Gen Con

From Free net encyclopedia

(Redirected from GenCon)

Gen Con is the largest and most prominent gaming convention in North America. As an indication of its size, consider that Gen Con 2002 brought in about 26,000 attendees; the only other gaming conventions that come close are E³ and Origins.

The name of the convention is derived from "Geneva Convention", as the first Gen Con was held at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin at the home of Gary Gygax. The name also is a play-on-words, as the "Geneva Conventions" are the name of a set of important international treaties. Gen Con is now held in two US locations, Gen Con Indy, in Indianapolis, Indiana and Gen Con SoCal in Anaheim, California. It has also been held in the UK in Loughborough, London, Minehead, and Bognor Regis (although its future is uncertain at best there), and will be held in France in April 2006.

About 100 wargame enthusiasts attended the first Gen Con, a one-day convention at Horticultural Hall in 1968. During the following decade the event grew and was hosted at a variety of southern Wisconsin locations, including an American Legion Hall, George Williams College in Williams Bay, and the former Lake Geneva Playboy Resort. In 1978 the convention moved to the University of Wisconsin Parkside campus in Kenosha, and in 1985 it moved to the Milwaukee Exposition & Convention Center & Arena (commonly known as the MECCA) in Milwaukee. Attendance steadly rose from 5,000 paid admissions in 1985 to a peak of 30,000 in 1994, making Gen Con the premier event in the role-playing game industry. Gen Con moved to the Midwest Express Center (MEC, now the Midwest Airlines Center) in 1998 when the MEC replaced the MECCA.

For most of its history, Gen Con was managed by TSR, Inc., original publisher of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. In 1997, TSR was bought by Wizards of the Coast, which in turn was purchased by Hasbro in 1999. In May 2002, Gen Con was purchased from Hasbro by Peter Adkison, the founder of Wizards of the Coast. The Midwest U.S. convention moved to Indianapolis in 2003.

The Gen Con EN World RPG Awards (the Ennies) are an annual awards ceremony devoted to roleplaying games. They are hosted at Gen Con and are organised and owned by EN World, a D&D/d20 System news website.

In 2003 Gen Con in the United States was split into two different conventions: Gen Con Indy (in Indianapolis, Indiana) and Gen Con SoCal (in Anaheim, California). Gen Con Indy is the larger of the two, pulling in approximately 25,000 attendees per year [1] [2], on par the Gen Con conventions in Milwaukee during the 1990s and early 2000s. Gen Con SoCal is smaller, with approximately 6,300 attendees in 2005 [3].

After two unsuccessful years of running Gen Con Europe in the UK, Adkison decided to scale back and focus his efforts on the US shows. In 2004 licenses were issued to groups who would go about creating the franchises Gen Con Barcelona and Gen Con UK.

In early 2006, Gen Con, LLC announced that it was going to run a new official Gen Con Europe, to be held in Paris, France from April 21-23.

[edit]

Timeline

  • 1967 - Informal get together - Approximately 12 people
  • 1968 - First official year of Gen Con - Lake Geneva Horticultural Hall, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin - Approximately 100 attendees
  • 1969-1976 - Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
  • 1977 - Playboy Resort, Lake Geneva Wisconsin
  • 1978-1985 - University of Wisconsn at Parkside
  • 1985-1997 - MECCA (Milwaukee Exposition & Convention Center & Arena), Milwaukee, Wisconsin
  • 1998-2002 - MEC (Midwest Express Center), Milwaukee, Wisconsin
  • 2003-present - "Gen Con Indy": Indianapolis, Indiana
  • 2003-present - "Gen Con SoCal": Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim, California
  • 2003 - "Gen Con Europe" London, UK
  • 2004-present - "Gen Con UK": (Lisenced Event) Various Locations in UK (2006 Site is unkown, perhaps due to Gen Con Paris announcement)
  • 2004 - "Gen Con Barcelona": (Lisences Event) Palau Sant Jordi, Barcelona, Spain
  • 2006-Present - "Gen Con Paris": Paris, France
[edit]

See also

[edit]

External links

Retrieved from "http://www.netipedia.com/index.php/Gen_Con"