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Gen Con Indy 2008 - Author's Notes There's no other fandom convention than Gen Con that is so difficult to experience in its entirety. One glance at the convention catalog and its astonishing 186-page, fine print list of games and events, and you realize that you won't be able to do much more than scratch the surface. The events farmed out to downtown Indianapolis hotels are large enough to be conventions in their own right. So we treat Gen Con like we treat many anime conventions, chasing costumers for pictures while getting a general feeling of the overall event. It's probably unfair to judge Gen Con by its costumers when most of the attendees spend most of their time in 24-hour game rooms, but it's useful to note that the younger costumers are usually anime costumers. The older costumers range from the ren fair, celtic look to the reliable group of Star Wars costumers - including the only man we've seen who could rival Vic Mignogna's version of Obi-Wan Kenobi from the first three episodes. We missed the geek queen pageant and the Gaia Online gathering, and we would have loved to see what must have been the ultimate contest from TwinBlade Games, "Alien v. Ninja v. Pirate v. Zombie v. Robot v. Archer v. Gladiator v. Viking," based on their SenSo board games. But there were plenty of card games based on anime - El-Hazard, Fullmetal Alchemist, Kingdom Hearts - and tournaments for players of Wario Ware and Dance Dance Revolution. The Gen Con weekend had an unusual quadruple clash of cultures in Indianapolis. Along with the gaming convention and the state fair, the WWE had their Summerslam pay-per-view in town and the new Lucas Oil Stadium was dedicated. Gamers, football fans, farmers and wrestling fans were all in the same city at the same time, in one of the more unusual urban mixes outside of Chicago or New York that this writer can remember. Indianapolis has evolved from a mediocre backwater to a place where events such as Gen Con are wanted and cultivated like one of the bumper crops celebrated at the fairgrounds. The gaming convention is scheduled to stay in Indianapolis through 2010, but it wouldn't be surprising if the convention's organizers arrange a longer deal to remain in the Indiana capitol. Milwaukee was somewhere between indifferent and hostile toward the gamers, but Indianapolis wants Gen Con, something shown from the street banners to the convention sponsorship from the Ram Brewery a block from the convention center. Among the mid-sized downtown city locations for fandom conventions we've seen, only San Jose is better. In its own odd way, Gen Con resembles another Indianapolis-area event held around the same time in late summer, the U.S. Nationals drag races. Each event lasts for four days and attracts around 30,000 people each day, and is considered the ultimate annual destination for its fans. Ironically, both events saw the passing of their patriarchs in the last year - Gary Gygax, the founder of Gen Con, and Wally Parks, the founder of the National Hot Rod Association. Haven't seen much new on this site in the last few months? You may not have looked at the part of the site that's been changing, but most people don't look at that area. The author is as much a racing fan as an anime convention fan. Most of this site's visitors have never heard of Craig Dollansky, Ben Spies and Tracy Hines, but the author has, and he's been on the road to races rather than conventions. Even with $4 gasoline, it's been less expensive to drive to tracks and see the racers than to fly to conventions in the last couple of months. $30 for fuel, $30 for a pit pass and $7 for a burger and a soft drink is cheaper than the hundreds of dollars it takes to travel by air to a convention and stay in a hotel. That's the reason we haven't been at Anime Expo, Otakon and other conventions more than a day's drive from home. While the expense of traveling to conventions has kept us closer to home than we'd like, we're still staying busy. Most people visit this site for the anime convention reports, but there also are motorsports pictures on the site, and that area has been regularly updated in the last couple of months. In mid-June, we headed to the high-banked quarter-mile Anderson Speedway for a late model stock car race. One week later, we attended a minor league baseball game. July began with a look at MotoGP motorcycle tire testing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's revised road course, followed by a drive south to Madison, Ind. to see unlimited hydroplanes on the Ohio River. The month's second weekend saw us take advantage of an rainout to get a camera ten feet from 120-mph winged sprint cars for the King's Royal at the Eldora Speedway in Ohio. After a quick stop at a men's tennis tournament, we got drenched by more rain the following weekend at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for Firestone Indy Lights and the IndyCar Series, a trip that came less than 24 hours after we made a brief visit to the Ikasucon convention in Fort Wayne, Ind.. Skies were clear and tires wore out fast in Indianapolis for the NASCAR Allstate 400 to close out the month. We started August with drives to the two fastest, most fearsome, high-banked half-mile ovals in the country. The Salem Speedway in southern Indiana held the Joe James-Pat O'Connor memorial race with sprint cars and vintage race cars; there's a chance our pictures of the old race cars and replicas could end up in a national vintage racing magazine. A week later, we headed to eastern Indiana for the King of the Wings sprint car race at the Winchester Speedway. One driver we know ran in both sprint car features with no luck, being put in the wall hard at the Salem race and having his front-row car break at the beginning of the Winchester feature. And to warm up for Gen Con on the day before the convention opened to the public, we traveled to the Indiana State Fair for the Farmers' Day Parade. This writer enjoys the difference between the mostly urban gaming culture and the mostly rural farm culture, although the attendance at the state fair is more urban, black and brown on weekends than most people realize. There's one tenuous link between the cultures: in 1993, Mindscape and Maxis released SimFarm, a farming simulation in the "Sim City" line of games. Gen Con Indy Main Page