For my own brief GenCon review:
Pro:
1) Food trucks! I can't figure out why no one else thought to introduce them to geeks on this scale, before. Fairly cheap food, fairly tasty food, and nice and close to the convention? Sign me up.
2) Playing geek-Tetris to fit everyone into our room. Due to some last-minute guys going "Hey, my plans fell through, got room?" we had six dudes in my hotel room this year. Everyone got along well, though, we hung out and had a few meals and chats together, etc, etc, and it turned out to be, overall, a positive experience and an excuse to meet some new folks to hang out with.
3) GenCon coincidences. I ran into an old professor of mine purely by chance, helped him get back into BattleTech after years without playing it (including hooking him up with my old Northern Kentucky gaming group), and chatted academia with him for a while. It was a very pleasant surprise, and I even got to work in a "now the student has become the master" joke when he was asking for GenCon advice since it was his first year. We ran into a pair of L5R developers when a buddy and I were fumbling through starter decks and the rulebook in our hotel lobby, and then we took turns geeking out at each other (OMG, you work on this game?! vs. OMG, you work on that game?!). I sat down at a table just to get off my feet, struck up a conversation with a pair of guys who came over and asked if seats were taken, and it turns out they play HeroClix with one of my local gamers ("Yeah, we know Dave!"). And, last but not least, I was in a conversation that was overheard during my lunch at the airport, and right before I boarded my flight home, someone approached me to sign their book. Coincidences, coincidences, coincidences. I love 'em. They remind us how small the world is, and how many cool geeks are out there.
4) Pick-up games are where it's at, cool cat. I love ticketed stuff, too, mind you, but there's just something awesome about a half dozen gamers just not having anything else to do for a bit, and sitting down with some books, some dice, some cards, or some minis, and having a good time.
5) The longer I go to GenCon, the more GenCon Buddies I get. I've got too many to rattle off all of 'em now, but suffice it to say it's always a pleasure. Even though I only see y'all once a year, Indy wouldn't be the same without you. Fun games and good food and good times don't happen in a vaccuum, no matter how good the books are, how pretty the artwork on the cards, or how lucky the dice. It's
the people that make GenCon magical every year.
Con:
1) Sweet giggidy-goo, did my feet hurt.
2) My iPhone decided to make the camera function just black out the screen, instead of letting me take pictures, for about a day and a half. That really sucked. I took maybe ten photos the whole time, and there was so much more awesome stuff to see and show off. I'm cycling through other peoples' Facebook photos to show stuff to my wife, which just makes me feel cruddy.
3) I hated flying. I hated having such limited luggage space (or worrying about shipping costs), I hated how my itinerary got changed at me on the last minute (sending me from Dallas to Denver to Indy, which is backwards and silly and saddled me with a layover I didn't want), I hated having to leave to make it to the airport on time instead of just drifting out of Indy on my own schedule, etc, etc. I dunno. I guess I got spoiled for my first several GenCons when I lived just an hour or two away, and had my car right there to lock extra stuff up in. As it was, I was
really stingy in the vendor's hall, and hardly bought anything. Feeling like I had no space to bring stuff home really curtailed my shopping, and I never really thought about how much of the GenCon fun was that vendor's hall, before.
4) By the end of the weekend, I had the Con Crud something fierce. Blech. My voice doesn't need that kind of "help," thanks.