Spiel ("Play" in German) is a four-day board game convention held in the city of Essen, Germany every year. The largest of its kind, over 1,200 board games from vendors from 50 countries were displayed in 6 convention halls. About 200,000 people were expected to attend this year- and I was one of them.
My friend and I decided to see the convention on Saturday, which I suspect is the busiest of the fair. Doors opened at 10am, but to be safe, we arrived at 8:30. It guaranteed us a nice parking spot (the lots near the convention fill by 9am, requiring people to park farther away and bus in). We paid a reasonable parking fee (6€), walked a quarter mile to the business district for a breakfast pastry, and enjoyed the morning. We walked about at 9:15am and entered the waiting hall.
Tickets for Essen are also reasonable, in my opinion- 15€ for a day isn't bad. And you can bring backpacks in, so I brought a mostly-empty one with some snacks. You can see, the crowd was large- and this was only one entrance!
Doors opened prompty at 10am- we are in Germany, remember, and off we went.
Conventions have a standard layout: hundreds of booths, spread out across different halls, feature vendors offering their wares. Many were publishers of games, offering (of course) only their games, with a demo area. There were also many board game stores who had booths and sold games of all varieties, and of course other stories like dice stores, miniatures stores, etc.
What do you do at a gaming convention? You can:
- play games
- watch games played
- talk with employees of game stores (or, in some cases, game designers)
- buy games
- buy accessories for games (like components, card protectors, game pieces, dice, even furniture like gaming tables)
- stroll around and enjoy people watching
I knew I wouldn't play any games- no time to do that and see the entire convention in one day. I watched some games played, but very briefly; I was here to walk around, look for interesting new games or great deals on old ones. I wasn't disappointed.
Of course, there are always booths with non-gaming items that might appeal to gamers. Things like artwork, comic books, toys, etc. And the games themselves varied quite a bit- board games, card games, miniatures, RPGs, kids' games: it could be found at Essen.
With something of this size, it's good to have a plan. Before the convention, I used tabletoptogether.com to look through all 1200+ games to be found at Essen and denoted which ones I liked. The website then produced a map showing which booths at Essen would have those games (neat!). When I got to the convention, I was given a convention guide, also with maps, and used that to navigate through each hall.
Where possible, we snaked through systematically to at least put eyes on each booth. In practice, we meandered at times and may have missed some things. No matter; the place was huge. I mean, huge.
Now, we're in Europe, so it's not shocking that beer was there- find it in the picture below. Amazing.
Celebrities were there, too. Well, gaming celebrities. I met Tom Vasel!!
We did three halls in two hours, then caught a bite in the Galeria (an area between halls with some food vendors). The food was good and reasonably priced.
We then meandered through the crowds- which got a LOT worse as we approached Halls 1 and 2 (we started at 6 and worked our way down). I don't know if it was the vendors (the bigger/better-known ones were in Halls 1 and 2) or the time (after lunch). But it was very tight in places. Note that some games had huge variants for fun/display purposes. And one company even had a business lounge.
Ultimately, we did all six halls in about six hours (which includes a break for lunch and circling back to booths of interest). At that point, I was gassed; it was time to go.
Here are some observations about the experience:
- There were many more reasonably-priced games than I expected. I assumed we'd pay full price for the games at the publishers' booths- this was largely true- but the game stores there (some of them, anyway) had some really good prices. And those prices got better as the convention went on in some cases, as people looked to move their merchandise.
- I don't know how anyone can do all four days of the convention. One was exhausting.
- I heard there would be board game component stores there (selling components to make your own games). This was true, but it was very limited- and mildly disappointing. I did see a 100-sided die, though- that was cool. And big. On the plus side, there were some game-producing stores there (as in "you design a game and we'll make the components for you).
- I didn't end up buying any of the games I had tabbed on tabletoptogether.com. Next year, I probably won't bother doing that (for more than a few games, anyway), and just walk around to soak it in.
- This event is mostly suitable for kids, if they have impressive attention spans and aren't prone to run off. I may take mine next year.
- Bringing your own snacks is a good idea- saves time and money.
- The big vendors (like Hasbro, Fantasy Flight, etc.) had walled-off store booths, presumably to protect their product. This created super-long lines for those areas; I wanted to browse but avoided them, not wanting to spend 20+ minutes in line waiting to get in.
- I kept myself in check and escaped with "only" 7 games, 4 of which were free or vastly discounted.
- My backpack wasn't big enough to hold most board games; it was handy for the sweatshirt (once I got hot) and food, but not much else. Bring a bag (they run out early in the booths) or be prepared to make frequent car runs.
Thanks, Spiel! Until next year.
