Hey guys,
I have a
little bit of time, so I thought I’d make another post. I’m not generally a fan of birthdays anymore,
but the last thing I want to have to do is decide where to go out for dinner
with the family. So my sister and my
parents worked out some British Pub to go to called Sterling Bridges. I’m used to Mexican, Chinese, Italian, and
classic American food here. But British
food? The items on the menu were totally
foreign to me.
But I wanted
to make the most of it. I ordered my
first Guinness, which wasn't terrible, and, what looked like the worst idea on
the menu--an Irish pizza with cabbage, carrots, turkey, and potatoes. Um, yeah, on a pizza. I was a little surprised that it really wasn't
too bad. It tasted a little bit more
like a spring roll. Otherwise, a pretty
uneventful birthday.
Ok, on to
way more interesting stuff. I mentioned
in my last post how disappointed I was in the Indie Arcade thing. I talked to Gabriel about what we could do to
make things much, much better. I don’t
want to get into the details here, but let’s just say I want to do a big event,
he wants to keep things small, and so we've parted ways on that. That means, for this event I’m planning, I’m
calling all the shots and he’s not involved.
The Sheraton
people are really excited about this convention I’m starting. We've set a date a little over a year from
now, though I’m still keeping things open in case we need to move it up or down
a week or so. Basically, just because it’s
currently set on Memorial Day Weekend 2015, that doesn't mean it’s set in
stone. There’s good and bad about this
date. The biggest of the bad is that it’s
in competition with Fanamie, which, I still think there are a whole lot of
gamers that love games but don’t care about anime. So despite this being a huge even a few hours
drive away, I don’t think this will hurt our pull too much. And second, it’s a little too close to E3. Generally speaking, if a big company is
showing off their game at E3, they don’t want to spill the beans early at a
small convention a couple weeks earlier.
This is the worst of two worlds--the game gets way less press and
journalists don’t want to cover old news two weeks later. This could be a more excellent convention for
Indies who can’t afford E3, but still want press on their game around that time
frame.
The good
news is that it’s fairly far apart from other, related events in town. Aside from the Jazz Festival in Old Town
Sacramento, not much is going on Memorial weekend. I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of gamers
into Dixieland Jazz anyways. Sacramento
gets a lot of traffic from lobbyists and political types, being the capitol of
California and where the state legislature meets. The law makers leaving town to go home for
the holiday weekend really empties out downtown in general. That means a lot less traffic. Also, there are some streets that offer free
parking in an effort to get people to come spend their holiday weekend
downtown. So this might be a great
window.
Before I
settled on the Sheraton, I went to 4 different hotels to get bids. In each one, the sales people gave me a tour
of the facility. Each were very familiar
with Sac Anime and saw a game convention as something they didn't want to pass
up. It was pretty fun to have sales
people treat me like I was important and to try and convince me to go with
them. One lady even promised to beat
whatever the Sheraton quoted me by 25%.
There are a
few reasons why I will likely settle with the Sheraton, but the biggest is
their vast experience with Sac Anime and how aggressively their sales people
have worked to bring me in. We've so far
had brain storming meetings where their staff have shared tips on organization
and marketing. The good news here is
that the more successful this event is, the more money they make. So they’ll do what they can to try and make
this happen. And the experience, as I
mentioned, plus their networks with potential sponsors and local businesses…
you can’t put a price on that. Being
right next to the Convention Center where I’d love to see this expand to one
year, that’s a compelling reason as well.
Now, I used
to be a concert promoter years ago. I
used to be the booker at a pretty big night club in town as well. I know something about this, but music and
bands are a lot different from game conventions. The best thing I can do right now is find
alliances and partnerships with people in the gamer community that know a lot
more about organizing conventions than I do.
I’m going to try and get those alliances in place now by the end of
May. Once that’s in place, we’ll spend
the next month laying out the organization: chain of command, staff
requirements, physical equipment needed, and other budgeting concerns. Then starting in July, I’ll be contacting
press and potential sponsors. I've
already heard from people interested in sponsoring, so that’s a good sign. Although we’ll start some level of marketing
in July, we won’t likely start physical marketing distribution such as flyers
and posters until January (five and a half months before the event).
I have no
illusions that I’ll do a lot of dumb things and screw up a lot in organizing
this. Being my first time organizing
such an event, of course I’ll have a ton of misconceptions. Planning early and aggressively with people
that have been involved in big conventions--like Sac Anime, Fanime, and the Nor
Cal Fighting Championships, will be really helpful so we can knock out
potential problems early. There are many
things you can have in a game convention.
I know what I’m trying to make happen, but I don’t want to say anything
yet that I’m still working on. I can
probably say for sure that there will be booths for game developers to rent out
and show off their games to fans. There
will likely be a fighting game tournament on some level--hopefully a big level. There will likely be a table top game
room. There’s at least one other big
thing I’m trying to get, but it will be tough to get.
Speakers,
voice over actors, panel discussions, live performances--these are really
common in conventions. That’s all a
possibility, but that might be a difficult thing to organize the first
year. Plus, there may or may not be room
for it. Keep in mind, if I dedicate an
entire room to a theater layout, I pretty much have to either fill the whole
rest of the convention with speakers and performers in that room for the
duration, or it becomes wasted space.
What could
happen, is such events could be planned for after parties at local clubs in the
area within walking distance. Get in
free with your game convention badge at Bob’s Bar and Grill and listen to Joe
the Game Developer talk about the making of Popular Classic Game III. That could work.
Really
tired. Need sleep.
