NASAGA 2026 Annual Meeting Summary
By Brian Stauber, NASAGA 2027 Chair
If you couldn’t make it to NASAGA 2026, we missed you! Here’s a summary of what I presented at our annual meeting.
The New Reality of Applied Play
Before I talk about where NASAGA stands, it’s worth discussing the larger state of the field. Interest in analog games is at an all-time high: GenCon attendance this year set a record at over 74,000 attendees, and the global board game market is expected to reach close to $18 billion in sales. Trading card games likewise are seeing a massive post-pandemic boom. Interest in Tabletop Role-playing games (TTRPGs) and Actual Play performances continue to grow, as does viewership of shows like Taskmaster, The Traitors, and Game Changer.
That growing interest in experiential learning and applied play has also led to more conferences on the topic since the COVID-19 pandemic. A short list of those includes: Play Make Learn, Serious Play, Games for Change, Meaningful Play, Reacting to the Past, and Board Game Academics, just to name a few. Many of these overlap in themes and timing with other conferences and there is little coordination between organizers.
The view from NASAGA
At the same time as the conferences themselves have boomed, funding for conference attendance at companies, nonprofit organizations, and academic institutions has shrunk or been revoked. NASAGA has seen this in our own ranks with members in academia having been affected especially by funding and position cuts. Previously a large source of funding for NASAGA attendees came from professional development funds, travel, and presentation budgets for attendance. With shifting organizational priorities and loss of government funding, these funding sources can no longer be relied upon.
As a quick refresher, NASAGA exists - according to our bylaws - for four purposes:
Facilitate communication between persons, associations and organizations, interested in the field of simulation and gaming;
Promote the training of specialists in diverse and general fields of simulation and gaming;
Facilitate communication between these specialists and policy-makers, students, and other concerned persons;
Promote the development of better techniques in the field of simulation and gaming.
To achieve these goals, NASAGA currently has two main mechanisms: our online presence - via our Discord server, website blog posts, and social media posts on LinkedIn - and the annual conference. Our social engagement is very limited compared to other online communities in this space - both commercial and educational. We are wholly reliant on volunteers and members to lead these outreach efforts.
Our annual conference saw an influx of new attendees in 2026 and a large number of proposal submissions - especially as related to TTRPGs. However we still remain a smaller sized conference even with this new fervor. We believe this is due to limited travel budgets and competition with other conferences that happen to be scheduled at the same time - many members chose to attend Meaningful Play in Pittsburgh. We do think we offer two key value propositions to differentiate us from other conferences: NASAGA members tend to be welcoming, and our sessions generally require a portion dedicated to actual experiential play. Especially in a time where people are seeking connection and interactivity, this is a marketing point.
At this time, we have not identified a location for a 2027 Conference and instead are exploring collaborations with other experiential learning and applied play conferences. I hope to have more information about this in the coming weeks.
Our membership fee ($30 annually) primarily supports our members in two ways: a discount to the annual conference and access to SAGE’s Simulation and Gaming Journal. We think the latter is particularly powerful, as it includes back access to some invaluable material from the ‘70s and ‘80s, but we can do more. We intend to reach out to survey members about how else NASAGA can provide support.
Our current fundraising is limited to conference sponsorship, membership fees, and scholarship donations. Until 42EdGames’ donation to sponsor the 2026 conference, our 2025-2026 income was heavily based on membership fees. We also conducted some engagement and relationship building with tabletop companies to get donations of physical materials for the scholarship auction and saw amazing results for the time spent networking.
NASAGA is also looking to complete our roster of board members. While many individuals came forward at the annual business meeting indicating interest, final decisions still need to be made. We also believe there to be great opportunities for students or young professionals to support us in roles that would support the board as well as their own development and growth. These include a Conference Co-chair/Vice Chair, Assistant Secretaries or Treasurers, or a Communications lead.
The Strategy Going Forward
Right now the strategy for 2027 is to increase outreach and collaboration with other organizations and use our membership as envoys for our amazing family of applied play specialists. At the same time, we will be ramping up our online presence and fostering a vibrant online community. As mentioned above, we want to increase the value of a NASAGA membership and increase the return on investment our members chose to make every year.
I’ll be sending out more on my priorities for 2026-2027 via a blog post next week, but I want to hear your ideas as well. Come into the #general channel in our Discord Server or message me directly at brian@staubercoaching.com and let me know what you think!
Image Credit: Photo by Lisa Boragine.
