The 2001 GAMA (Game Manufacturers Association) Trade Show took place at the Orleans Hotel/ Casino in Las Vegas on March 19-22.

The GAMA show is a convention for retailers, distributors, and manufacturers to learn about their industry, address needs and concerns and see new products and trends for the coming year.

This is a trade-only convention, not open to the general public. This year's convention boasted two full display halls and retailers from all over the country.

The main focus is on more traditional hobby-store gaming, such as miniatures games, trading card games and roleplaying games. There is a growing market, however, for finer board games, which seems to be a strong-but-small niche in the industry at this time.

I was able to attend the show because I live in Las Vegas and the owner of Triple J Hobbies is a personal friend (the store is where our game group plays).

I attended some retailer seminars the first day and was interested to hear the various gossip, comings and goings, and rumblings in the industry. I did hear some interesting perspectives from retailers during a couple of the seminars and round table discussions.

First, retailers are very happy with the sales of board games. The sales are a result of games like Settlers of Catan by Mayfair Games, and English language imports from Rio Grande Games. Some of the more successful stores also have sources to get games directly from Germany. A majority of stores also have at least 40 percent of their reatil space open for in-store gaming.

In a seminar about product diversifiaction, having a good selection of core board games was cited as being an area important to potential growth.

Additionally, the quality of product is important to retailers. In one seminar, a potential board game manufacturer asked retailers what would help his game sell. More than one retailer pointed out the high quality and playabiliity of German-style games. The industry is now being spoiled into expecting higher quality in their games.

But the other extreme also seems to be successful. Retailers also like the value found in the paper game catagory led by Cheapass Games and Placebo Press.

As a whole, the industry seems to be surviving the post-Pokeman era well. Most retailers reported very strong February sales for no obvious reason.

The industry as a whole doesn't seem to know what the next big trend will be, but does seem to be excited about tie-ins to both The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. The major manufacturers are positioning themselves for large potential sales from these areas.

An interesting statitstic that came up is that The Lord of the Rings triology has more than 100 million copies sold world wide. The industry would like to tap into more mainstream markets and is looking at franchise-type licensing agreements to do this. None of these areas may be of interest to board games specifically, but it is a general sign of where the industry as a whole is looking for growth.

The biggest news in our end of the industry came from Jay Tummelson of Rio Grande Games. Rio Grande will be printing the two-player card game version of The Lord of the Rings in partnership with Kosmos. Jay was smiling ear to ear and said that he didn't know how he got that game, but he did!

In other news, Mayfair seems to be intent on producing more games and increasing their market share. The Starfarers of Catan will be released "no later than June." They also seem to have latched onto Klaus Teuber designs, because they will also be doing the new Entdecker by Kosmos, and hope to have that out for Origins or GenCon this year.

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