Because
you asked for it...or something like that...here are a couple of the
entrants in the Spam carving contest. They were left out on a
convention center table on Sunday for fans to enjoy. Yes, we
heard the jokes from passing fans that the losing entries already had
been eaten by hungry gamers who had run out of cash.
And
despite the violence and horror, we returned to the Geek Squad booth,
just in time to watch the final death throes of a computer hard drive
that was sacrificed to the powerful jaws of the crusher. There was
actually an audience for this show.
We
spotted artists Robert and Emily DeJesus in Coralville at AnimeIowa,
and we spotted them again at Gen Con Indy. Robert had split his time
between the anime mini-con in the Westin hotel and this booth at the
main Gen Con art show. Contact Bob and Emily if you know a good place
to live in Indianapolis; they're consideirng a move to the Hoosier
state capitol.
Scenes
such as this are at the heart of Gen Con, showing what the convention
means to gamers. It's Sunday afternoon at the finals of the Yu-Gi-Oh
tournament, held in the custom-built arena that Upper Deck brought to
the convention. In the animated Yu-Gi-Oh, tournaments are noisy,
violent and set to a musical score. At Gen Con, the tournaments are
played in total silence and with the conventration you'd expect at a
chess match. Whether animated or in real life, the tournaments still
attract an audience.
Yu-Gi-Oh
and translated Japanese card games are part of gaming's future. Here's
another place where gaming has a future, the booth for the Bella Sara card game.
Bella Sara is a horse owning game that defies the pattern of gaming,
because it's aimed at girls and not men. While most of the games at Gen
Con are aimed at gaming's usual audience, Bella Sara tries to attract
new, young gamers that aren't into D&D, Magic or RPG's. If this
mostly-male crowd doesn't look like a group of Bella Sara players...
...it's
because they were part of the line for the convention's most successful
promotion. The closest you'll come to a RPG on mainstream U.S. TV is
the "Heroes" series from NBC. Bella Sara arranged for Hayden
Panettiere, who plays cheerleader Claire Bennet in "Heroes," to sign
autographs on Sunday, Even though it was Gen Con Indy's final day,
Penettiere attracted one of the convention's largest crowds -- so many
people that convention hall security had to be called to watch the line.