August 9, 2016: Surviving Gen Con's "Upside Down"

For many, Gen Con is four spectacular days of gaming wrapped around an untold number of chances to discover the latest games. Our booth alone offered up four new games -- Simon's Cat: The Card Game, Bill & Ted's Excellent Boardgame, I Hate Zombies, and Moop's Monster Mashup -- and when you include all of the new releases by other publishers at the convention, you find an overwhelming number of new games.

Awesome stuff, yes, but there's also a secret Gen Con that many of you may not know exists. An "Upside Down" Gen Con, if you will, where those of us working on games meet to plan, share information, and create new deals. Surviving this secret Gen Con requires careful planning, a willingness to adapt and strike when opportunity hides in the shadows, and more luck than any of us should ever rely on. At this year's Gen Con, our team survived and thrived, meeting distributors, retailers, publishing partners, and press, sitting in on almost 100 different meetings across a blur of days. Great work, team! Thanks for your dedication, and thank you for sacrificing sleep and comfort to make our 2017 even better.

(And if "Upside Down" means nothing to you, then I have one suggestion: Watch Stranger Things. Now. Today. Seriously. It's a fabulous show and more fun than I expected.)

-- Phil Reed