If you explore the main expo hall during the Penny Arcade Expo, you can often find some interesting booths around the edges of the room. These can offer rare games, designer clothing, blind boxes of themed merch, and occasionally/inexplicably, unfiltered access to local Washington politicians.
Steve Hobbs has held the secretary of state position for Washington since 2021. Visitors to his booth during PAX, held over Labor Day weekend at the Seattle Convention Center, could meet Hobbs and spin a prize wheel, with rewards that included buttons, collectible pins featuring the office’s official mascot Finn, custom 20-sided dice with Finn on the 20 face, and free snacks.
This wasn’t Hobbs’ first time at PAX, but it was the first time I’d heard about a closed-doors event he’d hosted on the night before PAX. One of the local exhibitors mentioned that Hobbs’ office had held a networking event in Seattle on Thursday, Sept. 3, between local tabletop companies and an assortment of international game publishers.
That got me curious enough to schedule a short conversation with Hobbs on the third day of PAX. Once we sat down, however, I had to ask him the question that I’d heard from a lot of other attendees: what was he doing at PAX in the first place?
“It’s twofold,” Hobbs told me. “One, this is a great opportunity for me to reach out to the gaming companies here in the state of Washington and look for opportunities for them to go overseas, linking up some of these indie game developers with major publishers.”
He continued, “The rest of it is civic engagement. Just reminding people, hey, don’t forget to vote. Don’t forget to check your registration.”
Washington mails a ballot to every registered voter, who can return it by mail or at an official drop box. Hobbs was urging people to use the drop boxes, citing what he called “a low-key fight with the USPS.”
Washington and 24 other states sued in August to block a U.S. Postal Service rule requiring new barcodes on ballot envelopes, and the Supreme Court kept it from taking effect on Sept. 14, after this interview.
“Look, PAX is where all the young people are at, right?” Hobbs said. “This is a very diverse, young community, and this is where we need to engage people.”
That brings us back to the games.
The Thursday-night event was intended to help connect Washington’s homegrown board games industry with interested publishers and players in Japan, Poland and elsewhere. This could allow Washington-based designers to sell their products overseas, as well as potentially letting foreign partners export their own games to North America.
Washington doesn’t make quite as big a deal about it as one might expect, but it’s one of the biggest states in the U.S. for tabletop and board game design, if not the biggest. Local Washington studios range in size from Renton-based Wizards of the Coast to one-person indie creators who make card games as a hobby. Hobbs’ office estimated early last year that tabletop gaming in Washington is a $2 billion industry.
The Secretary of State’s Office is best known for its core duties of running elections and registering businesses, but state law also directs the secretary of state to develop a citizens’ exchange program promoting ties that “may result in increased tourism, business relationships, and trade.”
“So what we do is help these indie game developers get access to foreign markets by putting on these trade missions,” Hobbs said. “What we’ll do is provide the booth [at international gaming conferences, such as Game Market in Tokyo], which is the most expensive thing. We will also help them navigate through the federal grant process in order to mitigate some of the costs over there.”
His office then works its connections with the U.S. State Department and the host nation’s commerce department to set up meetings for the developers.
“We have really strong ties with the German and Japanese governments, and we actually get these people to do their pitches with the major publishers in Europe and Japan,” Hobbs said.
As an example of the initiative’s success, Hobbs pointed to Lethal Shadows, a Snohomish County business that specializes in premium tabletop miniatures. According to Hobbs, he’d helped Lethal Shadows partner up with a Lithuanian company. As a result, Lethal Shadows has moved from a garage to a warehouse and is hiring more employees.
That did raise the question of why Hobbs’ office wasn’t making equivalent inroads toward Washington’s significantly larger video game industry.
“It’s more of a lack of bandwidth,” Hobbs said. “We want to take baby steps. We didn’t want to take a big step into it. And frankly, I didn’t realize that it was important to go to these conventions. In Japan, Germany, and Poland, we’re seeing if there might be an opportunity to do the same thing on the digital side.”
Hobbs continued, “I believe trade must go two ways. We need to support each other.”
