I have the privilege of living not too far from the biggest annual board game fair in the world – SPIEL in Essen, Germany, which happens every October from Thursday to Sunday, and which has been around since 1983. As a board gamer, this is obviously a dream come true! I’ve been a casual board gamer for about 20 years, and a very serious board gamer for about 10-12 years. During my study abroad semester in Australia in 2013, I started to attend a weekly board game club, and once I was back home in Germany, I tried to find something similarly cool1. It was only in 2016 that I finally found my board game crew here, and ever since then I learned how to attend SPIEL like a pro.

I’m not sure if it was my first SPIEL, but the first that I remember was in 2015 – I went only on Friday, and as this fair is, I was pretty overwhelmed. I was there with my ex and two friends, and we played a game that was definitely way too complex for us at that point in our board game career. I went again in 2016, this time only on Thursday (due to family commitment on the rest of that weekend), and it was already much improved, since this was when I had just found my board game crew.

Finally, in 2017 I was ready to get serious about SPIEL! I went for 3 days that year, and that’s where I realized that you really need more than one day, because the first day is always overwhelming, and on the following days it’s much easier and more relaxed to just go there, play games, and enjoy the fair. The two following years (2018 and 2019) I went for all four days, and here I first realized that perhaps Saturday is not that great. It is always the most crowded day, and the masses of people squeezing through the halls just becomes claustrophobic.

Along came 2020 – and no SPIEL. Thanks Covid. If there’s one good thing about Covid and the cancellation of SPIEL, it’s that the following SPIEL in 2021 was probably the best ever. Tickets were severely limited due to the still ongoing pandemic, and masks were required throughout the fair. Hand sanitizer was everywhere (which only makes sense at a fair where hundreds of people touch board game pieces). SPIEL 2021 was so relaxed and amazing. No squeezing crowds. No people coughing in your face. Plenty of games to play, and allover a good time. I wish they’d have kept that attendance limit.

Quite the opposite happened though, because I think a year or two later, the organizers of SPIEL “sold” the fair to a new organizer. It was previously a family run enterprise for 3 generations. It’s impressive the fair got as big as it is with such a small team, but they were hitting their limits with this ever-growing fair, and wanted to retire eventually as well. The new organizers really worked on the branding and marketing on the fair, and attempt improvements every year. Whether these improvements are successful IMHO is questionable. One of the biggest complaints people always had was that Hall 3 of the fair was too dense and crowded, since that is where the majority of the “expert” games are. In the past couple of years, the new organizers tried to spread this out over the other halls, and they keep adding extra halls. Last year they added Hall 7, and this year they added Hall 8 to the fair, where they mostly put family games. But still, I felt again this year that Hall 3 is too crowded, and I didn’t even dare to go there before 4:30pm when the crowd lightens a bit.

Another thing that I was really annoyed by this year is that they no longer offer a 4-day ticket. Up until last year, it was possible to buy a ticket for all 4 days, which I always did (even though ever since 2021, I’ve only ever attended 3 out of the 4 days). It was fairly affordable and allowed you a lot of flexibility. Sadly, this year they no longer offered it, instead you have to buy a 22,50 EUR ticket for every single day – meaning if you want to go all four days, it’s 90 EUR! Last year the 4-day ticket was 61 EUR, which was already quite expensive. I remember years when a 4-day ticket was 30 EUR or less. I understand that they removed the 4-day ticket to have a better control of how many people attend each day, but I feel like capitalism is ruining SPIEL as well.

This year’s SPIEL was definitely fun, but I felt like there were no particularly exciting games this year. I got to play only one heavy game, and other than that mostly played light and silly games whenever I saw a free table and wanted to sit down for a while. Perhaps it represents a general trends of the board game industry – I feel that the board game market is very oversaturated, and there are barely any new standout games lately.

Perhaps I’m also getting older and less patient, but sometimes I just prefer to play an old favorite (such as Terraforming Mars, Ark Nova, Puerto Rico, Great Western Trail or Clank) rather than spending time and effort to learn a new game that I might not even enjoy playing. And aside from that, sometimes it’s just better to wait a year and see if the hyped game of SPIEL stands the test of time – and then you can probably buy it cheaper in the following year.

SPIEL has also expanded a lot into other types of games, most prominently RPGs, trading card games and wargames. Most of Halls 1 and 2 are now dedicated to those. This correlates to a generic shift that I’m observed, where more people are starting to get into RPGs specifically.

Regardless of the hype, attending SPIEL is also always just fun for hanging out with people – going with my partner, and/or meeting friends from our board game crew there and playing games together. Even if there are not super exciting games, just walking around and playing silly little games can be a lot of fun. I will probably go again next year for the same amount of days, because when living just a 20 minute drive from the fair, why not?