A few months ago, I wound up on Elliott in the Morning by dumb luck, and heads ups from buddies in the area who listen to the wildly popular radio show.
Calling in resulted in something of an interview, as a result of prior callers on their Warhammer segment mentioning the NOVA Open. By the end of the call, we'd had a fun time of it, and we wound up catching the attention of a lot of people in the DC area who listen to his show (including some of my family members, who excitedly texted in).
One of these listeners was Alan Siegel, a freelance journalist who has written for a variety of media sources from the Washington Post to Slate, and who lives in the DC area. He heard mention during my on-air time of the high # of service members who participate in our hobby, and contacted us through the website to inquire more about the hobby, the NOVA, and especially the service member angle.
We invited Alan over for a game day, introduced him to a bunch of the people we knew who were comfortable talking about their hobby in relation to their military service, and he took it from there.
Alan's article released yesterday on Slate, and I thought I would re-post/share it here.
Only thing about it that's not spot on? I'm not an attorney! Haha.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/gaming/2012/09/warhammer_40k_why_american_troops_love_to_play_a_game_featuring_orks_necrons_and_space_marines_.html
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ReplyDeleteI didn't actually - when you put NOVA in comparison to just the pure US tabletop wargaming conventions, we're significantly behind AdeptiCon, but ahead of the rest. Games Day I suppose I've never counted, but should ... they'd be ahead as well, by a far bit.
DeleteThing of it is, there are very few pure tabletop wargaming conventions, and we'll soon not be ourselves when expand into things ranging from Magic to not-just-miniatures-as-a-medium art shows/conventions, and the like.
GenCon, DragonCon, TempleCon, and a good dozen or more others are all dramatically bigger than Games Day, AdeptiCon, NOVA, WGC, etc. - all of those are extremely small fry (1800 at AdeptiCon) compared to 40,000-50,000+ events that are included within some of the above mention.
Course, none of those cons are pure tabletop wargaming cons either - they're much broader scope (as NOVA will shortly be, though still at a dramatically reduced size).
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ReplyDeleteActually, that was my point in the above reply - NOVA is smaller than Games Day and AdeptiCon, but all 3 are tiny in the realm of gaming cons in general.
DeleteIn terms of those tabletop cons that are out there, careful who you might offend when excluding! WargamesCon, Feast of Blades, Bay Area Open, Warstore Weekend all come to mind.
We're also not the biggest 40k event - of our 600+ attendees this year, only about 230 were there for 40k. That's not ALL that much bigger than WGC, BAO, FOB, etc., but is substantially behind either Games Day or AdeptiCon (AdeptiCon's Team Tourney is far and away the largest 40k event the world has ever known, with nearly 500 participants each year).
As a reiteration, we never really qualified our size with him - he asked about other events, we shared the multi-thousands-styled GenCon's/etc., and the smaller niche of tabletop wargaming, which we're ... what, third out of 6 or 7 in? Creative license of the author. Same creative license that stated me as an attorney when I'm not :p