Overheard at GenCon...

His bike was too speedy for me. We also saw Darth Vader. Apparently the chow's pretty good in the Death Star cafeteria these days, 'cause I don't know if the Sith lord could pass the Imperial Forces PT test anymore.

So, we're walking toward the exhibit floor at GenCon, which started out as a convention for tabletop wargames* back in the day before morphing into the general station of the cross on the nerd party circuit it's become. Threading our way through swarming gamers and cosplayers...

Shootin' Buddy: "So, where are the games with the maps with hex grids and the cardboard counters with numbers on them?"

Me: "In the 1980s."

First card games and then computer games put paid to the classic games of SPI and Avalon Hill from the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Although, I do find it interesting that a couple of publishers are doing revivals of the old intellectual property; there are reboots of Panzer Leader and other classics out there, and Advanced Squad Leader has been in constant publication by Curt Schilling-backed** MMP since Avalon Hill went moribund and got bought by Hasbro. As the nerds of Gen X reach our peak earning years and start having midlife crises, I predict a revival of the old style of games: Nostalgia runs on 20-to-30 year cycles, after all.

I will also note that crowds don't come much more peaceable: They were bandying about attendance figures of around 50,000 souls, and we didn't see a single uniformed cop anywhere in the convention center. I'm sure there were a couple, but we never saw 'em.


*If anything, map-'n'-counter wargames are even farther outside mainstream pop culture than pen-'n'-paper role-playing games. They never did a Saturday morning cartoon based on Wooden Ships & Iron Men or Drang Nach Osten!, after all.

**Yes, that Curt Schilling, who is apparently a big ol' fellow nerd.
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