What I didn't realize from previous Gen Cons was that the gaming really starts on the Wednesday before the official opening. The convention hall is open and people start playing pickup games of "Settlers of Catan", "Are you a Werewolf?", "Game of Thrones the CCG," and everything in between.

Wednesday is Trade Day for Gen Con as well, where anyone in the industry can pay an extra $100 to gain access to seminars catered to the business of creating, publishing, marketing and selling games. It is also a chance to play game demos for almost all the new games at Gen Con before the crazy busy event schedule begins.

For out-of-towners, coming Wednesday means that you can get settled, pick up your swag-bag, and register for events if you need to. This will end up costing an extra $200 in hotel and parking though, so coming early Thursday is a viable play for many. A trip to Gen Con costs a lot of money. If you're going to flop down that expense, you may as well squeeze as many games and other experiences out of it as you possibly can. So that's what I did.

Along with 30,000 other people I will be attending Gen Con Indy 2011. I stayed with my grandparents the first time I went to Gen Con and used the bus to ferry myself to and from the convention. It was incredible. It was 1986 and the convention was in Milwaukee at the Mecca Convention center. I don’t think they can call convention centers “Mecca” anymore. Mostly because Mecca will not pay for the naming rights.

Gen Con is one of the best run conventions in existence. The key is the event submission and sign-up system. Anyone can submit an event. Pre-registered users can obtain tickets for those events. If there are open slots for any reason, guests can show up on the spot with generic tickets to get in. The result is to allow attendees to form a reliable schedule months ahead of time and eliminate or reduce useless waiting in lines to get into events. I like it a lot. This system allows mainstream games plenty of room to satisfy demand while also gives fruity bizarre events a chance to be seen; it doesn’t hamper the creativity of exhibitors.

The people at Gen Con simply do a great job.