The Gathering of Friends

Well, I picked just about the worst time possible to start a blog. I've been sick, had exams, various bits of bureaucracy to deal with, and a very busy personal life. It became obvious that if I didn't post something soon that this blog would die a slow death. However, I can guarantee you that this won't be unusual. You'll be happy to know that I feel no responsibility to you the reader, and I'll post when I feel like it. Expect three things a week or nothing for six weeks. However, I intend anything topical to be already out of date when I write it, so you'll miss nothing if you wander in at random every two months.

Todays post will demonstrate all of the above. I don't want to write about anything I care about, because I am just cranking this out, and this topic would have been better two weeks ago, so I'm going to write about The Gathering of Friends.

For those of you who don't know, The Gathering of Friends is a board game convention, held in, I believe, Columbus Ohio by Alan Moon. Alan Moon is the designer of the Ticket to Ride series amongst many other games. The Gathering seems to be the most important board game convention in North America. The board game big wigs are more likely to attend it than the other conventions, and a lot of deigners test out prototypes there. However, The Gathering is invitation only. If you don't get an invite you can't come. Alan Moon has strict control of the invite list, and to get on it you either need to know Alan Moon or to be recommended by several other gathering attendees.

This invitation only aspect causes an annual bitch fest about the exclusivity of the event. In part this is because there are always numerous articles and postings about how great The Gathering is, complete with name dropping of the board game glitterati, and of all the great new secret games that can't be talked about. My undertsanding that this year is not as bad as previous years, and in fact there has not been much about it at Board Game Geek. The centre for the discussion has been on Board Game News which in some ways seems to be a web site written by, and for, Gathering attendees. The Gathering attendees are basically the high profile Euro game old schoolers.

I've only seen two justifications offered that I've seen for the invitation only nature of the event are 1) If it got any bigger, they couldn't rent a ball room and would have to rent a giant convention centre, and 2) to keep the Riff Raff out.

The first of these justifications is a silly one, because tickets could be sold on a first come, first served basis. More importantly it requires that there be no intermediate size spaces for conventions. As everyone knows, conventions come in all shapes and sizes, not just really big and really small. That leaves the second justification.

It might seem surprising, but some gathering attendees make no bones about the fact that the exclusivity of the event is to keep out undesirables, and I think we can be assured that that is the real reason.

There is nothing terribly strange about an exclusive convention. Many industry conventions are exclusive. There are technology conventions that are for people in the industry only, and the general public is not allowed in. What makes The Gathering strange is that it is not really an industry convention. As I understand it, the primary thing that people do is play board games and socialize. There is some testing out of upcoming releases and prototypes, but the focus is on gaming and not on business, and you don't have to be involved in the business (even as a vocal internet fan) to attend. So the Gathering is neither fish nor fowl. I think things like The Gathering and the often poor reviewing skills of some of the most prominent reviewers of board games, point to the fact that in North America, the board games industry hasn't really reached a full level of professionalism yet. As a result we often see a weird pointless elitism in the industry. (Of course, some of this can probaly be layed at the door of bullying in junior high of certain key players.)

So should we then denounce The Gathering? My view is no. I can't think of The Gathering of Friends without thinking of the episode of South Park which features the goateed Evil Cartman from the parallel universe. Evil Cartman sings a song which goes; "You guys are my best friends...best friends are we." From what I know of the Gathering it would have a lot of Evil Cartman's in it. I'm sure that not everyone is like that, but I worry that there would be sufficiently few people that wouldn't be, that I would find the whole experience strange, and I would have no one to make fun of it to.

Putting it simply, I'm part of the Riff Raff they want to keep out, and I'm quite glad to be kept out. It sounds fantasticly unfun. I can't imagine a worse gaming experience than playing a game of Memoir 44 Overlord with Tom Vasel or Greg Schlosser as my commander. I also wouldn't enjoy a convention where I could never swear or would have to hear a million conversations about a game being bad because it had player elimination, or another equation of luck with a lack of skill. I'm sure not everyone would be that way, but from the reporting that seems to be the predominant tone. If I play games I want to have fun, and The Gathering doesn't seem that much fun.

The Gathering is probably becoming less relevant anyway. More and more people are coming to the internet about board gaming and tastes are becoming more diverse. The zenith of Euros seems to be behind us. What's happening is that the old board game glitterati have in many cases walled themselves off. As new ideas (new rulers as Ubarose would put it) become more common place, the old guard has found itself behind the times. For the most part their reaction has been defensive, and in most cases they have ignored critics (or at least not publically responded to them).

The most obvious example of this is the AmeriTrash movement. It might seem that the AmeriTrash movement hates the Gathering. Steve Weeks has vocally slammed them in several of his podcasts, and Alan Moon even got to make his enemies list. But I think, as is often the case, Steve Weeks reaction is atypical of the AmeriTrash movement. I think most AmeriTrashers could not care less one way or the other about The Gathering. That's because, like me, they don't want to play those games with those people in that atmosphere. It sounds boring. Instead, I think the most vocal detractors are for the most part amongst the people who really look up to that group. They really want to be there, to meet those people and game in that atmosphere. It's their idea of gaming Nirvana. The Gathering, in the end is I think an own goal. Sure they might exclude the odd undesirable, but in turn for doing that they alienate their own fan base. They tell the bulk of their fans and followers you are not worthy to come.

If he was being sensible Alan Moon would open the convention, but I don't care if he does.

Well, that was longer than I intended. See you in six weeks or two days.