game of Civilization has still not ended
And a convention trend towards shorter games

A game of Civilization was set up in one of the back rooms at around 8am on Saturday, and by 10pm that night was still not finished.

This, of course, is no surprise to people who already know about Civ.

Other long so-called "Ameritrash" games, though not as long as Civilization, being played at the convention included Descent and Twilight Imperium.

On a related tangent, some at the convention have already begun making a transition towards looking for medium-length to short games, especially towards the end. For most gamers, the more conventions attended, the more important it is to get in quality time with friends who may not be seen again for months. The need to play as many in-depth games as possible end-to-end is much less.

That said, many experienced convention goers will still manage to fit in one or two extra-long favorites, especially games with less opportunity for play outside of a convention environment. Where else can one begin a six-player game of Dune?

Sunday, November 12th

Final Farewells
Epidemic of post-con blues

Gamers were leaving in clumps of flight numbers, all for the better since this gave many a final chance to keep the magic of the convention going for as long as possible. The many shared taxis and final gate games added a final touch on what was a very special event. At airports across the nation and the world, gamers shook hands, hugged, and finally headed out on the last legs of their journeys home.

It was a great time with great folks. And we'd love to do it again.

Thank you Aldie, Derk, Vicky, and the rest of the BGG.con staff for a wonderful time. Thanks to those who came---we couldn't have made it without you. And see you all next year! © 2006 Ava Jarvis

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Comments:

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"Free wireless in every room at the Adam’s Mark guaranteed that many convention goers,” There was?!!  Why the heck did they have those little signs in the room that said $10/day?! GRRRR… Nice report. Posted by Mike Pennisi on Nov 19, 2006 at 08:32 AM | #

Thanks, Mike! $10 a day?  Well, even if that was truly charged, it’s still better than $15 an hour with major connection issues in the Westin (and yes, you get charged if you connect once and don’t get through to anything and log off after a minute… and charged again if you connect over an hour later and still don’t get to anything...).  I’ll correct the article as appropriate at some point later, but it will still leave a very strong leaning in the Adam’s Mark’s favor. There was wireless streaming down everywhere in the Adam’s Mark, and connection was far better there than in the Westin rooms, even in the hallways (the huge, huge hallways...). Posted by Ava Jarvis on Nov 19, 2006 at 01:46 PM | #

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