TooManyGames as a convention has evolved over the last 15 years. What started out as a small retro video game convention has grown and expanded into an all encompassing weekend of gaming. Whether it be board games, video games, indie games, retro games, handheld games, arcades, CCG’s, we have it all at TooManyGames.
Our first event was a free show held at the Inn at Reading starting in 2004 under the name, East Coast Gaming Expo. In 2005 and 2006 the event was held at the Inn at Reading and also at the Riveredge. East Coast Gaming classic ran yearly for three years before the name was changed to TooManyGames.
TooManyGames continued it’s journey in the Reading area at various locations with spring and fall shows at the the Inn at Reading, Greater Reading Expo Center, Leesport Farmer’s Market, and the Reading Crowne Plaza. The attendance at the shows in the Reading area ranged from 500-1500 people.
The convention then took a leap to move the show to a new area closer to Philadelphia, at a brand new expo center that had just opened up. The Greater Philadelphia Expo Center has been our new home since 2011. The first show in 2011 at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center consisted of only Hall D and some of the common area meeting rooms.
Over the last 8 years TooManyGames has grown consistently as far as space at the expo center and attendance. In 2019, the convention saw the most attendees ever, topping out at 15,000 people. The convention currently takes over the majority of the expo center including halls A, B, D, and E along with several meeting rooms.
Over the years, TooManyGames has been featured on local tv, in print newspapers, gaming podcasts, and on countless YouTube channels including: PHL 17’s Weekend Philler, MyNintendoNews.com, Bucks County Courier Times, Polygon, technical.ly Philly, The Reading Eagle, Metro Philadelphia, Destructoid, Kotaku,
Gifts for Gamers History
In 2017, TooManyGames launched a charity event called Gifts for Gamers. After the consistent growth of TooManyGames over the years the convention decided they would like to give back to the surrounding community. Partnering with the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center, we selected Philabundance as our charity of choice, which is the area’s largest hunger relief organization. 100% of the proceeds of Gifts for Gamers goes to Philabundance.
We were able to raise quite a bit of money with the help of our vendors and attendees. TooManyGames over the years has raised:
2017 – $4,742
2018 – $6,865
Game Swap History
In 2019, TooManyGames launched a new event called Game Swap. Game Swap is a video and board game event held at the Montgomery County Community College. As mentioned above, TooManyGames has grown from a small event to a huge event with over 15,000 attendees. We wanted to take the show back to it’s roots with a small classic style TooManyGames event. At the 2019 event we had 1,000 attendees.
