Essen

Italian or Polish labor is always cheap, and just get the stuff out.

The other day I saw some of this cheap labour locked in a car at the Gare du Nord, bound for Essen.

They were a miserable lot of grimy, unfit-looking men, the sort that could not get work in France or anywhere else.

They were all drunk, some shouting, some asleep on the floor of the car, some sick.

Dusseldorf, April 30th.

You feel the hate and the roar as an actual concrete thing.

It is as definite as the unswept, cinder-covered sidewalks of Dusseldorf, or the long rows of grimy brick cottages, each one exactly like the next, where the workers of Essen live.

It is not only the French that the Germans hate.

Yes.

So, Bart, what we will talk about today? Today we will talk about Spiel Essen 2026.

Yes, you were there and I guess you have a lot of things to talk about Essen because For your information, Bart is attending Essen Spiel for almost some years, I do believe.

And I haven't been there yet.

So today I will ask Bart about some stuff.

How does it look? Yeah, for the people

from US, Spiel Essen is a big trade fair focused on board games, war games and RPGs.

And it's like...

While the French are taking the coal uh you know the workers are calling for a coal ration uh for their families so they can you know keep the lights on keep warm um the it's january it's february and the industrialists are keeping the coal stockpiled at the mines and handing it over to the occupiers so so much for passive resistance passive resistance for you uh active collaboration for us why are you kidding me they might uh You know, they might take my stuff.

So on March 31st, the French army killed several strikers and wounded 42 strikers in Essen.

These are workers for Krupp, another major industrialist.

uh krupp himself is arrested later on in april um and there are you know scattered things going on in in the way of resistance active resistance a workers militia takes over the town hall at mulheim in a on april 13th and the german police storm it, take it back on April 21st, killing six and wounding 70.

Without further ado, let's get started.

Hey there everybody, it's Mike DiLisio, and today I want to talk about my top 10 most anticipated games from Asia that are going to be at the Essen Spiel Fair this year in Germany.

We are gearing up, getting ready to go to that as I am filming this.

And so I thought I would just talk about the games that are either coming from Asian publishers or from Asian designers that maybe are from publishers that are outside of Asia that are going to be at the fair this year.

This is very much an international gaming convention, as it is, and in addition to games from Europe, surely, and also from the Americas.

You're also seeing a lot of Asian countries that are being represented at the fair.

It's also, the timing of the Essen Fair is not long after the second installment of the Tokyo Game Market, which is the biggest Asian gaming convention, and they have two sessions of that a year.

And the autumn session is not long before this, so sometimes you'll see games from the most recent game market also make their way over to Germany.

Hi everyone, special podcast this time round because for two reasons.

Firstly, you want to hear my thoughts on Essen, don't you? I mean, I figured that's half the reason you're here.

But also because I'm not going to be around this weekend for much, because next weekend I have...

HandyCon.

I would need to game during the week.

So I figured, you know what, why don't we just get the podcast in a little bit early and just issue it tomorrow or something like that in advance because then it kills two birds with one stone.

So this one is basically going over kind of briefly just what happened at Essen for 2026.

So Essen is trying to get the...

And of course, there is this...

You have the Ruhrgebiet with cities like Gelsenkirchen and Dortmund and Essen and Bochum and they all count as their own cities but it's like a huge region where football is like an anchor for the people there and a lot of young guys play football and There are players in the national team at the moment coming from this region, but not necessarily all from Dortmund.

I was just checking there, man, and before I let you jump in, the only country I can think of who maybe rival Germany with this kind of decentralization is actually perhaps Brazil.

We touched about Sao Paulo there.