GenCon in Indianapolis is going on as I write this post. I’m not sitting in the middle of a crowded hall full of gamers where I can’t hear myself think for all the buzzing about board games going on in my head. In fact, I’m not there at all.
I haven’t been there since probably 2016, maybe earlier. We went for a day in 2012, then for the weekend in 2014 and 2015 and maybe 2016. I have trouble recalling exactly which years we were there, but we’ve been, and we had a blast.
I remember the year I met Wil Wheaton on the floor. It still wasn’t as cool as when I ran into both Tom Vasel and Zee Garcia from the Dice Tower. They were gracious and kind, as you might expect. But I don’t go to stargaze. I go to hang out with my friends and try/buy games. Cruising through the vendor hall demo tables is how I ended up acquiring Nuns on the Run, as I said in my last chunk of games.
That said, I probably won’t be going back to GenCon anytime soon. Indiana decided they wanted to strip women of their freedoms along with the rest of the Republican scum that’s doing the same across the country. I’m not shy about this, and if you agree with what they’re doing, you can fuck right off all the way and keep fucking off into the sunset forever, keep going past the horizon and into the sun itself.
So yeah, I do love going to conventions every few years, and GenCon is the closest con to home. Since Covid, we have’t been going, and with infection rates rising again and the CDC doing nothing about it but giving out wrong information because they care more about money than health all of a sudden, we won’t be going to any conventions in the near future.
Hopefully everyone goes home con crud free and has a good time, and maybe next year more vendors and gamers will have the time and the spine to boycott this particular convention and any other that take place in states with archaic and horribly regressive policies that strip women and minorities of their rights. Send a message with your money, the only language these greedy monsters understand.
BGG Con in Texas, I’m looking at you…
~Justin
Justin Plays Board Games 