bobquasit | Gaming at Arisia 2006

There has been a lot of talk about the state of gaming at Arisia 2006 over on the Yahoo Boston Gamers board;

unquietsoul5 first brought the issue up there, I think, and also mentioned it in his journal (the post is friendslocked).

The problem is that gaming is being moved out of Stanbro, which is a large public room at the center of the con, and is being moved into a series of conference rooms up on the relatively obscure fourth floor. You can read more about it on the board.

I've only made a few comments there - I'm more of a lurker, and rarely read the board at all - but I made one suggestion which was apparently useful: that a board be placed next to Stanbro listing the games on the fourth floor.

In retrospect, though, that really isn't an adequate solution. So I made the following post:

The worst part of moving gaming off the Mezz is that it will make gaming invisible to a large part of the con. The fourth floor is more difficult to reach, and if things are set up the way that they were the last time that gaming was moved there, the game rooms will be off at the extreme end of a corridor - effectively nowhere. People won't be passing by, won't be aware that there IS any gaming at the con. Effectively, it was a kind of internal exile.

A large sign-up board down near Stanbro would help a little...but probably not enough. For one thing, it wouldn't be practical unless someone stood by the board constantly, calling up changes to a gaming coordinator on the fourth floor. That's not likely to happen.

And there's a HUGE difference between seeing games listed on a board, and actually seeing the games. A newbie would have to be pretty desperate to push through the crowds and make it up to a distant corner on the fourth floor, whereas they can't help but see gaming when they walk by Stanbro. So my guess is (and I'm not attributing malice to anyone, or anything like that; I'm not on the ConCom), gaming is going to take a pretty serious hit in participation at Arisia this year.

And that increases the chance that it will receive still less consideration from the con next year; after all, you can't expect them to support unpopular events! (/sarcasm - sorry, couldn't help myself)

Are there any other ameliorating factors that could be implemented?

Coffee service, maybe. Soda and snacks might help. Of course, the problem is that if those things are equally available elsewhere, people won't bother to make the trek to fourth floor gaming for them. And it's not like you can ban those things from the rest of the con.

What's more, people would have to somehow be informed that that was the place to go for snacks. Hell, you'd probably need to put the con suite right in the middle of gaming in order to draw even a quarter of the same foot traffic as at Stanbro. And realistically, the effect would not even be 1/4 as good; most people would simply get food and leave. We've all seen enough cons to know that food is a lousy inducement to get people to do anything other than stop by, load up, and take off with minimal eye contact.

Would a lot of publicity help? Probably not much. Posters and signs and announcements don't have the same impact as actually seeing people having fun playing a game.

So what WOULD work? The only thing that I can think of would be to set up something really cool, something so compelling that everyone at the con would want to see it. Last year some guys set up a sort of cool-looking room with a huge castle wall and fake flames; I don't know what they were promoting, but it was definitely pretty neat-looking. Something like that, only more complex and involving, would be perfect.

The problem is, we don't HAVE anything like that. And we're not likely to find one.

So the upshot is, while it would certainly be nice for the con to take whatever ameliorating steps they can for gaming at Arisia, realistically there is GOING to be a diminishment this year. The only real solution is for those who care to get involved in the next Arisia VERY early, get on the ConCom or whatever, and push to increase the exposure of gaming at Arisia 2007 - put it back in Stanbro if at all possible.

I don't know how likely that is, though.

->Peter

There have been no responses yet, but it has only been about twenty minutes.