I've been meaning to bring this up for a while, and I figure now is as good as ever. I wanted to throw out a hypothetical question to you guys. If there were a local videogame fan convention in your town would you go to it? It wouldn't be anything like E3. It wouldn't be for the press, so no games are going to be announced or anything like that. It would be forPAC fans so it would be more along the lines of sci-fi or comic conventions, maybe like a smaller scale Penny Arcade Expo. There'd be a lot of panels regarding the history of a particular genre, a few industry people/developers would be in attendence to do Q&A's as well as maybe an author or two of some video game books. And then you'd have some of the typical convention things you always see like a dealer's room (that ultimately sells crap), costumes contests for the cosplayers, and whatever else could fall into that. Then at night you'd have some DJ's spinning and maybe a "geek band" like the Mini-Bosses playing. To top it off, you'd have a game room where you'd have some arcade games and maybe some consoles and TV's set up to let people do some playing.
So the question once again is, would you go? And if it looked interested enough, how far would you travel for it; an hour? 1 - 3 hours? More?
Assuming it had publisher support of some kind. If it's a meetup with some panels I'd likely not go. If it had game sales, like representation from local independent stores I'd be there regardless.
I went to the one in Melborune. Ddn't do anything in your post, but did play Twilight Princess, WarioWare and Red Steel. Played Red Steel isn't quite right, though. No one could work out how the controls worked, least of all the people that told you how to play. And it had the longest queue too.
The reason I bring it up, is that I'm in the very early stages of possibly putting a show together. At the last convention I was at I mentioned something like this to the right person apparently, and he was very keen on the idea. He's got the bankroll to put it on, provided the right person/people got it organized. Since I've got a lot of industry contacts now due to the whole Power Level thing I think I could actually pull it off. I'm trying to gauge interest in the whole thing though. It's great to have a show, but if there's not community interest in it, there's no point in doing it. Last year I went to a convention that was focused on explotation and drive-in films of the 60's and 70's. I loved it and got to meet some cool people like Pam Grier, but sadly there was only around 500 for the weekend and it was a disaster.
No. I hate crowds, especially when DJs and/or bands are involved.
Well just as a note, that stuff is only on at night to give people something to do when dealer's rooms are closed and no panels are going on. Old people who don't like crowds and music can go back to their rooms and watch Matlock or play Kaboom.
I would go local. Not travel.
Kaboom is the shit!
Given that gamers are typically anti-social/ shy, I'd say you have an uphill battle.
The conventions that succeed have strong communities already built.
For me personally, I'd go to any gaming convention if I could buy stuff or try games that were not yet released. If it's just to listen to people talk about games (who are not game producers themselves) I can do that at home (and frankly I'm sick of listening to so-called industry people who don't know shit about the industry).
My idea of a perfect gaming convention is a cross between what the Digital Press guys do (NAVA) plus California Extreme plus some publisher support, even if it was a single one, like Atlus or a local US dev.
Yeah that'll be the trick. In cities like Atlanta and Orlando, fan conventions are a pretty regular event and I know how to offer content that would tap into those crowds. I mean there are people who will go to any convention or any kind provided they get a chance to take pictures and party afterwards. Crossing over is the trick. So I'm trying to figure out what needs to be offered to get the gamers out. There's 2 gaming cons in Orlando this summer. Small ones minds you, but I'm checking them out. One is a collector's event where people show off old consoles, arcade units, and pinball machines and another is a strict fighting game tournament. Hopefully I'll learn something there.
And should it all fall into place I can say that at this moment I've got one studio on the line that's willing to send a few members of their localization team over. Could be interesting to see if people would be into learning about how a game is translated.
Oh well, still all very far into the future if at all.