Growing ICON board gaming event is back in a new, bigger venue
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IDAHO FALLS — The spring 2023 edition of the Idaho Convention for Boardgamers, or ICON, is coming to the Snake River Events Center at the Shilo Inn this Friday and Saturday.
This family-friendly event is the perfect excuse to get out, try out some new games and meet some new friends. ICON will also be debuting a few cool new features that gaming fans aren’t going to want to miss.
“We’ve expanded ICON,” convention organizer Jonathan DeYoung told EastIdahoNews.com. “We should have a game library of over 700 games. We’re going to have multiple role-playing events. We’re going to have some vendors and game designers there so people can talk with them and learn about their new games. We’re going to have about 12,000 square feet of room to play games in.”
The move was necessitated by a big upswell in people coming to ICON.
“We’ve already pre-sold more tickets than we sold for the last convention,” Deyoung said. “We’ve had a lot more interest in it. We’ve had some vendors and some other companies that have contacted us to come join us. There are actually quite a few people coming up from Salt Lake City or northern Utah. We’re capping it at about 300 people this time and we’ve already sold about 200 tickets.”
A new setting isn’t the only thing about ICON that’s changed. The convention has a new website where gamers can get all kinds of information about ICON, purchase badges and tickets and find hotels if they’re planning to stay overnight. (Click here to visit the ICON website.)
This year, ICON is also introducing new role-playing events. They include a good, old-fashioned Dungeons & Dragons dungeon crawl and some fun new games.
“I believe (game designer) Binary Cocoa is going to be doing a game based off ‘National Treasure,’ where Nicholas Cage steals The Constitution and (the players) are trying to get it back,” said DeYoung. “It won’t just be Dungeons & Dragons, but it will be a lot of fun, and it’s something we’re adding to ICON for the first time.”
Another new addition to ICON is “Play to Win,” a feature that will allow gamers to check games out of the library and play-test them. Gamers have chances to win the game they played at the end of the convention and take it home with them.
“We should have probably about a dozen games that will fall into the ‘Play to Win’ category,” DeYoung said.
DeYoung said it’s exciting to see ICON grow and he hopes it can become an event on the same level as other popular board gaming conventions.
“We’ve had a loyal following for quite a few years,” he said. “In the last couple of years, we’ve seen more people coming to the convention, and then they keep coming back. We were maxing out the last venue that we had at about 130, and when we were able to maintain that for a couple of years, it was like ‘OK, let’s see what we can do to get even more people coming.”
“We’re trying to make this like a mini-SaltCON (the Utah boardgame convention),” he added. “SaltCON has hit over 2,000 people now. We’re not there yet, but who knows? Maybe in the future, if we keep growing, we’ll be able to rent out the Mountain America Center Arena.”
ICON: Idaho Convention for Boardgamers is set for this Friday and Saturday, April 14 and 15, at the Snake River Events at the Shilo Inn beginning at 9 a.m. both days. Visit the ICON website for tickets, badges and other relevant information.
