Gen Con is the largest and most prominent gaming convention in North America. (As an indication of its size, consider that Gen Con 2002 brought in about 26,000 attendees; the only other gaming conventions that come close are E³ and Origins.)

The name of the convention is derived from "Geneva Convention", as the first Gen Con was held at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. The name also is a play-on-words, as the "Geneva Conventions" are the name of a set of important international treaties. Gen Con is now held in two US locations, Gen Con Indy, in Indianapolis, Indiana and Gen Con SoCal in Anaheim, California.

About 100 wargame enthusiasts attended the first Gen Con, a one-day convention at Horticultural Hall in 1968. During the following decade the event grew and was hosted at a variety of southern Wisconsin locations, including an American Legion Hall, George Williams College in Williams Bay, and the former Lake Geneva Playboy Resort. In 1978 the convention moved to the University of Wisconsin Parkside campus in Kenosha, and in 1985 it moved to the MECCA Convention Center in Milwaukee. Attendance steadly rose from 5,000 paid admissions in 1985 to a peak of 30,000 in 1994, making Gen Con the premier event in the role-playing game industry.

For most of its history, Gen Con was managed by TSR, Inc., original publisher of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. In 1997, TSR was bought by Wizards of the Coast, which in turn was purchased by Hasbro in 1999. In May 2002, Gen Con was purchased from Hasbro by Peter Adkison, the founder of Wizards of the Coast. The Midwest U.S. convention moved to Indianapolis in 2003.

After two unsuccesful years of running Gen Con Europe in the UK, Peter Adkison decided to scale back and focus his efforts on the US shows. In 2004 licenses were issued to groups who would go about creating the franchises Gen Con Barcelona and Gen Con UK.

External link

• Gen Con Conventions, official site (http://www.gencon.com/)