Essen 2015

[JeditOjanen]

Spiel, the legendary four-day gaming trade fair, runs in Essen from 8-11 October. Who is making the pilgrimage this year?

If you're not yet sure, I recommend booking hotels and flights (Dusseldorf or Frankfurt, connect by train) as soon as possible as everywhere is already selling out. It really is something every serious gamer should do once at least.

 

[JeditOjanen]

Do you go on your tod or with mates?

A bit of both. I'm travelling alone and meeting people when I get there. Spiel has been running for many years and a lot of the hotels set aside a conference room for gaming in the evening if they have one, so you don't have to worry about being in the same hotel. Demo games at Spiel itself are fairly free-form; if a bunch of you all turn up at once you can bogart the whole table, but if you arrive alone you can ask a demonstrator to slot you into the next available game.

There's also no obligation to stay for all four days. You can buy a full weekend pass if you want, but it only saves a couple of Euro so most people buy individual day passes and don't attend every day. Last year I saw almost everything I wanted to in two days, but I felt kind of rushed even with the helper app. This year I'll be there for all four days; I might run out of things to do by Sunday, but if that happens for a few of us we'll just play our ill-gotten games all day.