Gen Con

• 1. Introduction

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  Gen Con drew nearly 70,000 unique attendees in 2019. That made it the largest tabletop game convention in North America, measured both by attendance and by its number of events. Board games, card games, and miniatures wargames fill its schedule alongside role-playing games, live action role-playing games, collectible card games, strategy games, and computer games. Attendees spend their days moving between tournaments and interactive sessions across all of them.

  It began in the late 1960s as the Lake Geneva Wargames Convention, founded by Gary Gygax and first held in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Gygax would go on to co-create Dungeons & Dragons, the role-playing game whose fingerprints still cover much of Gen Con's programming today.

  How did a gathering that fit inside one rented hall grow into a convention that fills a downtown center for four days each summer? Why did it leave the state where it began? And how did a lawsuit from Lucasfilm almost end it? It starts with a wargaming club that could not agree on where to meet.

• 2. Origins in Lake Geneva

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  The International Federation of Wargaming, founded in 1967, spent its first year hosting a handful of small regional conventions. That August, the group held its first annual club convention in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

  Chicago-area members of the federation could not make the trip to Pennsylvania, so a smaller group gathered instead at Gary Gygax's Lake Geneva, Wisconsin home. That informal meetup later earned the nickname Gen Con 0.

  In 1968, Gygax rented the Horticultural Hall in Lake Geneva to host a follow-up IFW convention, the Lake Geneva Wargames Convention. The IFW, which Gygax had co-founded, covered $35 of the hall's $50 rental fee, and almost 100 people turned up.

  At the second Gen Con, held in August 1969, Gygax met two gamers named Rob Kuntz and Dave Arneson. Board games and miniature wargames dominated the schedule at these early gatherings, years before role-playing took over.

  Gen Con's name plays on Geneva Convention, a nod to its Lake Geneva setting. It also echoes the real Geneva Conventions, the wartime treaties many early games were built around. Starting in 1971, the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association joined on as a cosponsor.

  Within a few years, informal management would no longer be enough. A company Gygax had helped found would soon take over the job.

• 3. The TSR Years

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  Beginning in 1975, TSR Inc, the original publisher of Dungeons & Dragons, took over running and hosting Gen Con. A year later, in 1976, the convention became TSR's own property, folding it into the company Gary Gygax had co-founded.

  Through the following decade, the event moved between southern Wisconsin venues: an American Legion Hall, George Williams College, and the former Lake Geneva Playboy Resort. In 1978, it settled at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside campus in Kenosha, staying there through 1984.

  For three years, 1976-1978, TSR also ran a Gen Con West in California. From 1978 to 1984, a Gen Con South convened in Jacksonville, Florida. A Gen Con East ran too, in 1981 and 1982, first in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, then in Chester, Pennsylvania.

  By the middle of the 1980s, the Parkside campus could no longer hold Gen Con's crowds, and TSR started looking for a bigger home.

• 4. The MECCA Boom

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  In 1985, Gen Con moved into the Milwaukee Exposition & Convention Center & Arena, known as MECCA, chasing the extra space it needed. Attendance then climbed steadily, from 5,000 that year to a peak of 30,000 in 1995. That made Gen Con the premier event in the role-playing game industry.

  In 1992, Gen Con broke every previous attendance record for an American game convention, drawing more than 18,000 people. That same year, and again in 1988, Gen Con briefly merged with its biggest rival, the Origins Game Fair, running both as a single convention.

  Wizards of the Coast debuted Magic: The Gathering at Gen Con in August 1993. The game sold out its entire supply of 2.5 million cards, a stock meant to last until the end of the year. The collectible card game craze that followed has been credited with the extra attendance behind the 1995 record.

• 5. Changing Hands

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  Wizards of the Coast bought TSR in 1997, absorbing Gen Con along with it. Hasbro then bought Wizards of the Coast itself in 1999, putting the convention under new ownership again.

  Gen Con moved to the Midwest Express Center, now known as the Baird Center, in 1998. In November 1999, Wizards announced that Gen Con would leave Milwaukee entirely after its 2002 convention.

  Peter Adkison, the founder of Wizards of the Coast, bought Gen Con back from Hasbro in May 2002, forming Gen Con LLC to run it. The first show under his ownership still took place in Milwaukee, that August.

  The following year, the convention moved to Indianapolis. Adkison pointed to a lack of hotel space, an awkward convention center layout, and escalators in Milwaukee's center that broke down frequently.

  That relocation would turn Gen Con Indy into a fixture of the city's summer calendar for decades to come.

• 6. Growing in Indianapolis

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  In its new home, the rebranded Gen Con Indy pulled in between 20,000 and 30,000 visitors a year at the Indiana Convention Center. Wizards of the Coast marked Dungeons & Dragons's 30th anniversary there in 2004.

  By 2005, Gen Con Indy generated more direct visitor spending than any other annual convention held in Indianapolis that year. Adkison also revived the convention's California outpost as Gen Con SoCal, this time at the Anaheim Convention Center.

  Gen Con SoCal drew about 6,300 attendees in 2005, smaller than its Midwestern counterpart but still the third-largest consumer hobby game convention in North America. Adkison had said back in 2003 that he did not want Gen Con to turn into a "mini-E3."

  When E3 downsized in mid-2006, Gen Con LLC reversed course, offering more floor space to video game businesses. It said it wanted to "pick up where E3 left off." That same year, Gen Con LLC also ran the official Star Wars Celebration convention.

  The Indiana Convention Center finished a major expansion in 2011, driven largely by Gen Con's growing crowds, at a cost of more than $275 million.

  Indianapolis wasn't the only stage, though. For a few decades, Gen Con had also been building a life overseas.

• 7. Beyond North America

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  Gen Con reached Europe in 1990, when the first annual European Gen Con opened in Camber Sands, Sussex, England. A Spanish edition, Gen Con Barcelona, followed in 1994.

  The European convention ran in England for eight years, moving from Camber Sands in the mid-1990s to Loughborough. Its final UK-based edition took place in 1997, the same weekend Princess Diana died.

  There was no European Gen Con in 1998, but a Belgian edition appeared the next year for a single run. It then reappeared in Paris for three years, between 2006 and 2008. A separate Benelux Gen Con was held in the Netherlands in 1998 and again in 2000.

  When COVID-19 lockdowns forced the cancellation of the in-person 2020 convention, Gen Con ran an online version instead. The in-person show returned the next year. An online edition kept running alongside it until Gen Con ceased its online operations after the 2023 show.

  Back on the show floor in Indianapolis, though, the games themselves and the charities built around them told their own story.

• 8. Games, Charity, and the Law

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  Inside the exhibit hall, most attendees spend at least $100 on games, art, and other goods from the publishers and artists set up there. One game, called Fight in the Skies and later renamed Dawn Patrol, has appeared on the event schedule every year since Gen Con began.

  The D&D Championship Series, once called the D&D Open, has run Dungeons & Dragons tournaments at Gen Con since 1977. The RPGA followed in 1981, eventually running so many "Living" games, where characters persist between events, that they earned their own event category.

  A games library, letting attendees borrow titles to try, opened in 1987. In 1994, the first Magic: The Gathering World Championship was held there, won by Zak Dolan, who beat France's Bertrand Lestrée in the final.

  Cardhalla, first run in 1999, invites attendees to build a city from donated playing cards, then throw coins to knock it down for charity. NASCRAG has run humorous Dungeons & Dragons events at Gen Con since 1980, sometimes donating its ticket fees as well.

  The EN World RPG Awards, known as the ENnies, launched in 2001. They have been hosted at Gen Con Indy since 2002, run by the news website EN World. True Dungeon, a life-sized dungeon crawl built around puzzles, has run at Gen Con since 2003.

  That charitable streak collided with controversy in 2008. The Christian Children's Fund reportedly turned down $17,398 raised at that year's Gen Con Live Game Auction. The donation had been made in honor of Gary Gygax, a frequent CCF donor who died that same year. Game designer Rich Burlew called the refusal "insulting," and Gen Con and the fund both issued statements. Gen Con then redirected its support to a different charity.

  That year also brought legal trouble. On the 10th of January 2008, Lucasfilm sued Gen Con LLC over Celebration IV, a 2006 event, alleging breach of contract. The suit also claimed charity auction proceeds never reached the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Gen Con countersued, arguing Lucasfilm owed it money instead.

  On the 15th of February 2008, Gen Con LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing unforeseen costs tied to externally licensed events. That November, a hostile bid to buy the company's assets was rejected. Gen Con emerged from bankruptcy in January 2009, eleven months after filing, having still run that year's convention on schedule.

  Politics followed the legal fight. On the 23rd of March 2015, Gen Con president Adrian Swartout wrote to Indiana Governor Mike Pence. Swartout urged him not to sign Senate Bill 101, the so-called "Religious Freedom" bill. Critics said the bill would let businesses deny service to LGBT people and others on religious grounds. Swartout noted that Gen Con drew attendees from over 40 countries and all 50 states. The convention, Swartout added, brought over $50 million a year to the local economy. Governor Pence signed Senate Bill 101 into law on the 26th of March 2015 anyway.

  In 2022, Indiana passed a near-total abortion ban. Gen Con president David Hoppe warned that the law would make it harder for the convention to stay committed to the state. Hoppe added that Gen Con's commitment to Indianapolis ran only through 2026, leaving what came after an open question.