According to the Game Manufacturer’s Association (GAMA to its friends), which surely ought to know, attendance at the GAMA Trade Show was down 20% from last year. It seemed lower than that — perhaps 150 or fewer store accounts. Admittedly, they were the Pareto-optimal stores; any publisher here was talking to the best-run (only a good store will go to GTS without a free HeroClix Galactus as bait) and best-capitalized (only a store with a deep cash reserve can afford to send buyer staff to Las Vegas for three days) of their potential customers. Even in its 20% (or 30%) lower configuration, this may have been a gathering of 80% (or 90%) of hobby-chain sales.
Sadly, they had many fewer publishers in Vegas to sell them things — publisher attendance was more drastically down than usual. Fantasy Flight Games, Paizo Publishing, AEG, and Avalanche Press were only four of the big names missing from the show floor; White Wolf appeared only in the guise of its distributor, Wizards of the Coast brought its Book Expo cottage rather than its normal imperial palace, and Games Workshop had, if recollection serves me, a single banner and a card table. Your humble correspondent was the only representative of IPR at the show, which led to any number of amusing misapprehensions from retailers.
Was it merely the effect of the Current Economic Unpleasantness (Global Edition) or a new round of the Recurrent Economic Unpleasantness (Hobby Games Edition)? Hard to say — there were some new publishers there in fine fettle, such as boardgame supernova Bucephalus Games (23 games in 11 months!) and Bastion Studio, which had the first bubblings of what may well be the New Heat, namely Exillis, a skirmish miniatures game played with neat winged monster minis, an elegant map board — and an iPhone. Yes, the iPhone becomes your ruler, your rule-book, your dice, and your minis inventory all in one. While this specific game — fantasy monsters battling it out in medieval Europe — may not be the Next Big Thing, something very much like it very much will be. And only 150 retailers, at most, got to see it.
Your humble correspondent will be reporting next from medieval Europe — specifically from the Salon du Jeu de Société, aka GenCon France — next weekend. And then, from the Dark Ages known as the State of the Gaming Industry.
Tags: con report, exillis, gts
The Exillis does look very interesting! If Wizards had any brains, they’d be taking a hard look at Bastion right now. Thanks for the report!