What happened to gaming while I was gone?!!?
After spending 3 days or so at Gencon, I started to see some disturbing trends.
1) Where the hell did all of these collectible mini games come from? I saw what seemed like HUNDREDS of them. I remember when Heroclix came out and was never really impressed with it…..but based on the volume of these games maybe my judgement was a little quick. I got to a couple demos and I really enjoyed Monster Apocalypse by Privateer Games so maybe there is hope for me after all.
2) Collectible Trading card games seem to have died down a bit. In general, I saw MTG, Yu-Gi-Oh and that was about it. I was a massive CTG player back in High School when there were new ones coming out every couple days. The only one that I saw that seemed impressive was “The Spoils”. (Great idea selling starter kits for $5 by-the-way). I have not had a chance to play with it yet but once I do, I will post a full-review.
3) Cthulhu is everywhere. H.P. Lovecraft was always big in the gamins scene but by the end of Gencon, I was sick of seeing all of the Cthulhu based games. The plush toys, the various books and games with Cthulhu shoe-horned in. But hope is not lost, I got to check out Cthulhu Tech published by Catalyst which seemed like an interesting blend of Horror and futuristic game play.
4) Board games……wow…..I do not know where to start. I was blown away by how many different games there was. But I was also blown away by how many were similar. (How many train or travel games do we need?) I actually heard a vendor being asked what the difference was between a couple different games and they stated that they have “no idea…..they are all pretty similar”. There was one game that I checked out that I thought was VERY cool……..War on Terror the board game. I got to watch a bit of a demo and was very impressed. I meant to pick up a copy before I left but ran out of cash before I made it back 
Overall, I was completely impressed with the show. I was actually surprised that there were not millions of vampire related games being that is extremely popular in the mainstream media right now. I guess I have something to look forward to next year. 
