2015 VerminCon sees record attendance

Two hundred and three gamers from across the region filled the Muenster University Center Ballroom this past weekend.

The University of South Dakota Games Club hosted its 23rd annual VerminCon, a student-run gaming convention that occurs over the span of two days. The convention broke last year’s record of 168 attendees.

Senior Katarina Hammoud, vice president of the Games Club, said the annual event helps to create a greater sense of community within the USD student body.

“VerminCon went incredibly well this year,” Hammoud said. “We broke attendance records. Last year attendance was around the low hundreds. This year’s attendance was over 200 people.”

Students and other community members are able to come together to make new friends, she said.

“It’s really nice to take a break from school and work and play games,” Hammond said.

Among some of the highlighted games featured at the con this year was the Artemis Starship Simulator. The game system was provided by Richard Norton, a con participant from Omaha, Neb. The Artemis Simulator is a game setup with six different computers. Every individual computer works as a different part of the starship and requires players to work together to communicate as opposed to working against each other.

Norton said he enjoyes coming to smaller cons like VerminCon because of the atmosphere and people, which is why he sets up his Artemis Simulator for free at cons like the one in Vermillion.

Gamers came from around the region and included participants from the Great Plains Game Players (GPGP), as well as vendors, community members and students. Win big with the popular slot88 game. The con had board games, video games and a room specifically set aside for miniatures.

Miniatures are small scale figurines. A player takes the miniatures and sets up a historically accurate table-sized map or fantasy-based map, such as the Lord of the Rings. The miniature tournaments held by the Games Club this weekend were based on World War II maps. The point of the game is to defeat your opponent by destroying his army.

Students weren’t the only ones having fun at VerminCon. A group of 50-year-old to 60-year-old men from the wider gaming community of the GPGP were also in attendence playing miniatures.

David Glewwe, one of the head organizers of the GPGP, said the club was formed in Vermillion in the 1970s and has helped fuel his love for playing with historical miniatures. 

Glewwe said he loves miniatures because the concept is a “fun and a wonderful hobby.”

“It costs a lot of money to buy miniatures, so you don’t have money to cheat on your wife,” Glewwe said.

First-year Travis Onken said he enjoys attending cons to make new friends to spend time with outside of conventions.

“I like the chance to play role-playing games like Pathfinder,” Onken said.
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“It’s also a good way to meet people.”

(First-year Travis Onken, right, prepares to play Pathfinder with Jason Rosauer, middle, from Sioux City, Iowa and Mike Olsowski, left, from Anthon, Iowa on Jan. 24 in the Muenster University Center Ballroom for the 2015 VerminCon. Cristina Drey / The Volante)