This past weekend saw the debut of the Arizona Game Fair at the Mesa Convention Convention Center. The table top convention took held court in the “A” building of the convention center, the smaller building of that is not connected to the main building. The main room held several vendors and plenty of tables of table top gaming.

The really cool aspect of Arizona Game Fair is that if you didn’t find a game you wanted to join, you could start your own thanks to the convention library. The library had hundreds of games that you could check out and start your own gaming session that attendees could join. Just down from the main room was the “RPG Room” where the in depth gaming takes place.

A few observations from/about the convention:

  • The raffle aspect where badges came with raffle tickets was a pretty neat idea. You would periodically check a large board near the entrance where winning raffle tickets are displayed. It’s a good incentive for conventions looking to ramp up presale badge numbers.
  • Attendance looked solid but I wonder what kind of cost the building was compared to using a comparable ballroom at a hotel where the main room could have housed a few more vendors.
  • Saw more then a few comments online during the con that didn’t know the convention was even happening, a problem all first year conventions run into I’m sure. Hopefully if the convention returns the word will spread as Arizona has a large table top gamer population.

Yes, this is a short article on the convention and I apologize for that but I wanted to get a few words out there and let it be known that if you’re into gaming like this, you should keep an eye out for a year two announcement because it was a good time for a first year con. For a few photos, make sure to check out the tweets from the event, starting with this one.

 

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