National Games Week 2012: Gatherings, Games, and Good Times!

Ever wished you had a holiday that you could create all your own? As a gamer, have you ever desired to just have a whole week where you could decide which games you wanted to play, one after the other, for days and days?

As the Game Market Guru, I had the unique pleasure of helping to create just such a holiday, and I want to share that benefit with you. Originally, National Games Week was the brainchild of the former Executive Director of the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) and publisher of the former Games Quarterly Catalog, Mark Simmons.

With his departure from the game industry in mid-2005, the holiday had already made an impact. That first year, more than half a million Americans shared in the festivities. From the furthest tip of Maine to the great state of Alaska, and thousands of sites in between, folks broke out board games, cut and shuffled card games, and participated in party games, all with the point of outreach to new gamers, lapsed gamers, and veteran gamers alike.

With the change in administration, and the ordeals of determining the means for funding such an operation, the holiday has moved from its origin over the Thanksgiving week to a perhaps more suitable time frame of the winter holiday, sharing dates with Christmas through the New Year's Eve and New Year's Day holiday, taking advantage of the larger number of days where family and friends can gather. The holiday, intended to reflect the giving and sharing nature of the winter holidays, focuses on the merits of organized play, giving a means for game players to individualize their participation as they see fit.

Have a penchant for party games? Have a hankering for hex-based games? Born to play board games? Any way you want to play, National Games Week is your gateway to gameplay.

The date change will be made official for 2013, but as a bonus for those that wish to support the program, materials are already being made to provide the tools for a successful 2012 event as well.

The process is starting by way of a Kickstarter program, "National Games Week 2013: Gatherings. Games, Good Times"  If you want to participate, receive your NGW 2012 Player Pack, and help get the program off the ground, please check out the donor benefits list, and become a host, a donor, and perhaps a sponsor of the holiday itself!

Who else do you know would want to have a holiday of their very own? Don't we all?

  --Jonathan Albin, the Game Market Guru.