Origins 2007
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
July 2007

Wednesday morning, for what I guess is at least the 20th time, it was time to pack up and head for Origins, the Game Manufacturers Association's annual game convention. It's wargaming's annual pilgrimage to Columbus, Ohio for four solid days of game-playing fun.

Of course, once you start doing this sort of thing for a living, you don't really get to play games any more for fun. At least not at conventions. During the day you sell games and meet with assorted business associates. After hours its dinner and drinks with more business associates. It's a vital part of keeping Avalanche Press running — the opportunity to see our customers face-to-face, to meet with our distributors and foreign partners, and to talk things over with other publishers.

Day One, Thursday, opened with many of our key items missing — the booth backdrop, cash register, and stock of several recent games. But most glaringly, we were without Lys Fulda, our vice president. Lys handles all of our sales and marketing strategy (as well as human resources) and schedules all of our Origins meetings. The past 12 months have been very hard on her, and she didn't need the additional physical stress. But we did have Doug McNair, who is a sales machine, and webmaster Shane Ivey, so we did not go without experience.

Despite the absence of our smiling public face, we had our best convention sales since the 1990s, the days before we had a web store. By Thursday afternoon we had our newest product, Great War at Sea: Zeppelins, and it took flight all weekend, with the best Origins debut we've seen since Great War at Sea: U.S. Navy Plan Orange over a decade ago. Alamein did exceptionally well, thanks to its tried and proven game system and the solid graphic design of Beth Donahue and Susan Robinson. At the other end of the price scale, They Shall Not Pass was as big a hit with convention-goers as it has been through retail stores and the website since its release in February.

We got to meet many returning customers and many new ones. Long-time supporters like Ship Guys Randy York and Robert Line came around — somehow I'm now committed to writing a Daily Content piece combining Second World War at Sea: Bomb Alley and Alamein. Our very first customer, Joe Kwiatkowski, came by — he bought the first Invasion of Italy sold in 1994. Rich Digirolamo and Stephen Chin-Quee stopped by with a reminder that they first met me doing this gig when I was 18. But best of all, Lys' Aunt Ann and Uncle Peter brought us cookies. Home-made, chocolate chip cookies, thick and filled with chips.

After hours, there were dinners at the very fine restaurants that surround the Columbus Convention Center; usually I had these with our distribution partners. And then as the night deepened and the serious business of the game industry was conducted, it was really a pleasure to see old friends again like Chris and Tanith McGlothlin of Green Ronin, Steve Long from Hero Games and Adam Jury, now with the new Catalyst Game Labs. And some new games should be lined up for Avalanche Press, from designers like Rob Markham and Jim Dietz and Lewis Pulsipher. But shorn of the vortex of improbability that is Lys Fulda, there were no weird happenings like last year's Karaoke Massacre.

When you work the show, there aren't that many opportunities to wander around. The game-playing areas seemed full and well-run, especially the Columbus Area Boardgamers' two big rooms. Overall attendance seemed down. The dealer room was definitely missing Wizards of the Coast and WizKids; the arena where people could fight to the death with foam weapons just wasn't the same draw. I picked up some plush diseases for the children.

All told, it was a very successful show. I came back healthy and ready to make more games. And with the promo theme from White Wolf's online game Eve — which by Shane's calculation we heard roughly 38,406 times — now firmly stuck in my head.