I've got to suggest PAX, the Penny Arcade Expo. It's the fastest-growing and largest multi-platform game festival in the U.S.A. By multi-format I mean it gives equal love to tabletop games, video games, and computer games.
It's doubled in size each year, with 20,000 attendees at last year's show. This year's PAX is August 24, 25, 26 in Seattle, WA.
www.pennyarcadeexpo.com.
Exhibitors include Wizards of the Coast, Privateer Press, Tenacious Games, Turbine, and Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. Plus a whole bunch of others.
It's likely the friendliest show you'll ever attend. There's this overall "come as you are" attitude of inclusiveness; it really is remarkable. Everyone's just cool to everyone else.
Oh, in addition to booths full of new and unreleased games there's also panels and tournaments and freeplay and nerdcore concerts. What's nerdcore? MSNBC just did a feature on the genre. There are two documentaries about it; most of the footage of both was filmed at last year's PAX. Here's the
link.
If you're on the West Coast and want to go to an awesome game con, well, PAX is pretty much it. Come see WotC show off in their home state!
-z
Full disclosure: I run the show.
