View from the Game Store is a new weekly(-ish) column by Marcus King of Titan Games & Music in Battle Creek and Kalamazoo, Michigan.  This week, King talks about the recently completed GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas.

This past week I spent five days and four nights in Las Vegas at the GAMA Trade Show, sponsored by the Game Manufacturers Association, at the fabulous Bally's Hotel and Casino.  This is my 10th or so GTS I have attended, since 1997 or 1998 when I started attending.

Bally's is a great place to stay--and our room was great.  The nice fellow at the front desk upgraded us from a regular room to a suite for just $50 a night, and I scored major points with my wife, Colleen, by getting the Jacuzi Suite--which she really enjoyed.  Bally's would be my FIRST choice for a vacation to Las Vegas, not only cause the rooms are great, but the service we got was first rate!

GTS kicked off on Monday with a little routine we call "Bag Stuffing"--this is where the GAMA Staff, volunteers and assorted hangers on (like me) get together and put the flyers, freebies and fun stuff into the convention attendee bags.  In the past these were usually plastic T-shirt style bags, but this year Mayfair Games and GAMA provided reusable bags, like you might buy for a couple bucks at an upscale grocery store.  We used our bag all weekend to tote swag (Stuff We All Get--SWAG) around the show.

At 5PM GAMA hosted a meet-n-greet, for all attendee's to get together, have a snack and a couple drinks, and hang out.  This was fun, too!

Tuesday, I pretty much put my mouth where the money was (get your mind out of the gutter!) and did my five seminar presentations.  My seminars included "The Entertainment Model," "New to Used," "Guerilla Marketing" and a couple more.  They were attended from 35 to 70 people per session.  Lou Zocchi, Dave Wallace and Mike Webb had competing seminars, so I was not too disappointed to see that my numbers were respectable--and one seminar I did had only one empty seat.

I think Mike Webb's seminar, attended by my wife, was attended so far past capacity, we just won't say how stuffed the room was--but, the man is knowledgeable, and had I not been obligated to present my own seminar, I would have attended his.  Overall, I heard a lot of positive comments on ALL the seminars presented this year.

Wednesday the "Exhibitors Hall" opened at 11AM, and the rush of attendee's was on!  The exhibitors hall was full of vendors, publishers, distributors and a few new companies that I had not previously heard of.  GAMA had asked that attending retailers think of the show as an order writing show--and so my wife and I did our part spending about $10K on various orders.  Highlights of what we bought were a goodly sized order of Mayfair Games, Chessex and Crystal Caste Dice, large orders with both Alliance and ACD Distributors and a nice order with Premiere Hobby, who did not have a booth, but the owner, Sito, was nearby when I was oooh-ing and aaaah-ing in the UltraPro booth, and got my order for a LOT of card sleeves.

We also added some wooden games from two companies whose names escape me at the moment, but whose products we had not previously carried.  Oh, and a bunch of shirts from that cool T-shirt place: Offworld Designs.  I love those shirts!!!  Thanks Barb!

Also of note is that we saw a lot of products in person we had previously passed on, and had planned not to bring in--such as Mayfair's 1853 and Nuns on the Run, and a couple of releases by Steve Jackson Games.  Neither had really appealed to me, but after seeing them, we decided to bring them in after all.

And, as far as preorders, we had initially ordered a small quantity of Dust by Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG).  But after meeting the creator, and talking about the game, we increased our orders by 500%.  This game looks killer!!!!  My wife was also able to sign up for Magic events at our Battle Creek store in the Wizards of the Coast booth, and that was a great addition for our store.

On Thursday we had breakfast on Mayfair--who had about 20 retailers eating breakfast in their "learning center" (my term, not theirs) and then taught us four games each!  We learned the Catan dice game and three others.  This resulted in our ordering three of the games we were taught.  I appreciated the breakfast, and the games they gave us for attending!  Nice!!!

For me, I have long said that GTS offers the best opportunity a retailer has to "learn" or "get training" on their craft.  But, lets face it, seminars can only teach so much.  And, while I certainly learned more at my first GTS, this was my second best learning experience in 24 years of retailing.  Thanks to Mayfair and WotC who were training people to play and sell their games.  As well as the Wednesday Night Gaming Night, where Colleen and I learned another five games each!

I have returned from GTS all fired up!!  Appreciative of the training provided to us by the publishers, and the manufacturers association--as well as excited about the future of GTS.

It is my intention to help GAMA with seminars again next year and to also assist them in finding new and varied seminar topics, and presenters.  But I'm also hopeful that other publishers will take the same tactic pioneered by Mayfair Games--and hope that other manufacturers and publishers will provide training to retailers as they did this year!!

Smarter, better-trained retailers will help build a better gaming community for all of us in this industry.

At least that is how it looks from my view, as a game storeowner.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.