GenCon 2026 Reflections

Hey everyone!

It’s been a little while. GenCon 2026 just wrapped up and I thought it would be fun to write out my thoughts on the convention. So if you want to hear what I thought, here’s a stream of consciousness writeup!

We have landed on a style of booth setup that has served us well for years. It invites people to get in out of the crowded aisles. Short descriptions help people decide if they want to pick up and flip through the table copy of a game. And they can grab their own copy right above before checking out. It works!

It will change a little bit in future cons as I’m hoping to incorporate things like stickers, pamphlets, and other things to fill out the space.

I…really messed up with my packing. I did an inventory before I left for Korea in June. When I came back, I realized I was off by quite a bit on some of my most popular games, and there wasn’t enough time for reprints to arrive for the con.

That meant that RUNE, REAP, and Dragon Slayers all sold out on Saturday morning. A good problem to have in that I had fewer things to bring back. But a really bad problem to not have my big sellers in the booth for 1.5 days. I’ll plan better next time!

Solos reigned this year. RUNE and REAP sold out, and two of my older solo journaling games (Time to Kill and Rigged) both sold really well. TTK and Rigged did well on their own, and got a bit of boost once they became the only options.

There was one other option, and it was a huge seller at the booth: WYRD.

WYRD is designed by Cody Barr of Sasquatch Games. It uses the RUNE system, and I am the print publisher for the game on Cody’s behalf. It has been selling really well on my store and did great at GenCon! People want solos, and they love roguelikes, so it was flying off the shelves.

I actually thought I overpacked copies of WYRD, and I only had a few copies left at the end of the day Sunday. So Past Spencer got that one right at least!

This year we tried out two new strategies for the booth.

The first was implementing a “come back coupon.” Brian Flaherty and Elliot Davis talked about doing this in a video and we were inspired! Anyone that said “I’ll think about it and might come back” would get a coupon that gave them a 10% discount if they actually did come back.

And it worked! People would see the coupon with our booth number as a reminder, see the discount, and come back the next day to cash in.

The second thing we did is a game giveaway. We had a sign for “Free LOOT” in the booth. We gave away copies of LOOT (a game I have an unreasonable number of excess copies of) to anyone that purchased $50 worth of games. That usually meant buy 2, get 1 free. Plenty of people plopped down $35-45 of games at checkout, and then went and picked up one more thing to get LOOT. Smaller games like Time to Kill and Rigged benefited from this a lot!

Cons are always great because I get to see friends and fans. There is no better high than someone coming to your booth telling you that they played your game and had a great time. Seeing the same faces year after year, their return signaling to me that I must be doing something right.

And of course there is the time with designer friends. We all “see” each other mostly in Bluesky posts and discord servers, but to actually see them in real life is amazing.

I truly think that the time I get to spend with someone like that, even if it’s only 30 minutes, once a year, is a more powerful connection with them than a years worth of BS posts and discord DMs.

Giving hugs, sharing food and drinks, it doesn’t get better. And we didn’t even really play games! I honestly love that too.

I went into this con with a rule when it comes to playing games. I wasn’t going to playtest anyone’s game. I like playtesting, but that’s work, and a con is already 8 hours of work, so I’m not doing overtime. That time is better spent just hanging out with friends and talking.

Speaking of talking, you know what we didn’t do? We never discussed endless discourse topics, theory, or drama. That stuff is an online phenomenon. In person, we just wanted to talk about anything else. That doesn’t mean no shop talk, but it was always so much more positive, practical, and happy by comparison to online discussions.

It’s a very common question. I have a reputation as someone who writes a lot of games. And I do! So it’s a pretty typical conversation starter when someone comes to the booth.

This year, I had nothing new (besides GOBZ which two people bought, bless their hearts).

My daughter was born 18 months ago, which coincides with me going full-time. A lot of my time is taking care of her, and then Gila time is spent on the business side of things rather than design.

So I didn’t have anything new to share this year, and that was weird. Especially because I so many comments like “What’s your next thing” “Oh you must have written like 3-4 games since last year” etc.

And there’s nothing wrong with people saying that! I like the reputation. And I want to get back to that. I’m just now getting my feet under me, balancing dad life and design life, so don’t worry, Spencer will be writing lots of games soon.

So that was GenCon! Busy, tiring, fulfilling. And I can’t wait to do it again next year.

Oh, and if you want to know about the finances, all I’ll say here is that they were good! I do a year in review stream every year, so you can get the GenCon details then (or just message me, I’m happy to share data).

Until next time,

-Spencer