UKGE

UK Games Expo.  NEC, Birmingham.

This is the BIG "table top" gaming weekend event of the year.  I go along occasionally as it's somewhere between one hoooge festival of all things non-computer-game-wise, and a hoooge sweetie shop full of shiny things I should not be buying (or so my Kallax tells me).

My gaming preference is for board games so I was clearly looking around at what's new and innovative (not much this year), but one of the things I enjoy about Expo is seeing all the other forms of 'offline' gaming - role-playing-games, collectable card games, miniatures games and cosplay (dressing up to play as characters for fun) that I don't see much off the rest of the year.

It's also about meeting people that I know through online  connections but may have never met (bit like a blipmeet, really).

This event is one that I reference when talking to people about modern boardgames; especially people who still assume Monopoly + Christmas + 7-year-olds, hours, and tears.  It began in 2007 in a hotel and had about 900 people attending over the weekend.

This year's figures have just been released and it's 32,000 attendees, 52,000 if you count the return trips on another day. Such is the growth in non-computer adult game playing.

Yes, OK, that's well under an average attendance for watching people kick a bladder around for a couple of hours so there's a bit of a way to go, but no, it's definitely not just Monopoly, Cluedo, and 'that one with the twirly thing' any more.