This past weekend, hundreds of gamers, artists, and others took over the Student Union for UB Con 2005, a convention set up by the kids at the Strategists and Role Players Association (SARPA).

Since 1990, UB Con has drawn crowds reaching into the thousands. Most are WNY gamers, but some have come from as far away as Brazil, Germany, and Australia.

Robin Williams attended in 1992—not for a paid appearance, according to event staffer John Defoe, but just as an interested party.

Attendance has dropped off in recent years, Defoe said, because of the rising popularity of computer games and card games, which are less social than live action role playing games (LARPs), or tabletop games. The players who are into computers and cards, Defoe said, don’t care as much about the sense of community that conventions like UB Con try to foster, so they stay inside.

In the UB Con 2005 program, James Jennings-Wyckoff wrote, “I have come to notice that gaming breaks all boundaries of race, color, religion, etc. to bring people together on an equal playing field.”

Compare that to The Spectrum safety report’s account of the previous weekend’s student activities: a student threatened someone with a knife in Dewey Hall, someone in Schoelkopf was threatened with a BB gun, somebody stole an iPod from Spaulding, and some kid got thrown into the Erie County psych ward after a criminal trespassing charge.

While many of us don’t spend our Saturdays playing with foam swords, watching anime marathons, or pretending to be a Level 3 Mage who leads a horde of Black Spiral werewolves on a quest to destroy the Ivory Tower, I think we can all agree there are worse ways to spend your free time.