Observations at GenCon: This is going to be, in some ways, a continuation of the love letter to GenCon that I started in my first post. I loved GenCon, warts and all. I spent most of the weekend with a half-giddy grin on my face… or at least feeling like I should have one. It was awesome to play face-to-face again, it was awesome to just be immersed in geekdom. There are more than a few people who have made some very solid points about the whole geek monoculture myth, but for all that these people are right, I think they’re wrong, too. I may not really have a lot in common with that D&D gamer, or that Magic: the Gathering enthusiast, but there was this overwhelming sensation, all weekend, that these were my people, and at no point did that sensation dwindle or flicker. Let me talk about some specifically memorably aspects.
Wandering the halls: At no point during this whole weekend was I ever really wandering the halls just to wander. In previous years that I’ve attended, I’ve spent at least a little time simply wandering. This year, I was pretty much always on my way somewhere, whether it be to the dealer’s hall, a seminar, to go get something to eat, or to hit up Games on Demand to get some gaming in. I wasn’t always in a hurry, but I pretty much always had a destination. Nonetheless, wandering the halls, wandering the dealer’s floor, was an experience unto itself.
Obviously, there was the costumes. A great part of the fun of going to GenCon is checking out all of the costumes, and this year was no exception. There were more than a few mediocre ones, and more than a few truly impressive ones. Probably more than half I couldn’t have placed the origin of if you’d held a gun to my head. The sheer variety is pretty awesome. But what really got me about the costumes was, honestly, the partial ones, or the ones I suspected weren’t anything particularly geeky. I saw lots and lots of people in normal clothes, but with a corset, or a kilt, or cat ears, or with a little dragon on their shoulder, or a cloak, or… any number of singular accoutrements. They obviously weren’t wearing a costume. They just decided to wear this thing. Why? Because why the fuck not? Whatever it is, it’s not the strangest thing you’ll see wandering the halls. Because they just felt like it, and here, in this place and time, they felt free enough from judgment and ridicule to do so. That’s… pretty amazing to me. Oh, sure. There were people making fun of the corsets and kilts and whatever else, but fuck those guys. Why bother with the minority snickering behind their hands when the majority of people are smiling because they get the reference, or maybe just because they understand why you’re doing it.
Secondly, it was the massive assortment of people there. Obviously there were those that, outwardly at least, embodied the gamer stereotypes. But what was telling to me was all the people who didn’t. Families, husbands and wives with their kids, women who weren’t dragged their by their geek boyfriend, and older folks. The older folks in particular made me grin, because I figured one of two possible options was most likely… First, that these people had been gaming about as long as I’d been alive, or second that they were more recent converts to the hobby. Both of these possibilities make me very happy. No matter what shit you went through in high school when people saw your funky dice or deck of cards with fantasy monsters on it, gaming isn’t, and hasn’t ever really been, a childish hobby. These are people with grandchildren and successful careers, and they’re geeky enough to take a long weekend to go to GenCon. Combined with the people in business casual, with designer luggage, it’s joyous, celebratory evidence that gaming isn’t this basement niche hobby that mainstream society likes to think it is.
A sense of belonging: As mentioned above, there was this strong, buoyant sense of being among my people. I’d walk down the hallway, and I’d read geeky t-shirts with math jokes, Firefly/Buffy/Gaming/Whatevah references. I’d hear snippets of “No shit, there I was…” stories, or discussions about the merits of this edition against that edition. Then there was the simple fact that anyone wearing that badge… I knew, despite them being a complete and utter stranger, that I had SOMETHING in common with them. It made me smile so many times that I literally remember a lot of this with a sort of rosy cloud of general happiness. It made me bolder than I ever am. I struck up brief conversations with complete strangers. I didn’t try to make these conversations mean anything, and I moved on feeling good that I’d made a connection, however brief and minor, with another person. Even my roommates commented on my outgoing nature when I introduced myself to another Con attendee and a hotel employee and jokingly invited them to get a drink. For those who don’t know me in person, let me be plain: I DON’T DO STUFF LIKE THAT. Not without a strong crowd of outgoing people around me, or more than a smidge of liquid courage, and often not even then. But that sense of knowing that I had something in common with every attendee at GenCon, however tenuous, made me feel free to be this social, outgoing person.
Don’t get me wrong. My native, infuriating insecurity was still there. But it was less in control than normal, and the only time I ever let it dictate my actions at all was in those weird border relationships where I really like a person, but suspect that their feelings toward me are merely polite.
Intensity: The whole experience of GenCon, especially for me, especially this time, is very intense. Gamers are often very intense people anyway, passionate about the things they enjoy and care about. Given that I’d built GenCon up in my mind as my one chance to break my streak of no face-to-face gaming, and a chance to actually have something like a social life outside of my computer, it was especially intense for me. That sort of thing can often have disastrous results, as the reality rarely meets the built up expectations. This time though, it kind of worked out, but it’s left me in kind of a surreal place. The existence of being at GenCon was so… well, hell, intense that it almost feels wrong to not be there. When I was walking in the airport here in Phoenix, I kept expecting to see costumes. I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t going back to my hotel room to meet up with my roommates for dinner. Some of that, I’m certain, is the result of a day and a half with only a few hours of sleep, but not all of it. It just feels like I’m going to wake up, get dressed and try to make it to Games on Demand for the 10:00am slot. Basically, 4 days in Indianapolis has done to me what it took 9 months in Afghanistan to do.
A sense of loss: I don’t know a better way to put it. This observation is mostly centered around the dealer’s hall, and is definitely skewed by the fact that I’ve only been to GenCon 3 times, in 2005, 2008 and this year, 2012. Basically, it feels like… It feels like the character of the dealer’s hall has changed. It feels even more cramped, with only big name publishers having more than a cramped cubicle. It feels like there’s a lot more… miscellaneous junk than there was in previous years. In 2008, I remember wandering the dealer’s hall, and seeing the cluster of indie community booths, plus all of the other small press publishers with no association to the Forge/Story-Games communities. I remember seeing easily a dozen small press games that I’d never heard of, and hearing about the indie community I know using GenCon to make overtures to these folks, and supporting them too. I remember, despite the fact that Games on Demand wasn’t nearly as busy and successful back then as it was this year, a much stronger cycle of interaction between the dealer’s hall and the GoD room. This year, big names that were staples in previous years were gone. No Jared Sorensen, no Luke Crane, Vincent Baker or Ron Edwards. I mean, I get that these guys are doing what works best for them, but I still feel like, for all that there is some visible growth, that GenCon is less than it could be, without them in attendance. For all that I understand that change is the nature of things, it saddens me anyway.
That’s all I’ve really got for this. Stay tuned for my next post, regarding the games that made my GenCon so rockin’.
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