Video game companies have recently suffered massive layoffs, and the industry's largest convention was laid to rest last year. But the bustling of this summer's TooManyGames convention showed that the Philadelphia region is an unexpected site of passion and enthusiasm for playing and making games.
TooManyGames goes back 20 years, and this year's show on June 28-30 at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks had a record-high attendance of over 23,000 people, according to organizers. The growth of the event, which had 500 people attend in 2004, serves as proof that the local gaming community is alive and well, even while the larger industry teeters.
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The convention had almost 200 vendors selling retro video games and other products. Other halls were dedicated to tabletop gaming, signing booths for voice actors, esports tournaments, casual console gaming and arcade cabinets. The show floor had a sea of gaming fanatics trying to get around the expo center, some donning elaborate costumes.
Adjacent to the vendors was a small area devoted entirely to independent game developers, who appear at conventions to get feedback from players who try their demos. These developers frequent many conventions, so the growth of the grassroots Pennsylvania expo was perhaps evident to them the most.
"I see this (convention) growing more and more every year," said Mike Strollart, of South Jersey, who has attended TooManyGames three times. "It's slowly going to start rivaling the big ones we've been to before."
Strollart and his team were promoting their upcoming game "Below the Stone," and this year they found the need to expand their booth to accommodate the increasing number of attendees.
"I don't see it getting any smaller," said Anthony Fasano, a South Philly native who was at TooManyGames for a second time. "There's room to grow further down the halls. I can easily see it getting more cramped every year."
TooManyGames is thriving while the video game industry as a whole is undergoing growing pains. An estimated 10,800 people have been laid off from video game studios and publishers in 2024, already surpassing the total number from 2023. That is despite continuing consumer interest, with the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) reporting that 3 out of 5 people in the United States play video games and video game spending totaled $57.2 billion in 2023.
Last year, the ESA officially ended the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) after struggling to come back after the COVID-19 pandemic and facing the withdrawal of major partners like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft from the show. With the death knell of the industry's largest and most iconic trade show, relatively smaller events like TooManyGames are looking to fill the void.
A close point of comparison to TooManyGames is PAX, a series of conventions that include events in Seattle and Boston, along with a tabletop game convention every winter in Philadelphia called PAX Unplugged. Strollart believes TooManyGames can eventually catch up to PAX, which does not report its numbers but the recent PAX East 2024 event in Boston was estimated to attract over 100,000 attendees.
Game developer Bret Black of the studio Vashta Entertainment, who has been to TooManyGames six times, believes the culture in the convention has improved over the years.
"I'm seeing more community events going on, and just a greater sense of people trying to connect and meet each other," Black said. "I'd say people have gotten friendlier since I started coming, which is exactly what you want."
To Black, a Roxborough native, the convention's location was one of its biggest draws.
"I had no idea this existed when I was growing up," said Black, who reminisced about going to science fairs at the same expo center as a kid.
Gaining recognition and exposure can be challenging for an East Coast event like TooManyGames — and the Philly gaming scene as a whole — with most of the tech industry capitals being located on the other side of of the country in cities like San Francisco and Seattle.
"All the developers go to the West Coast because all of the studios are there," said Kenneth Oum, a developer based in Rittenhouse and the founder of video game studio Previously Pluto. "That's where the jobs are. The East Coast developers suffer. We don't have large studios, we don't have opportunities, we don't have job openings, and that's a big issue."
As a result, developers in the Philly and New Jersey area have found TooManyGames to have a unifying effect.
"One of the best things about expos is meeting other developers and meeting fans directly," Oum said. "Talking to other developers, it's like being in a war in the trenches together, suffering together to a degree."
Other local developers expressed similar sentiments, with Strollart calling TooManyGames "humble" and that all of the developers who attend want to "see each other succeed."
Fasano said, "Everybody's super noncompetitive and very cooperative and forthcoming."
To help TooManyGames continue to grow, Strollart said he intends to be involved with next year's event, particularly with the indie games area.
Oum, in the meantime, is working with a group called the Fellowship of Philly Games, aiming to create an umbrella organization that helps local video game developers.
"What I want the fellowship to do is to support local developers to grow and become bigger and create opportunities for new artists, programmers, visionaries, writers, designers, etc.," Oum said. "And the way to do that is to actually talk to everybody because developers are kind of like islands — they all have the same problem, but they don't talk to one another. So the goal of the fellowship is to connect with everyone and give them tangible support, either marketing, experience or actual finances."
Among the ideas that Oum mentioned were involving local independent businesses like Queen & Rook Game Cafe and the Philly Game Shop, as well as universities such as Drexel and Temple. Oum hopes this initiative will help grow the gaming scene not just in Philly but up and down the East Coast.
"It's not a zero-sum game. We all can benefit," Oum said. "As they say, rising tides raise every boat. In our experience with devs, everyone wants each other to succeed. And that's a great feeling. That's why I love this community."