We've had a chance to compile the wish list data for this year, and that means we can take a look at it to see what games are in the highest demand, for a number of reasons.
It also means that if you would like to get the wish list data for your own events, so you can go into more detail in your own planning, just email [email protected] and ask (and remember to include your group name). If you aren't the event organizer for your company or group, ask them to do it - we won't be sending data to individual GMs or anything.
First, the same caveats and instructions from last year still apply:
First, remember this list does not reflect overall demand, only high unserved demand - which is expressed here as the number of tickets folks had in their wish lists beyond the number of tickets that could actually be sold, based on submitted schedules. So Pathfinder doesn't show up in this list, for example - that doesn't mean it wasn't hugely popular, just that the schedule Paizo offered had enough space for most of the people who wanted to play (at least overall, I'm not digging into specific events here, but general demand). It's also wort noting this only measures the kinds of events folks put in their wish lists. Many TCGs and miniature games (and most board games, for that matter) don't have as strong a culture of pre-registering. Many players just show up with generics. Late events obviously won't be in this list, either, nor do games that had no submissions this year, for whatever reason (even if they were on last year's list). This is not provided to debate the merits of different games or editions, but instead to help GMs figure out what games they might want to run in response to what players are trying to get into. Second, don't sweat the details too much. There are lots of variables and some strange artifacts can pop up in how events are listed or attendees sign up for them. Friends might double-up and put the same tickets on both their wish lists. Many people will put every session they can find on their list, even if they really only want a single ticket. So the numbers I have aren't exact and don't read too much into these rough rankings. They're not exact, but they are a useful general gauge of what games seem to have a lot of unserved interested behind them. I'm going to break games up by type this year. Might make it a bit easier to parse quickly. If anyone has any questions or would like other data, let me know and I'll see what I can sort out.
It's also wort noting this only measures the kinds of events folks put in their wish lists. Many TCGs and miniature games (and most board games, for that matter) don't have as strong a culture of pre-registering. Many players just show up with generics. Late events obviously won't be in this list, either, nor do games that had no submissions this year, for whatever reason (even if they were on last year's list).
This is not provided to debate the merits of different games or editions, but instead to help GMs figure out what games they might want to run in response to what players are trying to get into.
Second, don't sweat the details too much. There are lots of variables and some strange artifacts can pop up in how events are listed or attendees sign up for them. Friends might double-up and put the same tickets on both their wish lists. Many people will put every session they can find on their list, even if they really only want a single ticket. So the numbers I have aren't exact and don't read too much into these rough rankings. They're not exact, but they are a useful general gauge of what games seem to have a lot of unserved interested behind them.
I'm going to break games up by type this year. Might make it a bit easier to parse quickly. If anyone has any questions or would like other data, let me know and I'll see what I can sort out.
The distribution of high unserved demand events among different event types speaks to player habits and the challenges in scaling some events to meet apparent demand. If anyone is thinking about running some events at Gen Con and not sure what to do or if you're a gaming group/company looking to expand, hopefully this can be a bit of a guide: pick something from this list and you shouldn't have much troubling finding players.
If anyone is thinking about running some events at Gen Con and not sure what to do or if you're a gaming group/company looking to expand, hopefully this can be a bit of a guide: pick something from this list and you shouldn't have much troubling finding players.
With that taken care of, here are the high-demand games for this year:
RPGs
Board & Card Games
Some high-demand games that I don't think will be out before Gen Con (but correct me if I'm wrong - and I'm sure I missed plenty of other premiers/new releases) included:
For other event types, things get more chaotic and individual. For LARPs, unserved demand was for specific custom games or for home-brew games that are driven by the gaming group's reputation and/or the IP.
Historical minis (HMN) did not have individual games systems at the same scale, but Bolt Action and Blood & Plunder were pretty close. Non-historical minis (NMN) were mostly spread out as well, but A Song of Ice & Fire had a lot of demand, with Imperial Assault and Space Hulk also almost making the same threshold I set for RPG, BGM, & CGM.
If anyone wants to refer back to last year to see what has changed, you can check the thread on high-demand games from 2016.
There's also the thread from 2015 about high demand games that year.
- Derek Guder Event Manager Gen Con LLC
Just because I like data and statistics, I'm curious about something. Is this based on a percentage unmet demand or an absolute ticket number? So would a small RPG game with one session and six tickets but 15 unmet wishlist requests (250%) have risen above the noise or would it have been washed out by larger events like a game with 10 sessions of six and thirty unmet wishlist requests(50%)?
Are these games listed in order of the amount of un-served demand, from highest to lowest?
They are roughly in order of highest to lowest, with a few possible exceptions where I took things out or merged them or added things in from another event type, and I just eyeballed those, since this list isn't really meant to be too precise.
And the list is based solely on volume of unserved demand, not relative volume. I did calculate that, nscott, and called it the "hotness index" in my notes, but while it tends to highlight games that I personally love, I figure for general use it's more helpful to just know what the greater raw number of players want to get into. That also appears to match up a bit better with available GMs who are comfortable running those particular games.
There's also the case that some of the really high relative demand games have so few available slots at all that it can easily distort the numbers.
For the sake of keeping track, the Legend of the Five Rings LCG is having a 'limited release' at the convention (which means that FFG isn't formally releasing it but still bringing a bunch of copies to sell) and anyone attending the Thursday morning tournament will receive a copy of the core set (which is included in the ticket price) so they can play.
Yeah, but it won't be out before Gen Con, so it will be difficult for most folks to feel comfortable enough to run an event around it - though it would be great for some enterprising souls in that inaugural tournaments to share their copies later in casual games with other excited attendees :)
Based on comments I've seen elsewhere, I should also probably mention that just because something isn't in this list doesn't mean it didn't have unserved demand, possibly even many times it's actual capacity. This is just the list of games that had particularly high demand - hundreds of potential players that couldn't get seats.
It also doesn't meant that individual events follow these patterns. There were Call of Cthulhu or D&D 5th edition games, for example, that did not have high demand and sessions of games that didn't make this list that could have fit many times its max players. This is just overall trends for those games in general.
Does this data make its way to the event sponsor before wish lists are processed so they can add more seats/tickets/space if they know ahead of time that wish list demand exceeds event capacity?
One item struck me as interesting. "The Strange," "Numenera" and the "Cypher System" are all on the list as separate games, but in fact are more like flavors of a single game system. If combined, where would the combined game sit on the list?
Thank you,
Vic
I appreciate the curiosity about the specific numbers, but I'm not going to combine different games (even if closely related or using the same rules) to adjust the list. It's not a leaderboard - it should be sufficient that they are all in the list.
- Derke Guder Event Manager Gen Con LLC
Hello. I am talking to Stronghold Games about an official, sanctioned Terraforming Mars Tournament. I was thinking 64 players but... I'm starting to think this thing could actually be a whole lot bigger, especially seeing it so near the top of the list of in-demand games. I could use some help in putting together a proposal to them. I'll email as well.
Note that this is the list of in-demand games from before Gen Con 2017, so demand may well have changed over the last year.
Also, the number of GMs you have will establish a practical limit for the number of players you can accommodate.
As an extreme example, if you only have one GM, you won't be able to handle 300 players.
It's also worth nothing that "bigger" does not always equal "better," by any stretch.
High demand doesn't automatically mean that a single big tournament will be successful, for example. There are lots of factors that go into folks attending a game, and - broadly - we suggest a relatively conservative approach: larger events can be fun, but keep those restrained so they fill up and run other events throughout the rest of the weekend to even out overall capacity so it's not just one big spike.
Derek, anyway you would be willing to share some of the datasets you used for this? I would love to make it accessible as part of the www.best50yearsingaming.com along with the event schedule data if Gen Con is amenable to it.
Unfortunately, we can't really unilaterally release final attendance data or full event details for all events. There are lots of factors to consider there.
If you want to get anything beyond what is released in the event catalog file each year, you'll probably want to send us an email with a full run-down of what specific data points you are looking for and what you intend to use them for, so we can review those with you as necessary.