It is again that time of the year. It sounds weird when one claims to walk more than 10 km per day always with a roof above his head, yet that's what Essen Spiel is about, and even more so, its 2018 iteration. All its numbers are more impressive than last year's: there is more space (80.000 m2 is more than 11 real football fields / almost 15 American football fields next to one another), more exhibitors (1.150, to be precise), and more new games (1.400, which are enough to stock a shop for around five years or so). One has an idea of what German design usually means, yet Essen Spiel is truly multinational, with its exhibitors hailing from 50 different countries. All this creates an issue. What is a visitor to do with only four days at his disposal?

Convention dynamics have been changing constantly over the last few years. Taking their internal schedules into account, companies, or at least the bigger ones amongst them, try hard to release their games in GenCon first. The reason is simple. GenCon takes place in August and precedes Essen Spiel by two months. Thus, it allows a company two global releases for the exact same product: one in the US and one in EU. Why not create a buzz with media and buyers on both sides of the Atlantic if you can afford it? That is not the case when Essen is chosen as the place of the first global release. It has however an incredible hidden advantage that publishers know how to gauge: when it comes second, it allows for a confirmation of a game's initial reception, and even more so, on a crowd that is not linguistically homogenous.

It is the internet age and all, and games that are doing well on one side of the pond are likely to do well on the other side too. That's a relatively harmless observation that can be expected even though exceptions exist, if people are talking over a beer. Companies however do not talk over beers; they want to be profitable by creating games that will sell, to reach crowds with predetermined tastes as well as tap new ones that didn't even exist before. CCGs didn't exist 40 years ago. Cooperative games were a niche of a niche 20 years ago. Today they make a substantial chunk of the market. Essen Spiel allows a company a good, hard glance into the Christmas sales period, not to mention the grounds it provides for deals on partnerships, new language editions, wholesale purchases of existing stock, and many, many more, that the average gamer wouldn't care that much about. That's why one doesn't see only corporate megastructures in Essen. Asmodee are to totally dominate Hall 1 (and will probably have a very strong presence in Hall 3 as well) with their dozen multifaceted design studios. This however only increases the pressure for smaller publishers to be there and become visible. Desyllas games, a major Greek player (but an unkown quantity abroad), might even win this year's Kennerspeil des Jahers with Emojito!, a game it brought there last year for the first time. Drawlab Entertainment, also a Greek company, presented When I Dream in 2016 in Essen Spiel, for the game to become a humongous hit when it was taken over by Repos in 2017. The Czech Gamemat.eu joined last year already for the first time and blew people away with their mats and incredible scenery; idem for Lithuanian DeepCut Studio and their equally impressive wargaming miniature accessories. For such companies, Essen is a place to really get known, to make things happen, to strike deals that would have been impossible elsewhere.

The games that will be featured in Essen can already be found in numerous sites, irrespective of whether they are showcased there for the first time. The fair has also upgraded its exhibitor and new releases guide, which, to be fair, had been continuously substandard up to last year. There are many clear favourites to make a splash, and don't forget that the different gaming prizes do not always go hand in hand with the reception of the crowd. Boardgame-wise, expansions (like Kingdomino: Age of Giants) or reimplementations (like Codenames: Pictures XXL) for existing games will reign supreme. RPG-wise, I definitely hope Chaosium brings a truck of RuneQuest Glorantha, which was brought in limited quantities in GenCon as well. As for the new stuff, I wouldn't dream of making a guess. BGG's The Hotness and previews are quite indicative of what inspires the crowds, at least temporarily.

Can one meaningfully see all this in only four days? My experience from the last few years suggests that it is doable, even taking the fair's growth into account. Participating on plays of every new game won't be however, so plan in advance. By now, the fair's participants and their locations have been finalized. It's better to know what you are looking for, than trying to sort it out with more than 40.000 people around you each day. Properly approached, Essen Spiel is a one-in-a-year ludic extravaganza, an immensely fun time where nothing but games exist. That's true even for the guys wearing press badges, and try to frantically speak to every designer and publisher they managed to fix an appointment with. Trust me; I know.