UK GAMES EXPO
GAME ON
UK Games Expo is the biggest event in our calendar – but what’s the story behind it?
Interview by Charlie Pettit
Once upon a time, some 19 years ago, there was an enthusiastic gamer who wanted a core space to play games. Fast forward to the present day, and UK Games Expo hosts nearly 40,000 people over the course of three days at the NEC in Birmingham. Richard Denning, one of the directors of UKGE alongside Tony Hyams, sat down with us to talk about how it came to be, the powerhouse it is now, and the changes for this year. Whether you’ve been every single year, or are debating your first trip, it truly is something special.
YOU BEGIN IN A MASONIC LODGE
It’s not the line that you might expect, but before UK Games Expo took over the NEC, and before even it was hosted at the nearby Hilton Hotel, it began life in the Clarendon Suites off Hagley Road in Birmingham in 2007.
“It used to be a Masonic Lodge building used for banquets, medical exam type things and also weddings. So it was a strange building.” Richard says of it. “It only had about three or four windows, because it was a lodge building and obviously they tend to like to have a certain amount of secrecy. A lot of [the rooms] would have a lot of kind of quite elaborate paraphernalia – swords, sickles. shields and all sorts of things on the walls. I remember when we were setting up one day, my wife overheard somebody say, ‘we must remove the ceremonial suitcase of swearing in’. Whatever it was, they sort of ruffled around in some cupboard and removed a special suitcase that we weren’t supposed to know about.” Although they never found out what it was, it set the tone for games of mystery.
“We always used to say the building itself was good for roleplaying games, because it was one place where the building was slightly weirder than some of the people coming to the convention. And a particularly great place to run things like Cthulhu, as it was quite atmospheric. That first show, I think we used about 750 square metres of space.” For comparison, Richard estimates UK Games Expo 2025 will be between 50-60,000 square meters of space.
“The basements had individual rooms that we used to call a dungeon. We ran little immersive dungeon type experiences, because you could decorate them and move people around these little rooms. It was quite cool.” Richard explains that over the years, they produced more accurate maps of the building to maximise what space they had, but thematically, they noticed a void in their plans.