With SPIEL over and me on a long train ride, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the whole trip and answer a number of frequently asked questions.
What Did It Cost?
For trips like this, that’s always the big one. Well, it depends on various factors: How expansive is it for you to travel to Essen? Do you need to stay in a hotel/AirBnB or can you stay with a friend? Can you book early to take advantage of early bird discounts? Do you bring your own snacks and drinks or buy stuff at the convention? How many games do you plan to buy … ?
Here are my expanses split by category:
Total amount is 1750.97€, which is a huge sum for an event that’s less than a week. I was in the fortunate situation that the kind folks at SPIEL Essen granted me a press pass, so I had no tickets to buy. However, this also added an additional day of staying at the hotel to be able to attend the press conference and novelty show the day before the convention opened.
As you can see, the biggest cost factor for me were the hotel costs. If I would have stayed outside Essen in an AirBnB, the cost of accommodation could likely have been cut in half with the drawback of longer travel times. Since the Ruhrgebiet is pretty well covered with public transport, a lot of people stay in the surrounding cities. Staying in Essen itself however not only shortened my commute considerably but also turned the whole trip into more of a gaming cruise because there were always people playing in the hotel bar and adjacent rooms. Doing a daily blog meant I couldn’t fully take advantage of it, but it allowed me to play SETI and Altay with Reni & Kristof of Board Game Diaries and that was just lovely!
A very relevant factor is how many days you actually “need” to stay at SPIEL. Most games I purchased on Thursday morning and I could have used the afternoon for a little gaming and then traveled home. Of course I had the advantage of early access due to my press pass, but that basically saved me 1-2 lines, not more. So if you just plan to grab games at SPIEL, you might be okay only going a single day. I know a few people that in the past just stayed for one day by traveling to Essen very early in the morning and heading back in the evening / late at night. That of course cuts costs tremendously.
If you want to do some actual gaming, 2 or 3 days is more realistic. The whole four days are typically only needed if you do other stuff (e.g. me doing interviews and meeting up with people) or you just enjoy the buzz and being there. Keep in mind though: a lot of the hot games will definitely be sold out by Sunday and despite being explicitly prohibited, I saw at least 2-3 publishers that had closed and packed their booth by Sunday early afternoon. On the other hand with many people already traveling back on Sunday, Sunday is probably the most relaxed day to do actual gaming.
Finally, I consciously made the decision to just buy food and drinks at the convention which of course has crazy prices. I haven’t been on a vacation all year plus I didn’t want to have to carry tons of drinks/food as I was already hurling my interview recording kit and camera with me. However, looking at the numbers that definitely hurt. A small bottle of ice tea did cost 5€ where it costs more like 2€ in a store in the city.
What Did I Buy?
My plan is always to just buy 2-3 big boxes for immediate play / review and otherwise only some smaller ones that caught my fancy. After all, I already have a lot of great games at home and whatever I buy, I have to haul back by train. This time I went a bit overboard, but still kept it to a somewhat reasonable amount I think … at least compared to the giant hauls some other reviewers post 😀
Big boxes:
- Daitoshi: always like Dani Garcia’s games, so this was my number one pick
- Resafa: Vladimir Suchy’s games are an auto-buy for me, they are always interesting to explore and write about
- Altay: I was sort of talked into this at the novelty show and thought it might be interesting to write about, otherwise I wouldn’t have picked it up
- SETI: hadn’t planned to pick this up but after playing it with Board Game Diaries. It peeked my interest and I know a friend of mine will greatly enjoy it.
- Tea Garden: ordered a copy online after playing it and seeing that the convention promo had a very sizeable discount code on it.
Small boxes & misc:
- Kingdom Legacy: completely didn’t have it on my radar but was hooked immediately when I saw it at the novelty show
- Flamme Rouge Grand Tour expansion: have been waiting for this so long that I now want to see what the wait was all about
- Roads & Boats Scenario Book Volume 1: just seemed like a great project to support and I liked having an additional reason to dive into R&B more
- AI 100% human: I don’t think it will stay long in my collection, but it just got me too curious and I want to explore it a bit
- Gloomhaven Button & Bugs: was just curious, later noticed that I could have gotten it cheaper online
- Kintsugi: probably simple card game, but the theme and art really spoke to me
- Landmarks: I really liked Kites and Skyrockets plus Floodgate Games always has great production values
- Sky Team Turbulence: haven’t even played through all scenarios of the base game, so this was mostly to satisfy the completionist in me
- Tranquility the Ascent: 3x copies as gifts for friends
Missed out on:
- Galileo Galilei: I somehow had assumed I wouldn’t like it but greatly enjoyed it during the demo. Gave me Grand Austria Hotel vibes somehow despite using completely different mechanisms
- Kartini: I really would have loved to demo it (wasn’t available for purchase)
- Quiet House: Not really that sad I missed it, but I would have liked to buy a copy and see how much the advanced movement modes would ramp up the difficulty.
All of them I purchased myself as I don’t ask for review copies. I find it more convenient to buy and re-sell games in case I don’t like something or just don’t feel like writing about them rather than feeling indebted to a publisher. Right now, I would assume that approx 50-70% I will end up re-selling at some point in the next few months after I finish reviewing them. The competition by what games I already have in my collection is so high that anything that’s not amazing but just good usually gets cycled out quickly. So the net cost for games should go down to approx 200€.
Are There Great Deals?
The big cost factor are of course the games you plan to buy. A number of hot ones will be sold out by the end of Thursday as international publisher have to pay horrendous prices to fly in copies. As far as I understand it, they usually only bring a few hundred copies to be part of the marketing buzz as they sell them for retail prices and so make a loss on them due to the high shipping costs. Most games sold there will be in retail by Christmas, so you are not missing out on much in that sense, but there are some limited clearance sales or special packages. E.g. there were a few deluxe versions of Let’s go to Japan and a handful of KS copies of Galaxy Postman for example. But for the cost of going to Essen, you can probably find someone willing to part with their copy on the secondary market.
There are a number of clearance sales, especially from German online retailers. I saw spiel-offensive.de sell copies of Mosaic: A Story of Civilisation for 12€, but that’s the same deal they have on their website for a while now. Some publishers offer special prices on Sunday, but I would say that’s rather the exception. Often publishers will rather ship excess copies to local distribution centres or partners than sell them below retail at the convention.
The whole evaluation of course changes if you’re an international visitor. There might be games that are cheap at SPIEL and hard to get in your country, especially classic you can find at the second hand re-sellers. But of course, those are predominantly German copies.
Can I Meet (insert name here) There?
Yes and no. Depends on what you mean with “meet”. A lot of the bigger designers and board game content creators are there and some even do meet and greets at booths or at the special meet event the SPIEL Essen is organising. There are signing sessions (like Ryan Laukat’s) or designers demoing games (like Vital Lacerda). CGE this year had a nice “meet the designers” part of their booth. What also happens surprisingly often is that you walk around a corner and suddenly you see Ilka & Markus Brand (best know for the EXIT game series), Paul Grogan, or any number of other important people of the hobby. One has to keep in mind though that a) they are there for business (and not leisurely game with you) and b) they don’t know you. Everyone I briefly stopped to say I admire their work or thank them for some concrete game/contribute was really, really appreciative of it. The most negative thing I experienced was someone saying thanks but making it very clear I was keeping them from talking to more important to them people. So my recommendation would be: say hi and thank them, but assume that they won’t want or have time to have any deeper conversation with you.
What works great is to run into people at Essen that you already have some connection with, e.g. via Instagram, BGG, or some other channel. So basically to use it for a first time meet in person with someone that already knows who you are and has an interest in getting to know you as well.
How Crowded Was It?
In short: not as bad as I had thought. The news of SPIEL Essen selling out conjured up images of me having to push through masses of people to get anywhere, but that never really was the case. Even in hall 3 where most of the heavy games were, it was more a constant flow of people than that I ever got seriously stuck. As far as I understood it, that was also part of the considerations to actually have a hard cap of how many tickets would be sold for each day. People should still be able to enjoy themselves. The official numbers for 2024 are 204,000 people attended SPIEL over the four days. That’s a heck of a lot people!
Where the crowd was most noticeable was by the lines, especially in front of toilettes. One time, I stood in line for 20 minutes because I had used a popular location instead of one that’s more off the beaten track. And if you wanted to purchase one of the hot games on Thursday, it could happen that you had to wait up to 45min for it to be your turn. Food trucks also had long lines if you went there between 12:00 and 14:00 as most German’s are conditioned at work to go to lunch at 12:00 sharp. 😀
Will I Be Able to Play (insert game here)?
It very much depended on the game and publisher. Some few opened up reservation lists on Thursday morning and had all their tables soon booked for the rest of the convention, others opened them up each day in the morning for that day. Most though still just use open tables without reservations (which I greatly prefer) so you can walk around and ask how far a group is and with some wait time be able to play the game. Of course the more popular a game is, the higher the chance that someone else is already waiting before you. But for games like Spectacular, Babylon, or similar mid-weight games, it usually took me less than 20min wait time to get a seat. If you plan to game the hot titles, you should probably head there first thing in the morning and make sure you’re towards the front when the gates of SPIEL open.
Note though that more and more publishers will cap play time. E.g. in Babylon we were given a shortened number of turns, in Galileo Galilei a reduced number of discoveries, etc so that game slots would roughly be an hour. For heavy games, there were usually 1-3 tables depending on publisher. Some players will also offer to just play until everybody has gotten a good feel of how the game plays, both to open up the table to other players and to be able to game more different titles themselves. The hotel lobbies thus were a good option to just buy a game and play it there instead in the evening.
Any Recommendations for Visiting SPIEL Essen 2025?
The essential one is: book hotels, train tickets, and SPIEL tickets early. I guess that part will be obvious from now on, but not to what extend this goes. I just booked my hotel for 2025 and noticed that some hotels already no longer have rooms available for the full duration of the convention, despite the new dates just having been announced!
Also plan for recovery days when you figure out your schedule. The excitement, new acquisitions, lack of sleep, and travel times usually mean you will need a day or so to recover after SPIEL. A lot of people also come home with a cold because it’s just a lot of people with little sleep tightly packed in large halls.
Any Highlights?
It feels unfair to pick favourites, but …
- Favourite game I played: Galileo Galilei because it made me forget euro-mechanism and enjoy the theme
- Favourite purchase: Kingdom Legacy because it packs a lot of punch for such a small game
- Favourite conversation: talking with Ryan and Malorie Laukat over coffee. Those two are just an awesome duo, full stop.
- Favourite interview guest: Tomáš Holek. Humble, smart, and has a keen design sensibility.
- Favourite moment: entering the novelty show for the first time. Felt like being a kid in a candy store while TV celebrities walk around you.
- Favourite YouTube celeb I met: Cardboard Rhino, just seemed genuinely to be a super kind and interesting person
- Favourite food: … none really, it’s convention food after all. I kind of missed the spiral potatoes of last year, no idea why they weren’t there.
Was It Worth It?
For me, yes, definitely, but not to play or buy games. If that would have been the goal, I would just have ordered a couple online. As you can see from the costs at the top of this post, I could easily have bought my top 5 grail games for the price the whole trip cost me.
Part of what makes it worth it to go to SPIEL is the buzz and that a tremendous amount of interesting people will be there: designers, artists, YouTubers, Instagrammers, … but even on the train or in the local diner, you can have lovely conversations about our shared hobby. On one day, I dropped by a bakery to grab a bun and a tea and ended up almost running late because I had a great chat with a friendly Scotsman that sat on the next table and had a printed out list of games. On another day, I introduced myself to my table as we were playing Galileo Galilei and it turned out that one of the players was a reader of mine, which was awesome.
It was also a great opportunity for me to introduce myself to a few people I hope I’ll be able to interview in the future or do interviews I had scheduled in the weeks before the event. So it was definitely all about the people and the community for me. And I like to think the daily posts made it easier for all those that couldn’t come to Essen. As a result, the hotel is already booked for 2025. Fingers crossed I get a press pass again as otherwise I will have booked one day too many now 😂
Stay tuned for the post-Essen coverage. As mentioned in the day 4 post, a lot of interesting interviews to come.