Hi, Mike here! Me and Claudia are foreign nationals from Mexico living in the US where we have been working out of the southeast for the past 15 years. We work hard, we play hard, and one of our biggest loves is for Games of all sorts. Specially analog tabletop games! In the time we have been here we've had the privileged of participating in the communities that flock around the hobby space, being able to write, design, create and promote games. We attend the convention circuit doing workshops, seminars, game events & organizing spaces for Latin-American creatives and community members who are yet to learn how to better access these spaces. Together, we have put together a community built, led and driven project called the "Latine Lounge". Our biggest effort currently is participating in the two biggest events in the continent for games, GENCON in the US, and MEGA XP in México.

This year we were able to support 35 people from other countries, even being able to bridge the gap to get talented artists and first time designers to get the GENCON grant for underprivileged, less access imbued talents to Indianapolis for GENCON 2025 to huge success.

Not satisfied with just that, we were able to provide through our group for free or very discounted housing (We work to get everyone in our collaborating group housing as possible as well as planning way ahead of the convention to gather as many spots as we can and need to cover our peeps!). We are one of two recognized and supported minority led, diversity representation organizations withing GENCON and are very happy to see the leadership of the convention continue to support us with a full room at ICC-124 where we continue to present, promote and run games for everyone in GENCON for the fourth year running.

We are the single, largest concentrated effort for Latin representation and go all in on vetting our space , growing and evolving to continue to offer more ways to support under represented communities. Our goal is to share in the love we have received from this hobby through supporting games created by POCs OR have people from our countries run a diversity of games for all folks attending (you do not need to be Latine to be in our space, we are here to connect with everyone!), showing our talents, our style of playing & diversifying our hobby space gaming experiences.

This year we were able to offer more than 110 events through the convention and are shooting to get 160 events for next year.

But thats not all.

2026 is the first year we were able to gather funds to pay for a booth which we offered to all and any good standing, constructive, community supporting projects and individual creators to connect with us so we could sell their products. Through our "AXOStories & The Latine Lounge Presents" booth we were able to offer a little bit over 50 games from creators that would otherwise not be able to have a presence in the biggest gaming convention of all of the continent.

ALSO, this year, for the first time the Latine Lounge was able to provide a grant to brand new first time creators to produce, edit, print and carry their book, which was so good on delivery that it got picked up by the amazing folk at Indie Press Revolution to distribute through all the conventions in the US. We can be the change and the help that we all needed at some time.

To be able to do so, we will be working to get additional resources upfront, we have historically picked up the bill through our joined efforts, but as we grow we are finding more opportunities that we could develop for the space if we are able to have the funding earlier and not limited by our own individual financial capacity. We have had an enormous luck in finding similar minded projects, conventions and individuals who we will be working to be present on the hobby space. you can also go ahead and support if you are like-minded to our efforts by re-posting us in social media and cheering us on. Every little bit helps, and we will be using these funds to help have representation of our community and talents in conventions all over the us. All funds will be used to upkeep costs of all involved activity for our presence in the convention circuits, and to support our hosted guests and collaborators.

This past 3 years we have been able to support creators and projects of latinamerican origin, inspiration or collaboration by promoting them, discussing them and/or running them in the following game spaces (Some of them due this end of year):

GAMA Expo

Origins

PAX East

PAX West

PAX UNPLUGGED

BIG BAD CON

MEGA XP

SDCC

NYCC

GEN CON

GAME HOLE CON

Startplaying

Roll20 Virtual Weekends

For the latest iteration of the Latine Lounge, "Latine Lounge 2025 @ GEN CON" , the organizing EO's ended up paying around 10K usd to support all 35 collaborators, the ICC-124 room as well as the AXOstories & Latine Lounge Booth that supported and sold games from more than 2 dozen publishers & self published creators that were represented, promoted & who had for the first time their games carried in the biggest convention, and the center mass of our hobby space, GEN CON.

These costs were carried individually, by pur household, as the Event Organizers (EO) based on our wanton to produce a healthier, more egalitarian, community based & collectively worked game space.

The breakdown of these costs:

AXOSTORIES & LATINE LOUNGE PRESENTS booth in exhibitor hall $2400 USD

Administrative costs, travel costs & accounting $800 usd

Vehicle rentals to transport our collaborators & for delivery of the books & products from wherever they came from to Indianapolis $2800 USD

Furniture & Retail supplies for Booth $800 USD

Stay for 20 of the collaborators $3950 USD

Snacks, Food, water & Room dressings $950 USD

Grant given by the lounge for first time global south creators doing their first game, published and sold $350 USD

While its been wonderful to put this money in our community knowing the bridge and ladder that its become for so many talents & projects, we want to be able to do more, and to be able to offer more space for more people with the experience and know how we have gathered. We are in a strong network of support, and have collaborators who have been spearheading paths, tools & ways we want to be able to share with more of our peers.

If you are a project, an organization or a publisher who wants to collaborate or support us in a particular way, please don't hesitate to contact me or drop me a message, you can find me in most places under @themikeballes in social media. We are entirely open to hearing on ways we can help, connect you with our community as well as eternally grateful for all the help and support we have received previously. Our timeline will be ongoing, with our quickest upcoming events for the end of the year in queue, and MEGA XP (The biggest and most central event in México and Latin-America due to be pulled in on 2026 for an April date which is closely upcoming). Thank you for reading along, and we hope to be able to get a beautiful thing become even greater.

No sweepstakes, giveaways, or returns on investment are offered in exchange for any donations made to this GoFundMe.

Best regards,

Mike Balles