[GenCon 2008] First thread! The basics

[Ron Edwards]

Hi everyone,

Here's the GenCon stuff for this year. A lot is staying the same, and a couple of things are changing.

First, for people who don't know, this is how it works. I and several other people have bought a big booth space, which is basically a 20' by 20' square. Brennan Taylor is one of them, and he sets up kind of retail space with shelves and cash register and so on. The rest of the space, more than half, is all full of play tables for demonstrations. It's run a lot like the CCG guys sell their games: brief exposure, just enough to be interesting.

We've paid over $6000 for this thing. The whole point is that other companies can now buy into the booth, helping to defray that cost, and have their games be demonstrated in that play space. It's open to any independent publisher, except for people who've done it a couple of times or more already.

Let's say you want to do it: you do not register for GenCon in any way, you pay me $125 and the fee for a badge ($65 last year; I'll confirm or update that when I know), and you can attend the con as an exhibitor with an exhibitor badge (i.e. that's how you register), working out of that booth. You can demo your game, and if you can teach it to others, they'll demo it too (I typically learn 4-6 games during the con for this purpose). You're expected to help with others' demos and generally to be a mutualistic kind of person in the whole project. The time spent at the both is one-half of the exhibitor hours for each day, or however many days you're there.

If you have done this before, you'll notice that the first-timer's fee has increased, from $100 to $125. That's because GenCon's raised its prices. The same goes for second-time participants - this year, it's $250, not $200. I don't really like doing this but the primary sponsor outlay is much higher with this space (i.e. the six of us lost a lot of money on that last year), and then those prices just went up.

OK, back to booth functions. If you buy in, your game will be sold at the booth. Brennan will be taking a commission on all sales (he does not get the buy-in money, this is the only way he offsets his booth payment). A few other games, from people who've participated in the past, will also be sold at the booth; Brennan will not be taking a commission on these at all. This is a good-will thing and a mutualistic thing for those publishers.

H'mmm ... here's an important thing. I already said, if you do this, do not register for GenCon. That will cause all manner of agony for me and for GenCon LLC. Your registration occurs via me naming you for a badge, and that doesn't happen until June. The downside is that, since you're not registered, you can't sign up for a hotel room through the GenCon deal. The solution is to have someone else (spouse, friend, whoever you're attending with who's registering as a regular attendee) get the room.

When will the buy-ins start? Not until late April. I'm thinking just after Forge Midwest. They'll close in June, because I have to get the badges before mid-June. You don't have to reserve it beforehand, or anything of the sort. There's no waiting-list, and no maximum (that we've encountered yet anyway) for the number of people who can buy in.

Let me know if there are any questions!

Best, Ron

P.S. Let's hold off on discussions of demo kits and other specific logistics, saving those for their own threads later. Right now, this is for people who simply need to understand how the whole thing works at all.

P.P.S. There will be no posters or banners at the booth for publishers of any sort. The only two banners will be IPR and the Forge.

[Justin D. Jacobson]

I'm guessing you and Brennan have discussed this, and maybe it cuts against the general vibe of the booth, but you could offer having designers pay a premium to secure more visible shelf space, e.g., $25/title/day to secure the top row for your book, $50/title/day to secure a spot on the table next to the register. You could probably net yourselves an extra $1000+ to dfray some of the cost.

Just a suggestion.

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Oh yeah. Above, you identify the other tier as "second-time participants". Last year was my second time. Does that mean I can't do the Forge booth this year? I know that was a policy a year or two ago, but I didn't think you restricted it last year.

[iago]

I'm guessing you and Brennan have discussed this, and maybe it cuts against the general vibe of the booth, but you could offer having designers pay a premium to secure more visible shelf space, e.g., $25/title/day to secure the top row for your book, $50/title/day to secure a spot on the table next to the register. You could probably net yourselves an extra $1000+ to dfray some of the cost.

Speaking as someone who's been "on the ground" doing shelving for IPR at a convention, acquiring this sort of set of additional priorities and restrictions to the process would strike a blow for absolute chaos.  It's hard enough getting everything shelved as it is, and across four days of the convention, every day stuff gets shelved differently to give as many products as possible a chance for the premium placement.  Some have a form factor that simply can't be shelved more than one way, on top of that.  Plus, some of the reshelving on subsequent days is done in response to the sales-behaviors of the previous; low sellers might be promoted to more prominent spots, etc. 

Much as the booth could use a little extra cash, I don't think introducing another factor into an already fairly multivariate bit of shelving algebra's the way to do it.

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Commie bastard! Why do you fear capitalism so? Oh, what's that, it's Indie Press Revolution? Never mind.

[iago]

Commie bastard! Why do you fear capitalism so? Oh, what's that, it's Indie Press Revolution? Never mind.

I love capitalism!  But some things have a much greater cost (in time, frustration, logistics) than the cash they produce.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Justin,

I'm glad you asked that, because it's important. The two-years-maximum was put into place as a permanent thing. The Forge booth demo thing is now intentionally transitional.

Best, Ron

[SirValence]

Ron, Brennan, et al:

Thank you very much for making this available. I wanted to participate last year but by the time I pursued it, buy-ins were already closed (and it's just as well: our cards didn't get printed in time for GenCon anyway).

How does getting a badge through The Forge affect event registration for participants? Can we still preregister for things we want to play? It looks like preregistration starts in April, and it often seems if you can't preregister right then, the events are really picked over. This isn't a deal breaker for me at all, but I do like to preregister for a few things if I can. I suppose that in the worst case scenario I can have some buddies try to get tickets for me to those events.

I haven't participated much here at The Forge because I find it's like trying to sip from a firehose: I hope that won't be a problem with me participating in the booth. I'm not only excited about having the opportunity to promote StoryCards, but also I want to learn more about other people's games too. I seem to recall that in previous years there has been a pre-GenCon meeting in Indy to teach people how to demo each other's games: is that something that would be done this year?

Also, in case it's useful, I work across the street from the Indianapolis Convention Center. If for whatever reason you need some errands run there before the event starts, I can easily help with that.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Carl,

Those are good questions. Event registration is probably the one thing that a participant has to give up on, at least through direct purchase. I don't see a way around that, unless it's through a friend.

In the past, people have participated at the booth without any previous time at the Forge at all, not even lurking. The only requirement is to be an independent publisher; it doesn't have anything to do with being any sort of "Forge member." So that's no big deal, and you can count on all the mutualism and other good booth stuff that anyone gets.

I can sympathize with the fire-hose issue, and maybe GenCon can be helpful there too. Who knows, maybe conversation is a better medium than internet (you think?) for talking about the important stuff.

At least one person has mentioned to me that he wants to lead pre-con preparation for demonstrations, so that's good news.

Best, Ron