Leipzig Games Con Dead

[DoctorFinger]

Leipziger Messe, the company behind the Leipzig Games Convention has confirmed that the 2009 show has been canceled.

Begun in 2002, the late-August show had become the biggest gaming event in Europe, and one of the biggest in the world. It had been considered a wild success, and that success is likely what led to it's undoing. The beginning of the end came last year with the announcement of the rival gamescom show, also set in Leipzig. gamescom (always with a lowercase 'g'!) was organized and run by Germany's BIU, the equivalent of the ESA and ELSPA industry trade groups here in the US.

Publishers and developers were steered towards the gamescom event - taking place a month before Leipzig - and didn't see the point of holding another event a month later in the same city. So endeth the Leipzig GC.

Source - VG247 (http://www.videogaming247.com/2009/01/29/official-games-convention-is-dead/).

[Sl1pstream]

What the hell? I was going to go this year, had my vacation ready and everything. Now I'll need to find out if I can move that over to whenever this takes place.

EDIT::

New date: European industry trade fair gamescom will take place from 19 to 23 August 2009

Not that big of a problem, I guess. I'm glad I didn't book a hotel yet.

So they basically killed Leipzig by picking a better date and then, once Leipzig was dead, moved their event over to the same date as Leipzig. Assholes.

[Ancalagon]

Yay for a knife in the back.

Its pretty devious that the BIU did that I think. Imagine if someone tried to do that to PAX (although I think PAX is too popular to be affected).

[Psykoboy2]

PAX is a bit too popular to be affected, but it'll be interesting to see attendance numbers for this years PAX considering the state of the economy and since PAX East will take place only about 6 or so months after.

[Housemixer]

Strange, I thought the rival show would be in Cologne. But Leipzig is good enough, the GC was pretty nice in '07.

edit: I just checked the gamescom.de webpage, according to that the gamescom will be held in Cologne. That's better for me personally, only about 40-50min drive from where I live (and the bigger part of that route is without any speed limit ;) ).

[Evewalker]

Yikes. I really didn't expect to see Leipzig go under. It's an amazing show.

As a principle staff member of a moderate-sized gaming convention myself (TempleCon, in Providence RI), I can attest to it being a razor thin business to be in. The sheer financial output to create any event of a reasonably high caliber is disturbing, and when the economy is tanking, it's an easy decision to pull the plug. Even worse, venue space is getting more expensive, not less.

Thankfully our attendance looks up this year, but it's been nine months of a lot of work get to that point. Really sad to see something like Leipzig go, though.

[Siraris]

Leipzig has become one of the best conventions to look forward to. This is really too bad.

[PathMaster]

Unfortunate. I always liked what came out of the show. And I had always heard good things from people who went.

PAX is a bit too popular to be affected, but it'll be interesting to see attendance numbers for this years PAX considering the state of the economy and since PAX East will take place only about 6 or so months after.

Do they have a firm date yet for that, seeing as how it is now about one year off?

[bean]

Leipzig sees so little that is new due to E3 only being a few months before it, so this is no big loss to me as a gamer, and it remains to be seen if this is a loss to Europeans.

As far as the BIU's tactics, they are absolute fucknuts. The problem is that publishers can't tell them to fuck off because that is the group whose job it is to fend off the religious wackjobs that want to limit people's freedoms.

[Orca]

So they basically killed Leipzig by picking a better date and then, once Leipzig was dead, moved their event over to the same date as Leipzig. Assholes.

Yeah, they chose a date that was more attractive to publishers/developers and then bailed on it when they all switched over. Classy move.

[AbeLincoln]

Dicks. Also there's no way this could happen to PAX because it's not really the same. It's strength comes from the Penny-Arcade comic, creators, and community. It's a Penny-Arcade convention as much as it is a games convention so it can't be so easily sabotaged so long as Gabe and Tycho have the rights to their own stuff.

[Orca]

Dicks. Also there's no way this could happen to PAX because it's not really the same. It's strength comes from the Penny-Arcade comic, creators, and community. It's a Penny-Arcade convention as much as it is a games convention so it can't be so easily sabotaged so long as Gabe and Tycho have the rights to their own stuff.

Exactly. Publishers could threaten to pull out of PAX all they want, all that would accomplish is they miss out on all the people that will still attend it. It's not E3 - people aren't going there just for the games and if those companies want a piece of that mindshare, they need to be there.