An Eggcellent Time – A Retrospective of Origins Game Fair 2026

I haven’t been to Origins for a full convention since 2019, so let’s go over the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good

It was great to be back. It was an opportunity to hug friends I hadn’t seen in years and get a chance to sit down and play games with them. I even got to try playing a game I’ve been working on with some industry friends and got some great feedback from them. The publisher booths were busy and any demo spaces in the dealer hall were frequently filled.

Seeing families gaming and having fun was great. Watching kids get excited by the vendors in the hall is always fun. I went with a friend this year and it was their first Origins, so getting to see their face as we walked around the dealer hall was entertaining, as Origins is the largest convention they’ve been to thus far.

The gaming library was run by the Columbus Area Boardgaming Society (CABS) again this year and they did a great job. They didn’t have a great spot as they were in the very back of the side hall, but they had a ton of tables and finding an open one (or half of one at least) usually wasn’t difficult. This meant between the demo halls and events and the extensive library, I managed to get a good number of games played this year while at the show.

Magical Athlete is very silly fun that surprised me with how simple and entertaining it was. Devious is a clever anti-set collection game that I’m excited to try more of. Cyberpunk Legends gave me big Arkham Horror LCG vibes in the best way. SETI was great to play (check out my review here) with Moon and Wormholes continuing the space theme. Rising Cultures was a fun card based civilization building game that I managed to win on a tiebreaker. Citadels Duel and KPop Demon Hunters: Battle for the Spotlight were shown off from Asmodee at their press event and I enjoyed both games. Trickarus is a very thematic push your luck trick taking game where you want to take the right number of tricks without taking too many more. The friend I went with had never played 7 Wonders Architects so I taught it to them. Finally another friend brought Kiri-ai: The Duel to breakfast on the last day and we played after we ate. It’s a little pocket game of only 18 cards that I could see being quite fun to keep on you.

Despite not wanting to bring home too many games, I worry I did exactly that. You can see which games I got and for what purpose in this Geeklist on BoardGameGeek. If you’re in my area and want to check out any of the newly acquired games, please reach out and let me know!

The Bad

The layout of the dealer hall was a mess. The ratio of board game vendors (sellers, publishers, etc.) and craft folks (artists, authors, leather workers, etc.) was about one to one. For Origins being a game fair, it didn’t feel like it was focused on gaming. A lot of the craft vendors were selling game adjacent stuff – dice, dice trays, 3D printed inserts, and so on. Also being sold was a lot of geek culture stuff. Signs inspired by Firefly, Doctor Who, and Lord of the Rings. Lightsabers with sound effects. Laser cut lights of various mascots and characters. I’m certainly not saying they didn’t belong there, as Origins has always had a good chunk of creative folks selling their wares on the floor. But if the focus of the convention is a game fair, it should be more focused on games and gaming things, not random 3D printed objects.

The mixing of crafters and game companies also made things messy, with some large and well known publishers being pushed to the back of the gamer hall to force attendees to walk by a lot of other booths to get to what they were after – just like getting milk in the grocery store. Unfortunately this also left some interesting choices for booths near the entrance, including the not quite family friendly Cosplay Deviants. It was a bit of a surprise to see that booth front and center at the show.

Everything was digital this year, from the guidebook to the coupons and maps. This is great if everyone in your group has a smart phone, but as Origins generally caters to families. Not all kids have smart phones, so it was hard for some families to partake of some of the offerings of the show. The map section of the app offered a clickable view of the exhibitor hall, while searching that same hall was on a different page entirely. I found myself using a fan made map tool over the official Origins app multiple times as it let me zoom in and out and was functionally faster than the native app. I also know it confused a lot of folks when the initial email with the link went out for the app and it led to a password protected page. The coordination and communication of GAMA and the folks behind Origins seemed muddled and messy at best.

The Ugly

I saw five different booths selling the same 3D printed eggs for holding dice. I saw a bunch of sellers with fidgets, wiggly animals, life counters, and tons of other 3D printed stuff easily found online and made by anyone with a 3D printer. One friend said that the dealer hall felt like a flea market, and I unfortunately have to agree. The amount of stuff created not by hand, but by lasers or 3D printers made the exhibitor hall feel cheap and disjointed from the game publishers and sellers there.

I also saw so much intellectual property theft it would make a lawyer’s head explode. I’m all for being creative and making your own art of characters, and I’ve purchased game and character inspired art before from vendors, but when a seller is just 3D printing screens from video games or making stained glass images taken directly from video games, it means anyone who is playing by the IP rules is at a disadvantage and can’t compete with people wrongly selling things from companies like Pokémon and Marvel.

If the dealer hall continues to cater to the craft folks without some kind of rules and regulations around the types of craft items being sold, I worry it will continue to feel less like a game fair and more like a yard sale.

Conclusion

I’m glad I went. It was a great opportunity to catch up with friends and remind folks that I’m still producing content. There were some bumps along the way with the app and some of the choices made by the Origins staff, but I look forward to going again. Maybe not next year, but in a few years time. Give the folks behind it a chance to work on the game to craft ratio, develop better communication skills, and grow as a team.