Facilitating the largest megagame ever held in North America

On Saturday, March 1st, 2025, I drove down to La Crosse, Wisconsin to meet up with over 100 other people to tell a story through what would be the largest megagame ever held in North America. Typical megagames will host between 20 and 50 people with some as large as 70 players in rare instances, but this was anything but a typical megagame.

Jake Williams from the UW-La Crosse History Club was organizing their club's annual game and contacted me last September asking if Midwest Megagames would be willing to help control/moderate a megagame in early 2025, noting:

• It would be the first run of the game in North America

• It would be the largest megagame ever run in North America

• He was confident in the history club's ability to produce it and fill the room

• He was not confident in getting enough people to fully staff the 30-35 person control team required to run the game

The game in question was First Contact, designed and produced by the very appropriately-named 'Very Large Huge Games' out of the UK. The game itself can handle nearly 200 players, but to do so would required a control team roughly the size of an entire megagame itself. For sake of scope, a typical megagame of 30-50 people requires a minimum of 5-7 control team members. To keep a similar ratio of players to control team, the History Club was going to have to wrangle no fewer than 5-6 times the normal number of volunteers to help run the game.

UW La Crosse Bluffs Ballroom during game setup. The calm before the storm.

First Contact is a game that takes the schtick behind the OG megagame, Watch the Skies, and cranks it to 11 in every way. Where Watch the Skies can be described as 'model UN, but aliens are invading the earth' and maxes out at 42 players, First Contact expands every aspect of the game until you've got an orchestra of mammoth gaming proportions. The game includes several times as many nations, additional mechanics for each team to interact with, and each region map of the world is roughly the size of what you'd see in a game of Watch the Skies. Did I mention you can go to space, launch ships into the outer planets, and build colonies on the moon?

Players were able to send probes to space and colonize parts of the solar system by mid-to-late game, provided they had the resources to do so after addressing the crises back in their home countries

Very Large Huge Games (VLHG from here on out) hosts their 175 player megagame once a year, every year, in London. Although the midwest United States has a long and proud gaming history, we don't have anywhere near the experience and player base that the UK and Australia do for megagames. Most of the United States megagaming is done at conventions such as GenCon, where the Megagame Coalition hosts over a dozen megagames each year. Without the draw of such a large event to aid in marketing, though, it can be a struggle to pull together enough players and volunteers who are willing to devote a full day to telling a story together.

The Americas board, where I spent my day as Map Control for First Contact

Jake reached out again in early January and asked for volunteers to commit. The date was set: we were to converge on La Crosse on March 1st. We didn't have a final player count, registration was allowed nearly up to the start of the game, and we were still short roughly a dozen control staff. Regardless, we were all committed to 'send it' and push on with the game.

Each region of the world had its own map as well as two control team. One facilitator (Map Control) would facilitate the map actions and mechanics and the other (Plot Control) facilitated any plot elements or developing stories in the same fashion of a dungeon master in a roleplaying game. Midwest Megagames was able to muster 3 volunteers to assist, with some last-minute reorganization of control staff meaning that Tim Troxel from Midwest Megagames (MWM) would be Plot Control for the Americas and I would be Map Control for the same. Trenton Greyoak of both the Megagame Coalition and MWM joined us last-minute and was able to fill the role of Map Control for the Africa region of the game.

Europe Regional Map front and center with multiple screens showing the current state of the game. Americas Region shown on the right with the Middle East region on the left. Space maps and United Nations assembly in the middle of the ballroom.

The majority of players had never played a megagame; this is fairly typical and exactly what I'd expect in a situation with a game involving over 100 players, but it meant that the first turn involved a significant amount of coaching from the Control team to help the player teams understand what options were available and what actions might help or hinder their plans later in the game.

One of the really neat parts about this game ended up being the venue itself. The game was held in an enormous ballroom and multiple screens around the space displayed the current game state - what turn it was, how much time was left in that part of the turn, what DEFCON level various nations were at, and a 'Breaking News' ticker from Global News Network, or GNN, the press team who alternated between interviewing players and writing press briefs for broadcast.

Turn 1 Press Broadcast showing factions and alliances forming at the very beginning of the game.

The teams did a great job of developing strategy and negotiating between themselves. There was one instance where all but one player from a single South American nation's team had to leave to attend band practice. This left one single player as dictator of the nation, having responsibility for military, government leadership, foreign relations, and anything else required. This prompted GNN to issue a public statement regarding the team members who left in response.

The military leaders of the countries in the Americas Region as well as one player from the Palestine-Israel team (far right). Note the player in the center wearing 4 lanyards - her team left mid-game to attend band practice and she was single-handedly managing an entire nation!

That aside, there were a number of potentially baggage-heavy real-world issues that were neatly sidestepped by the event staff and game writers. Namely, by making a statement that the game setting was in the future where conflicts involving Russia, Israel, and Palestine were all resolved through diplomacy. All pre-game briefs also included instructions that though costumes or in-theme cosplay are encouraged, we're there playing characters, not caricatures.

It wouldn't be a megagame if things didn't go horribly, irreversibly wrong at one point or another. The ballroom wasn't available early enough to set things up beforehand, so we started the game around an hour later than expected, for example. Probably the most disappointing thing to me as a member of the Control team is that somehow a large proportion of nations had nuclear weapons. I'm not sure if this was intentional or if it was the product of Control being too willing to reward teams to nukes, but by the last couple turns, the world ended in a series of nuclear exchanges that left the planet uninhabitable and the aliens ended up pulling a large proportion of people from allied human nations into their habitations or something.

The players and Control team left at the end of the game with the UW La Crosse History Club flag front and center.

Thus ended the largest megagame in North America (so far!). With over 100 players and over 25 Control volunteers, no fewer than 5 different organizations (including Midwest Megagames) assisting in the production of this game, and some individuals driving from as far away as Chicago to attend, this was a resounding success.

Jake and the rest of the UW-La Crosse History club did a fantastic job of carrying out this most ambitious endeavor. At a post-game dinner involving a number of the volunteers, everyone agreed that it was a great time and we'd definitely like to see something of this scale again. Thank you to everyone involved in carrying this out and thank you to the players who devoted the large majority of a Saturday involved in bringing this game to life!