This week brought the sad, but largely inevitable news that the 2020 Internationale Spieltage in Essen was “postponed” to 2021.  This has been a bad year for boardgame conventions.  In the last couple of days, Gen Con (Indianapolis at the end of July) has also fallen to Covid-19 and it is now surely only matter of time before Origins (Columbus, Ohio), which was postponed from June to October, follows.  However, as many game-groups are moving online, so now are the conventions.

– Image from ukgamesexpo.co.uk

UK Games Expo was one of the first to make the announcement of their “Virtually Expo” to be held in August.  We now also have “SPIEL.digital” “Origins Online“, “BGG.CONline” and “Gen Con Online“. It is still not entirely clear how these will run, though Virtually Expo, will be through a mixture of online platforms over a specific set of dates, and BGG.CONline starts tomorrow, so we will soon have a better idea.

– Image from facebook.com

Online conventions are clearly no real replacement for the face-to-face interactions at the large game fairs, but could allow the publishers to access a wider audience as well as being better for the environment.  As such, it will be interesting to see whether online conventions continue beyond 2020 and whether the seething mass of humanity that descends on the Messe Essen every October will be a thing of the past.

– Image by boardGOATS