Origins Game Fair

Exhibitor's Hall

Origins started in 1975 with a gathering of game players in Baltimore, Maryland. The Interest Group Baltimore, a local wargaming club, worked with the Baltimore-based Avalon Hill game company to put on the first show that year at Johns Hopkins University.

Avalon Hill produced the first commercial war games back in 1958. In a nod to Baltimore's position as the home of Avalon Hill and the birthplace of the commercial wargame hobby, Don Greenwood, a game designer with Avalon Hill and founder of the convention, suggested calling the show "Origins". Over the next few years, both Avalon Hill and SPI (another wargame company) ran the show. As the show continued expanding, the Game Manufacturers Association assumed management in 1978. RuneQuest debuted as Chaosium's first RPG at the Origins convention in Ann Arbor, Michigan in July 1978.

In each of 1988 and 1992, Origins and Gen Con joined forces to hold a single convention in Milwaukee.[2][3]

In April 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was announced that Origins would be postponed from its usual mid-June date to October 7th-11th. In its place, an event called Origins Online was to be held that would allow attendees to "demo and buy games and merchandise" and offer "streaming workshops and educational seminars with guest authors, artists and game designers, plus hundreds of games online that attendees can sign up to participate in."[4]

In June, due to a lack of response by GAMA concerning Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd Protests, some members of the community who were intending to run or participate in Origins Online events stepped down, and others joined them in solidarity. Such a large number of people withdrew, it is speculated that Origins Online may not have been able to run without them.[5] Regardless of the reason, Origins Online was cancelled completely, and GAMA offered to "match, dollar for dollar, any exhibitor, sponsor, advertiser, or vendor who donates the amounts they are owed for Origins Online to one of" several different black organizations.[6] Soon after, the regular Origins convention was cancelled for 2020 as well, citing fears of a second wave of COVID-19. This would mark 2020 as the first year without an Origins convention since 1975.

Columbus, Ohio

"Alan Smithee" (the man in the gaudy jacket) consulting with his helpers at the 2007 Smithee Awards at the Origins International Game Expo

Throughout the first twenty years of its life, Origins migrated from city to city, until in 1996, GAMA decided to anchor Origins in a single location. After considering a number of possibilities, GAMA chose Columbus, Ohio.

Year	Dates	Attendance (Unique)
1996	July 4–7
1997	July 17–20
1998	July 2–5
1999	July 1–4
2000	July 13–16
2001	July 5–8
2002	July 4–7	10,500 (approximate)
2003	June 26–29	12,600[18]
2004	June 24–27	13,980
2005	June 30 - July 3	15,061
2006	June 29 - July 2	11,852
2007	July 5–8	11,104
2008	June 26–29	10,110
2009	June 25–28	10,030[19]
2010	June 24–27	10,669[19]
2011	June 22–26	11,502[19]
2012	May 30 - June 3	11,332[19]
2013	June 12 - June 16	11,573[19]
2014	June 11 - June 15[20]	12,902[21]
2015	June 3 - June 7[20]	15,938[22]
2016	June 15 - June 19	15,480[23]
2017	June 14 - June 18[20]	17,001[24]
2018	June 13 - June 17[25]	18,648[26]
2019	June 12 - June 16[27]	20,642

Several reports of sexual harassment emerged after 2018 Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio. [28] [29] [30] After multiple first hand accounts were published on social media [31] and Reddit,[32] GAMA, released a public statement [33] regarding the complaints and has since then updated its anti-harassment policies. [34]

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