I launched Board Game Beat in late January 2026 with an ambitious plan: cover three shows — Spielwarenmesse, Toy Fair NY, and GAMA Expo — to highlight as many upcoming game releases as possible.
However, two things complicated matters. First, real-life events in February consumed a lot of work time both then and in subsequent months. Second, and of more relevance for this site, by the time I hit GAMA Expo, I felt like I was reliving the earlier two shows. Didn't I just see this "newly announced" game? Meet with this publisher? I'm already flush with info from the earlier two shows, so why am I loading more photos on my phone than I will ever have time to publish? Why am I writing still more notes about games that I might never cover?!
These feelings arise after most shows, especially after Gen Con and SPIEL Essen, and ahead of Origins Game Fair in mid-June 2026 I decided to take a more relaxed approach to my mission, starting with a trip that lasted only Wednesday through midday Friday. Origins has never had a huge number of game releases, and when BoardGameGeek livestreamed from Origins — something that hasn't happened since 2019 — the stream featured more designs being crowdfunded in the future than designs available now. I didn't expect that to have changed over the past seven years, so let's compress my travel time so that I can spend the weekend at home.
On top of that, I decided not to stress about covering every game possible. No matter how hard I try, it's impossible to cover everything in depth, so let me preemptively give myself permission to walk past a booth without stopping. Let me walk the city and absorb the local environment rather than spend twelve hours a day in the convention center stressing that someone might demo a prototype that I don't see. Let me finally embrace this work-life balance that I've heard so much about.
After all, when I look back at these trips years later, what I remember best of these trips and what I still share with others are the non-game elements, so let me make more of those memories...while also doing my job.
Amazingly enough, I stuck to this plan, thanks in part to me taking a room at a hostel an hour's walk from downtown. I love walking around cities, so Wednesday night after the Allplay preview event for media, I walked past a never-ending stream of rainbow-bedecked businesses on High Street, slowly getting soaked from a light mist until I finally reached my hostel with enough time to write up the aforementioned event before going to bed at a reasonable hour.
As for the convention itself, I saw enough new material to make my trip worth it...or at least I think I did. Maybe a better way to say it is that I saw enough to make me feel I sampled Origins 2026 and reported what stood out to me. Whereas previously I felt the compulsion to try for (while failing at) comprehensiveness, now I'm going for a taster, which allows me to wrap up coverage in a retrospective post like this one instead of simply dribbling out material until it's washed away by other announcements and lost in the flow.
Despite not having attended Origins Game Fair since 2019, the experience felt familiar. Ah, yes, you can enter the Hyatt Regency, take the escalator up through the Big Bar on 2 (where I had a BLT in 2018 that made me violently ill), then walk along a long corridor that connects you to escalators down into the Greater Columbus Convention Center. Aside from me being grayer and on my own, it's almost like no time has passed...
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Advice for Event Organizers
Unfortunately, the struggle to find where to pick up your Origins badge was also familiar, although this might be due to me getting a free badge as part of my GAMA membership. You can't get those at the regular badge pick-up at the north end of the convention center, but instead at a special table on the second floor about halfway through the center. I was lucky in that I showed up midday on Wednesday and encountered no wait at the main pick-up spot, but I know of others in the industry who waited 45 minutes in the initial line only to discover at the counter that they had wasted their time.
Ideally, this would never happen, but signage at most events is insufficient. Ideally, convention organizers would "playtest" their event the way that designers playtest their creations — by blind playtesting, that is, by taking someone who knows nothing about the event and paying them to do a task. Buy them pizza and a drink at Mikey's Late Night Slice on the corner of Vine St. and N. High St., give them a QR code, and ask them to enter the convention center and pick up their badge. Say nothing else and see how long it takes them to return for the unicorn bar dessert.
Two other things to mention about the Origins badges: First, they didn't include a person's name. I imagine this was done for privacy reasons, but ideally the organizer would make this an option for attendees, not the default choice. Maybe when you apply for a badge, you have to submit your real name and complete a "name listed on badge" field, with "{no name listed}" being an option.
As someone who attends Origins for business purposes and meets others for business purposes, I would appreciate seeing a person's name on their badge since (whispers) I often forget names. I'll remember a person's face, but struggle to recall who they are and where they work, likely because I meet lots of people within a short window and they mush together in my memory.
During the show, I ran into someone with face blindness, which my sister-in-law also has, and names on badges would be a huge help for them, along with folks in my situation.
I suppose I could resolve this problem by taking the approach of introducing myself at each meeting and hoping the other person would do the same, but then I'd have the awkwardness of sounding like an aloof git who thinks they need to announce their presence.
The second issue with Origins 2026 badges was that they were printed vertically, with a base too narrow for the ribbons that attendees use both because the ribbons are essential for admittance to certain events and because attendees love to promote what they love. Thus, you needed to place at least one ribbon on the left or right edge of your badge in order to make that badge's base wide enough for other ribbons — and this looks less attractive than normal.
Many attendees love to have a huge chain of ribbons on their badge, and this seemed like a design move made without consideration for the public.
I don't recall seeing "helpers" during Origins who were ready to answer questions...but that might be because I've been to this show previously and weren't looking for them.
One thing I always appreciated about BoardGameGeek events was the number of people with BGG jerseys throughout the convention space who could answer questions. (Sometimes attendees would ask me a question, but I had no role in planning BGG events, so I'd take them to someone who did know and I can't recall spending more than a minute looking for someone.)
When walking the exhibitor hall, I found the layout of booths less than ideal, mostly because your flow through the aisles was constantly being interrupted, with many aisles shifting in their path to cut off your vision across the hall—
—and with other aisles being cut off completely by vendor booths or event spaces.
Seems odd to design a space that's difficult for attendees to move through. Maybe I'm unusual in how I navigate exhibit halls, but I want to try to see as much as possible, so I go up one aisle, then down another, up and down, up and down in a boring, methodical manner — and this layout makes it challenging to ensure that you see everything, which is a drawback for certain vendors. Maybe the Origins organizers thought that I and others needed a tiny bit more excitement in our lives, but I imagine this is more about making cool, splashy layouts than anything else.
One vendor I spoke with said that they were promised visibility, despite being at the back of the hall, but vendors between them and the entrance doors had banners that blocked said visibility. Another vendor pointed out that a booth directly in front of the entrance doors cost a premium due to its inherent visibility, but then Origins added an additional row of booths between those "front" booths and the doors, so what was that cost for again?
Still another vendor said that they reached out to Origins repeatedly for a list of media members attending the show so that it could send out invites for a publicity event, but that list didn't arrive until less than a week prior to Origins' opening date.
And speaking of things happening ahead of the show, for weeks Origins included a promotion for Southwest Airlines in its mailings to attendees:
Southwest Airlines is offering discounted fares for Origins Game Fair attendees traveling into the city. Book through SWABIZ to access reduced rates and streamline your arrival before the convention goes live.
I used that code when searching for airfare rates, then I searched for rates on Travelocity and discovered that rates for flights on Southwest were the same either with the code or without. Hmm. As you might expect, I became less curious to explore other promotions in future mailings.
Despite all my kvetching, my Origins experience was fine. I saw new and upcoming games and wrote about them. I did not get ill, thanks in part to a ingrained habit of fist-bumping that I overrode only once by accident, after which I immediately washed my hands. I discovered a fabulous gluten-free dining option a half-hour walk from the convention center. I enjoyed reconnecting with a few friends and acquaintances, one of whom asked whether I was at the show for work or pleasure, with me replying, "A bit of both, I hope".
Mission accomplished...now on to Gen Con 2026!
