As part of turning my attention from MMOs, I will be attending Origins and Gen Con this year. This will be my first time at either, and I am working through the Origins business model. It seems a bit like what we’ve called the “carnival” model in MMOs: you buy a badge (box), which gets you in the door, but many/most events require one or more tickets (usually $2 for a game), and you can buy bundles with ribbons, after which you do not need tickets for events/games covered by those ribbons. That sound about right?
With more than 4000 events listed, time is probably a greater constraint than cost, but so is just figuring out what is of interest from a pool that big. And I’m told that Gen Con events registration is also going on, so I should probably start sorting through that, which is likely to be a larger list.
Any tips or recommendations?
: Zubon
Oh hey, I’ll be at GenCon as well. I wonder how many other bloggers are going…
I’ve been fiending to go to GenCon again. Hopefully next year… not this.
I’ll give one tip… take breaks. Midday naps, showers, getting away to a restaurant, etc. Those all help refresh.
Okay, two tips. Keep hydrated. These games all run on that 75% water balloon of a skull.
Can’t wait to hear about it!
We’ll have to do lunch when you’re out this way then. :)
– Under schedule. Indianapolis in August is *hot*, and you might get tired. Leave in time to relax and troll the dealer hall. If you’ve never been, hitting the dealer hall is fun.
– Unless something is going to sell out (which many things do), don’t buy anything until Sunday. Sunday all the dealers want to offload stuff rather than ship it home.
– If something is listed on the site as sold out, buy some generics and try showing up anyway. A lot of games are no-shows.
– If you want to try something popular like Pathfinder or D&D, they run open tables of huge events all weekend. Guaranteed you’ll be able to find something. Much more fun if you bring a friend to party up with, otherwise you get partied with Randos.
– For further details, a friend of mine has a detailed guidebook on surviving Gen Con Indy:
http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/cons/gencon_survival.html
http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/cons/cities/index.html
Don’t over schedule for events. I did that last year and ended up skipping a couple because it was cutting into time to visit with people and play demos. If there’s anything that you really want to do, get those, but for the most part leave yourself open.
And I’ll be there again this year, I’m looking forward to playing lots and lots of board games.