A Look at the Nexus Game Fair
If you’re a large plains-roaming land mammal, or a driving cat, and you just can’t make Origins, there’s always the local convention ~
Jim Owczarski, 31 May 2017
Milwaukee has missed GenCon since the day it changed lodgings in 2003. I know. I’m from here. The mass of local gamers that were left behind have created other events and some have seen remarkable success, but none have approached the grand madness that is the mother of all American gaming conventions.
Still, I love the convention experience and was looking forward to checking out the Nexus Game Fair when it rolled into town late last week. Most importantly, I was wondering if there would be anything at all for a grognard to do. What follows are a few thoughts and a fair number of photographs documenting the experience of Friday and Saturday.
Hosted primarily at the downtown Hyatt, evident on the Milwaukee skyline by the spaceship-like restaurant perched at the top, Nexus seems to have kept its ambitions modest. Attendance ran to the hundreds rather than thousands and there was rarely a press of crowds despite the smallish space. It was, however, a professionally-organized operation with a well-designed program and a strong staff of workers managing registration.
