UK indie games conventions

[andrew_kenrick]

If you're into your indie games (playing or running), there seems to be plenty of cons that cater for you in the US, whether indie games are at their centre or merely present as a con within a con. This doesn't seem to be the case over here in the UK, except for at Conpulsion earlier this year, which had an indie games track (and which I trust went well guys?).

Does anyone know of any other indie-centric/friendly UK cons? Or any reason why one wouldn't work in this country?

I'm toying with the idea of trying to run an indie games track/indie booth of my own at the next couple of cons I go to - probably Excal2 in the autumn, Conception next february and Gencon UK 2007 a year from now. Anyone interested or have some advice for capturing the Forge spirit that seems to make for such great cons over in the US?

[Matt Machell]

Conpulsion (Edinburgh, March) and Dragonmeet (London, December) are both, from experience, very Indie friendly. Check earlier threads for Indie Games Track at Conpulsion summaries. By the looks of the programme, Continuum has a strong indie presence too (and is the tail end of this month).

To be honest though, I imagine any con that you approach in the right way are going to be indie friendly. Make an overture in advance and offer to do things like run games and sit on panels, they'll probably be glad of the support. The hardest part of organising any event is getting enthusiastic folks to help organise.

If you promote it here, other folks will likely join in. It doesn't take too many people for it to hit critical mass.

-Matt

[Arturo G.]

Organizers are typically wellcoming anyone who wants to prepare something.
I had a very good experience preparing myself the first indie-games track in PuCLN a national Spanish game convention, last week. I was showing games during half the convention (four sessions of four hours each). A little tiring but very enjoyable.

Most of the game titles were completely unknown here. Thus, I made a big bunch of flyers with a little description about each game I was showing. It worked, and I got people for all the sessions (many of them repeating to try different games).

The response of the people was great. I'm sure that there are now some people around talking to friends about indie-games. I hope that this will open a little more the door for indie-games in Spain.

If you have local conventions around which do not have indie-games sessions, I encourage you to talk with the organizers and do it yourself. People will surely thank you.

Arturo

[Graham W]

Andrew,

There's a small but definite indie presence at Continuum. Dogs In The Vineyard is running and so is Burning Wheel.

There's also a large indie LARP presence: I'm running my game Too Much Rock For One Hand (inspired by Meat Loaf and Spinal Tap) and there's lots of very experienced LARP designers running games.

It's the weekend after next. If you can come - and you'd be very welcome - drop me a PM.

Graham

[andrew_kenrick]

I think I'll definitely try to organise my own indie games track at the next con I'm going to. I'm hoping to be at Dragonmeet too, so that might give me the opportunity to perfect my 15 minute demo!