Essen 2024 was my first time going to Germany and also to the Essen game fair. I have been a boardgamer for 20 years. Essen is the biggest boardgame event in the world. Everyone in the hobby knows about it. For many years it wasn’t something I thought I’d go for. It’s far and expensive. But the day came when I thought I should go at least once in my life. It wasn’t about just playing and buying games. It was also about being part of a congregation of tens of thousands boardgamers from around the world coming together to celebrate this hobby of ours.
Having now returned to Malaysia and also having had some time to gather my thoughts, here are those gathered thoughts in a not very organised manner.
I now have to admit to myself I’m not a heavy eurogamer anymore. That has been my identity for many years. I had noticed the change in my gaming tastes, but I had not been able to let go of this identity. During Essen 2024 there were many more simple care games which attracted me than complex strategy games. I realise I now tend to see most heavy eurogames as yet another resource conversion exercise. There are simply more and more convoluted ways to score points. I admit sometimes convoluted is fun. It's just that now, to me, convoluted is mostly just convoluted. Maybe I've come to the grumpy-old-man point in life where you just don't have patience to go around in circles. I want games that get straight to the point, that have something new and clever to offer, without wrapping multiple layers of busy work around them. I'm now a Japanese minimalistic game fan.
Good art is important. I've seen so many games with excellent art at the fair. If your art is drab or does not look professional, people will ignore your game. Generally I think this is a good thing. As an industry we are improving. The minimum expectation is increasing.
So many themes are overdone. But then, maybe I'm just being a Karen. With more than 1500 new games being released at Essen 2024, of course there are many games which clash in themes. There were two tea games. There were many Japanese themed games, not necessarily from Japan. Chinese themed games. Tons of fantasy themed games. Space games. Civilisation games. Cat games. Even a cat poop game. The nature theme is popular. Horror. Rock bands. Cities, traveling and locations around the world.
One theme I found interesting was the game 1984, based on George Orwell's book of the same name. Another one was Age of Comics, which was first released last year.
Essen is about celebrity spotting. The first celebrity I spotted during the fair was Bruno Faidutti. I was having a chat with a publisher in their office, and Bruno popped his head in to say hi to the publisher. It was in French so I didn't understand a word. In my head I was going OMG that's Bruno Faidutti I've been following his blog and playing his games for 20 years should I go and shake his hand and take a photo before he runs off? Eventually I had to resist the urge since I was halfway through a discussion. During the fair I spotted Friedemann Friese, Martin Wallace, Eric Martin and Zev Shlasinger. I saw Matt Leacock standing quietly in a corner when someone approached him and spoke for a while. I thought they were talking business, and only after some time I realised the guy who approached him was a fan too. He spoke for quite long and I was thinking c'mon don't take up so much of Matt's time. Matt looked like he wanted to escape but was too polite to do so. When the other guy finally left, I quickly went up to Matt to shake his hand and chat a little. I promise, just a little. I thanked him for making many great games which my family and I have enjoyed.
I went for a signing session of Reiner Knizia. It was on Saturday 4pm, and I only found out about it on Friday. I arrived around 3:35pm, and there was already a queue. I'm glad I was a little early, because that queue grew much much longer afterwards. My turn only came around 4:35pm. It was great to meet a designer I greatly admire who has made so many games I've played.
For a Malaysian Chinese, going to Essen is like going to Hong Kong. You get so excited when you spot Hong Kong movie and TV stars on the streets.
Essen is four days of speed dating / speed pitching. Those four days were intense. I wanted to look at every booth at the fair. Every interaction with a booth is a mini pitching session by the booth to me as a visitor. I look at the booth to assess what it sells. If it's not something I'm interested in, I can make the decision to skip. This is probably a 2 second decision. If they sell something I might be interested in, I come closer to take a better look. Is the art attractive enough? Does the production look professional or amateurish? Does it look like just-another-game-I've-seen-before or does it promise to be something a little different? Many questions and evaluations already go through my mind before I even decide whether to ask the staff to explain to me what the game is like. So that's the next step in the process. I don't even ask to play the game. I want an overview first. And that's assuming there's someone available whom I can ask. Sometimes the booth staff are too busy teaching others to play. Sometimes I pick up the rulebook or the game box and read it myself to find out more about the game. Having someone give an overview of the game is usually quicker.
At the fair, most play tables were occupied most of the time. I didn't often get to choose what I played. It depended a lot on what was available. I could only choose whether to sit in those free seats I was lucky enough to encounter. Sometimes I passed because the game didn't seem interesting. More often I would settle on watching others play a game that looked interesting, or I'd skim the rulebook or the back of the box, or I'd ask for an overview. If it was a game I was interested to try, but there were no available seats, I didn't wait for a table to be freed up or sign myself up on the play schedule (some games had those). Too time-consuming. I found that among the games I had played, only a handful ended up being purchases. Most of the time it was for me to understand how the game worked, and I could decide it wasn't really for me. I didn't play all games to completion. In many cases I just played a round or two to understand how it worked. Only some shorter games were played to completion.
Imagine this non-stop speed dating process, for four days. Thousands of games getting to different stages of catching (or not catching) your attention. Most games stop at the first few stages. Some make you want to spend a bit more time to learn more. Some make you want to sit down and play a round, or a full game. It's a mentally demanding exercise. Imagine you are an HR manager looking through 1500 CV's and interviewing hundreds of candidates over four days. That's a lot of work!
After the event, I read other people's reports on the fair, and I noticed that the games which they wrote about and liked were not even registered in my mind. I might have completed missed those games, or I did see them, but my brain auto-filter had already failed them in the initial scanning stage. I probably missed many good games this way. But that's okay. You can't play every single good game in the world. Just be happy you have good games to play and good friends to play them with.
Language tags is a good idea. At many booths the staff wore a tag indicating the languages they spoke. When I imagined myself going to Essen before I had decided to do so, I imagined myself wearing a small placard saying I spoke English, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese and Malay. I never got around to doing it, but hey, now I know this is a good idea. Just a simple and small tag was sufficient. No need for a placard which would look awkward. I didn't see any visitor wear any language tag. Just staff. One thing that surprised me a little was how much English was used at the fair. Basically all the people I spoke to at booths spoke English. Some might be less fluent, but they managed to explain how the games worked. So Essen is pretty international.
I remember one particular guy showcasing a fantasy battle game related to King Arthur and Mordred. I think he was American, based on his accent. He was super enthusiastic when explaining the story and the game. So energetic. He reminded me of roleplaying game players. They really know how to create drama and they seriously get into character. Now I realise I never took any photo of the game. It wasn't a game I was interested in. I don't even remember the name of the game. But I remember the guy's enthusiasm. If I ever recruit anyone for a booth, I'd want someone like this. And I should learn to introduce my own games to others like this.
My wife said the international edition of my game Dancing Queen will probably be out by Essen 2025, and asked whether I would want to go again. It would be a meaningful trip because it will be the first time my game is released internationally. I did this Essen 2024 trip purely as a gamer, and not a game designer or publisher. I was a consumer spending money, not a business trying to be profitable or trying to create business value (e.g. marketing). I think as an indie publisher in Malaysia, it's difficult to make a booth at Essen profitable. The cost is high, and I'd need to sell many games and gain many benefits for such an expenditure to be justifiable. If I get a lot of good exposure which in the long run leads to more sales, that's good. If I get connected to other publishers or retailers and work out business deals to license or sell games to more countries, that's good. It's not easy to work out the numbers. Maybe Malaysian game designers and publishers need to pool resources together, like how Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and Thai publishers have done and are doing, to make trips to Essen more efficient, cost-effective and productive. Or I can be just happy going again as a consumer.
I probably won't be making Essen trips an annual thing. It's expensive. Before I went, I had been thinking this might be just a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Now that I've experienced it and enjoyed it, well, maybe I'll go again some time. And here's my humble loot shot.
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