Blizzcon ’09 – Gaming with Children style
Blizzcon, the annual festival of all things Blizzard (World of Warcraft, Diablo, etc…) was recently held in Southern California. Rather than send some boring old grown-up to do the reporting, Gaming With Children went an entirely other direction – we sent a boy (and his mom). Since they’re both avid World of Warcraft players, it seemed a natural fit. Here’s his report!
Hi, I’m Aiden. On Friday, August 21, 2009, I was given the opportunity to go to Blizzcon as a reporter, thanks to the great guys at Gaming With Children. It was amazing! It was so big that the $175 tickets sold out in about a minute. If you weren’t in the queue to buy a ticket in the first thirty-seconds after they were available to the public, you didn’t get a ticket. However, I got to go for free as a Gaming with Children reporter! Blizzcon was held in four halls of the Anaheim Convention Center. Each hall had a different focus: World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, and the Performance hall.
While I first think of boardgames and RPGs when I think of GenCon, it is actually so much more. Here are a few of the nifty, cool, or downright odd things I came across as I went about my business. Oh, and since we are a video-game centric site after all, I’ve also included a few comments about the video games being shown off in the main dealer hall.
What is a gamer boardgame? My previous GenCon report covered family boardgames, games that are great to play with younger kids, or informally with friends who drop by for dinner. Gamer games are slightly more complex and tend to last a bit longer (an hour or two).
Two reports down, two to go. No additional posts today, but feel free to head on over to 
In the past few years, GenCon has made a concerted effort to appeal to a broader audience than the stereotypical gamer geek. They have a areas set aside for kids to play boardgames, trips to the local museums and movie showings for gamer spouses, there’s even a giant highway billboard I see every day on the way to and from the convention that advertises GenCon as a family vacation destination. For the most part, I think they are succeeding. Even in the past five years that I have attended, I have noticed a significant shift in both the family-friendly offerings and a much larger family contingent of attendees. As I’m a big boardgaming fan, I managed to find more information on boardgames than can fit in a single article. So today I’ll focus on games and companies that are family-friendly. Next time we’ll cover boardgames that are cut out more suitable for enthusiastic gamers.
GenCon has come and gone once again in Indianapolis, leaving attendees with a bit less sleep, a bit more crowded game rooms, and a bit lighter in the wallet. However, most can claim to be satiated for the moment. GenCon is four days of concentrated gaming in one of the oldest and largest game-focused conventions in the US. I was able to attend for two days and spent most of my time roaming the large dealer floor, checking out the upcoming games. Started as an offshoot of TSR (the original Dungeons and Dragons company), GenCon has a strong role-playing presence in addition to the large number of boardgame and slightly fewer electronic gaming companies. For today, I’ll focus on the role playing game news that I found most interesting. In future articles, I’ll cover the electronic and the boardgame news from the show.
Wii Sports Resort releases today (Sunday) and if you have a Wii system, run (don’t walk) down to your local game vendor and pick up a copy. Many people I know consider the console pack-in Wii Sports title to still be one of the best around for family friendly pick-up and play fun. Wii Sports Resort takes that style of game and kicks it up another level with even more games and options as well as incorporating the new MotionPlus attachment for even better control. If you had any interest at all in the original Wii Sports, you owe it to yourself (and your family) to check out Wii Sports Resort. I’ve had the pleasure to take the game through its paces in the past week. It has dominated my limited play time and I believe it will be my go-to game for weeks to come.
Take some action, add strategy, mix with a dash of exploration and you might create something like the top-down team exploration-shooter that is Elite Forces: Unit 77. Players manage a team of four unique individuals as you explore a somewhat confined mission area, discovering traps and enemy agents along the way. A bit too slow paced to be a pure action game, it has too many real time elements to be considered a strategy title. If I had to describe the game to an old-school videogame player, I would consider it a top-down perspective of GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64, but with a team of four instead of a single character.
With the new version of Dungeons and Dragons (4th Edition) revealed last year, there has been the expected line of products released by Wizards of the Coast to supplement the game. Some are targeted at all players, while others are primarily for Dungeon Masters (the folks who put together and referee the game every session). Here’s a quick rundown of supplements released over the past year with a few comments to fill you in on what’s included and who might benefit from them. If you just want the best of the best, feel free to read 
The newest incarnation of the Dungeons and Dragons role playing game (4th edition) has been out for just over a year. Reviews were fairly mixed at first, but most of the furor of over changes to the game have died down. Die hard fans of the old system (3.5 edition) have moved on to keep their holy flame lit in support of their familiar system, but most players have moved on and begun to embrace the new version. Wizards of the Coast has succeeded in their attempt to overhaul the game by making it easier to learn, quicker to play, and better balanced for character options. My initial reservation to the new system was a concern over the lack of variety in player characters. One fighter-type was pretty much like another and there was very little room to customize to make a unique character. Fortunately, material published throughout the year has done much to improve the situation. Follow along with me and I’ll give you a virtual tour of a year of releases, giving you the skinny on what books are best, and which ones you might as well avoid. Today we’ll look at my top picks of the year, and tomorrow we’ll briefly hit every major release of the year.
