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Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs presents at SPIEL Essen 2025 in Germany, the world’s largest tabletop gaming convention. Hobbs led a trade mission to the convention, taking a collection of Washington-based game creators, publishers, and other related tabletop businesses.
Office of the Secretary of State of Washington
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Outside of his work as Washington secretary of state, Steve Hobbs cofounded the tabletop gaming convention Orca Con with his friend Donna Prior.
Dyer Oxley / KUOW
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Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs at SPIEL Essen 2025 where he took a collection of Washington-based game creators and related tabletop businesses on a trade mission.
Office of the Secretary of State of Washington
Washington state is widely known for industries like tech, agriculture, and aerospace. But Secretary of State Steve Hobbs has a goal to make Washington just as well known for its tabletop game scene, especially on the international stage. As he puts it, everyone should know that Washington is the “tabletop game capitol of the world.”
“This is the tabletop game capitol of the world,” Hobbs said while at an annual tabletop convention, Orca Con, that he cofounded. “I don’t think a lot of people realize that.”
Tabletop games are exactly what they sound like: games played on a tabletop, which can include board games, roleplaying games, and more. Monopoly, Dungeons & Dragons, and Catan are all tabletop games.
Hobbs is engaged in Washington’s thriving tabletop community spanning publishers, indie game creators, playtesters, artists, and pubs, plus small businesses like Lethal Shadows, which started up in 2019 in Bothell. It produces high-quality game pieces.
“The secretary of state is a nerd, as a lot of people know,” said Patrick Rami with Lethal Shadows. “He does a lot of tabletop gaming himself. He paints miniatures. Like, the guy is awesome.”
Under Hobbs, tabletop gaming has been incorporated into the Office of the Secretary of State. He has placed copies of “Dungeons & Dragons” in Washington libraries, and started a prison programusing “Dungeons & Dragons” as a form of therapy. And through trade missions to Game Market in Tokyo and SPIEL Essen in Germany, he aims to establish tabletop trade routes from Washington state to Asia and Europe.
“The Secretary of State’s Office has always been an active player in international commerce and international relations,” Hobbs said. “Not just me, but you can go several secretaries back, to Sam Reed, even further back than that. And I feel it is my responsibility as secretary of state to ensure that we support these industries here.”
Indeed, Reed led trade missions throughout Asia and hosted 120 delegations from 45 countries. Former Secretary of State Ralph Munro was perhaps the most prolific as a trade ambassador during his time in office. The government of Japan even posthumously honored Munro for this work with the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon.
“I’ve gone on trade missions for aerospace, a little bit for ag[riculture],” Hobbs said. “But as a fellow nerd, as someone who knows the industry, because I have friends who play these games and design these games, I feel like we need to do something for them. We need to have the same government support to maintain our advantage overseas.”
Washington purchased considerable booth space at Game Market in Tokyo in 2024 and at SPIEL Essen in Germany in 2025. The Secretary of State’s Office is returning to Tokyo in October 2026. There are plans to return to Germany, and potentially Japan, in 2027. Each time, a collection of Washington game creators and related businesses come along.
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The effort hasn’t come without criticism. The overseas conventions can fall near the same time as November elections, a busy time for the Secretary of State’s Office. And the cost to attend these events can run tens of thousands of dollars.
Funding for these trade missions comes from a variety oforships from private companies and the Department of Commerce, corporate filing fees, and economic development groups
“We will pay for the booth,” Hobbs said. “[Businesses and creators] still have to have skin in the game, pay for their airfare and all that stuff, and they do get grants through the federal government. And I provide them a means to access the market in these places.”
“An indie game developer does not have the reo costly. A booth over there is like $20,000. If you went to Essen, it would be about $50,000,” he added. “So, we provide space for these indie game developers to be able to sell their wares. And now we’ve gone beyond indie game developers and we’re including those who do accessories, who make figures and dice boxes.”
Tabletop trade missions
Office of the Secretary of State of Washington
In 2025, Rami with Lethal Shadows decided to roll the dice and take a turn at Washington’s booth at SPIEL Essen in Germany. He was among a collection of Washington tabletop representatives on the trip, including Occam’s Razor, Black Diamond Creators, Flatout Games, Misfits, World of Kylia, Cherry Picked Games, InDiPro Games . The Secretary of State’s Office planned a 10-day trip (around the four-day convention), allowing time for networking and meetings with government officials (Germany is a major tabletop market).
For Lethal Shadows, it was a critical hit.
“We made some huge, huge inroads,” Rami said. “We’ve already closed some deals that we started there. There’s some deals that are still ongoing.”
Lethal Shadows connected with a European game company. They now produce their models in Bothell, so they don’t have to import them. They also became their exclusive U.S. distributor. In turn, Lethal Shadows is gaining business connections throughout Europe.
“It’s been absolutely amazing,” Rami said. “We’re looking at onshoring other productions as well that we’re doing overseas currently. We’re looking at onshoring our resin production. We’re looking at onshoring some of our dice production. But we need space for that, right? We need more people. So, this is all forced growth in correlation with our trip to Germany. … It’s kind of like a root system — it’s sprouting in different directions.”
Lethal Shadows is currently expanding into a warehouse and hiring additional employees. It has begun its own line of paints for figurines. And as Rami explains it, the trip to Essen wasn’t just a boost for his business.
“It left a positive impression of the U.S. as a whole,” Rami said.
“You know, right now it can be tough times on the world stage for the U.S.,” he added. “So, that had a very positive reaction, people seeing… ‘Oh, there’s stability here. Oh, there’s still growth in business. People are still business-minded, and the U.S. can still be accessible to business. … The U.S. doesn’t hate the world.’ We’re still open for business. And it went a long way.”
Hobbs pointed to Lethal Shadows as a success story.
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“The reason why I focused on Essen, Germany, and Tokyo Game Market in Japan, is because that allows these game developers, these artists, those that make accessories, to access the greater European market and the greater Asian market,” Hobbs said. “We had a game developer with us in Japan that connected with a distributor that distributes all over Asia. … You have the regional distributors, buyers of games who are going to those shows and looking for the new thing. They are hungry for indie games, especially from the United States, and this is the way to do it.”
‘Tabletop game capitol of the world’
Seattle has a history of tabletop gaming. Pictionary, Cranium, and Exploding Kittens all emerged from the area.
But in recent years, tabletop has experienced a considerable rise in popularity across the U.S. Long gone are the days when game shelves were limited to Monopoly or Scrabble.
As Planet Money reported, “We’re in a golden age of tabletop games. Thirty years ago there were around 800 new games each year. Now, it is more like 5,000.”
And the Seattle area is a hotbed for this culture, where many games are produced by independent creators, often through crowdfunding. DIY game creation is so popular, an organization called Playtest NW hosts regular events so creators can test their games, get feedback, and make improvements.
Locally based are publishers like Wizards of the Coast (“Dungeons & Dragons and “Magic: The Gathering”), Ravensburger, Paizo, and Green Ronin Publishing. Flatout Games, which went to SPIEL Essen, produces “Cascadia,” winner of the 2022 International Gamers Award and Spiel des Jahres (this is essentially like winning “best game in the world”).
“It’s really the synergies that happen here in the Pacific Northwest, primarily in Washington state,” Hobbs said. “Because you have Wizards of the Coast, the creator and maker of ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ and ‘Magic: The Gathering.’ You have also the digital side. You have Microsoft. Sony actually has a digital arm here. Everyone talks about Pokémon, and you think, ‘Oh, that’s a Japanese company.’ But most of their employees are here in the state of Washington. That’s why you have this synergy. That’s why I call us the tabletop game capitol of the world.”
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