Gencon used to be known as the best place in the world for tabletop and board gamers. With nearly 50,000 attendees every day and nearly every game publisher setting up shop for sales of new games, exclusives, and countless opportunities to play, it is a bucket list event for many a nerd. However, over the last decade, the convention has circled the drain of woke politics, tarnishing what once was a wonderful weekend of gaming. This year, they're getting canceled by the woke themselves because they supposedly canceled a tabletop RPG award, The Crit Awards, from being onsite because of their anti-Jewish stances. The truth, however, is even more ridiculous, like most woke outrages.
As far as Gencon's descent into wokeness, the last decade has seen the convention mired by:
1. Threatening to leave Indiana because Mike Pence was a vocal Christian as governor.
2. Banning YouTuber The Quartering for getting sucker punched by a trans activist, literally covering for someone who did violence over the victim because of politics.
3. Banning Jeff Bergen from TGG Games, one of the biggest retailers in the country, and game publishers, too, because he was a known Trump supporter.
4. Putting a draconian vax and mask mandate into place even after those were shut down.
5. Continually pushing LGBTQ DEI content above everything else, which doesn't even make sense in the context of board games.
6. Annually hosting a mentally ill leftist agitator posing as sci-fi writer Patrick s. Tomlinson for writer's symposium panels.
In the latest controversy, their tabletop gaming awards, The Crit Awards, posted a call for "Inclusivity and Respect," which started with obnoxious woke concepts. Most of the points are standard woke talking points about racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and the other laundry list of insults they throw around. But it gets weird in section 1.5, where it says, "Individuals who identify as Zionists, promote Zionist material, or engage in activities that without a doubt support Zionism are not eligible for nomination."
Even though the left likes to use the word Zionism, what they mean by that is Jew, and it's their way of skirting around saying it so they don't sound like the dreaded Literal Nazis they call everyone else who disagrees with them.
The Crit Awards were removed from Gencon after this information made the rounds on X, largely due to an expose done by RPGPundit, which went viral. Because of this, The Crit Awards posted a lengthy statement saying they'd been removed because of safety concerns, acting like some random Rabbis with baseball bats might be attending Gencon to harass the poor pro-Palestinians.
However, a new statement proves that The Crit Awards' first statement in this matter is false. In the latest statement, The Crit Awards admit Gencon gave them conditions to which they needed to adhere to in order to remain on the site. This is likely due to Indiana's anti-discrimination laws, which would not allow discriminatory events like the Crit Awards to occur in their publicly funded convention hall.Â
The Crit Awards refused the conditions and therefore canceled themselves from Gencon, while Gencon did what it could to host them there.
While Gencon never offered such talks with conservative people like Jeff Bergen or The Quartering to allow them to stay in the convention, the hypocrisy is clear for the woke. However, it didn't stop the woke from canceling Gencon.
Dozens of X accounts are calling for boycotting Gencon in the wake of this craziness, including Critical Role's Critical Bard. While the boycotts and complaining on X exist, they don't appear to be moving the needle to get Gencon to respond publicly to their woke cancel mob.
It's a lesson for any convention, event, or business: if you just ignore the woke cancel mobs, they scream in their echo chambers and go away. You only give them power by responding to them and canceling on their behalf. For Gencon to truly get back to being the pinnacle of gaming, it will have to stop bowing to social pressure from these people in the future and simply let people have fun again.
This is extremely depressing. I guess now gamers know a little of how women felt when women only festivals were shut down by trans militancy.
If it has to die then it has to die. Hopefully something better and non woke can rise from the ashes.