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Video Games Live National Tour Canceled
Plaguefox writes "Video Games Live ('The first major North American concert tour featuring music from some of the biggest video games combined with video footage, lasers, lights, and live action') announced today that they have cancelled all tour dates in their national tour except for two scheduled for this weekend in Seattle and Vancouver. Fans across the country who have paid for tickets to these events must now manually request refunds and suffer convenience charges. The event was cancelled 'because ticket sales were slow and did not reflect the great interest expected.' This news comes after a previous tour-wide cancellation(with similar convenience charges) when the creators decided to increase tour stops and venue seating to match what they perceived as vastly more interest than they anticipated. As one person said: 'I've already paid enough convenience fees and facility fees to see a broadway musical. I wish I had.'"
I blame Electronic Arts, Microsoft, MTV, Jack Thompson, Yahoo, and that blog that didn't put me on its blogroll even after I TrackBacked.
Did Yoko Ono break up Mario and Luigi too!? I don't know what to believe in anymore!
First cancelling because you want to do a bigger tour because of claimed high interest in your show and then cancceling again because there is not enough interest?
Smarter people then me should probably be able to figure out if this is a vaporware product wich exists just to get gullible people to give them money. Phantom game console like.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Fans across the country who have paid for tickets to these events must now manually request refunds and suffer convenience charges.
Not to be one of those lawsuit happy types but...
If the organizers don't cover convience charges to the fans, I'd say bring on the civil suit!
Why should the fans pay out these fees to a show they never got to see?
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
1: Promote Event
2: Sell Tickets
3: Cancel Event
4: Profit!
I can't believe they are charging "Convience Fees" for an event that they canceled. I mean, its one thing if I decide I can't go and return my ticket for a refund. Yeah, I'll suck it up and pay the return fee. Its completely different when they CANCEL the event. Full refund, including all service charges and fees are in order for the people that bought tickets.
If this goes kind of stuff continues to go through without a hitch for the promoters, I'm going to start organizing non-exisitant tours promising all sorts of wild, outlandish things people will pay to see, then canceling the show. I'll make a ton off of keeping 15% of the cost of every ticket sold.
They easily filled up the 10,000 seats for the first one in the Hollywood Bowl. The problem would seem to be that they didn't research into their target cities well enough and just picked cities based on location.
From their press release:
Due to circumstances beyond our control, Video Games Live will not be playing any of the previously scheduled shows, with the exception of Seattle and Vancouver on October 29 and October 30. Furthermore, plans are being made for additional shows in specific markets across North America for 2006.
These guys have a nice racket going. I would hope someone who bought tickets files a lawsuit.
...brought to you by greedy, inexperienced dolts.
"We want to make sure we squeeze out every dollar we can rather than going with what was scheduled and doing something practical like a second loop on the tour." Oh wait, didn't they say that? They might as well have.
Any moron who gets tickets for their so-called 2006 tour deserves what they get.
Assuming you paid with a credit card...Call your credit card company, explain that the concert has been cancelled and that you have not been offered a full refund. They will ask if you tried to work this out with the merchant. Tell them you can't seem to contact anyone at the merchant location. More than likely your credit card company will immediately credit your account (provisionally) and file a dispute with the merchant's processor. The other plus side of this option is that the merchant will most likely be handed a 'chargeback fee' from their processor. Vengeance is yours!
In Soviet Russia the concerts cancel YOU!
There was a lot of back-patting going on, for which I blame on Tommy Talarico. I still can't believe music from crap games like Advent Rising (Talarico did the music for this) and Headhunter was included in a concert that also features Mario Brothers and Halo.
My experience was further soured by sitting in front of a group of ignorant boys who referred to themselves as gamers just because they hopped on the Halo bandwagon. I'm not trying to put down the Halosexuals, but these guys were whining through-out the whole concert, "Halo! Where's Halo? OMG I wanna hear Halo!" and then they would proceed to start singing the gregorian chant that starts the theme song. In between whining, they were trying to impress each other with their gaming "knowledge." when clips of MYST were shown on screen, one of them shouted to the other, "Oh! I played that on the Playstation! It was SO awesome, but really really bloody." When Castlevania was shown on screen, another one called it Mario Brothers. I would understand it if these guys were younger and grew up after Mario Brothers, but they were at least in their mid twenties.
Then there was some sound equipment debacle when the Halo song was finally played (as the grand finale) and Steve Vai's guitar wasn't hooked up to the amp at all.
I believe the real reason the concert was cancelled was that too many people realized how much of a tool Tommy Talarico really is and demanded their money back.
Well, while you quoted much of the initial announcement that was posted on our main page, you failed to quote the portion that we included SPECIFICALLY about ticket charges:
"TICKET REFUND INFORMATION
Our ticket providers (Ticketmaster & Tickets.com) have given us the following information.
Tickets can be returned to the point of purchase for a refund which includes the full value of the ticket, plus fees with the exception of the one-time handling charge. The handling/convenience fee averages about $4.50 per ticket ORDER, not per ticket. So if someone bought 10 tickets, that one-time charge of $4.50 is levied once, not 10 times. That money is used (in part) by the ticket provider to pay for postage, envelopes, etc. and that is why it is not refundable.
VGL does NOT keep any handling fees or convenience charges for any tickets bought for any show."
As you can see, this is a charge that TICKETMASTER implements. This charge would be for any tickets that are sold. Therefore, if you go to an Aerosmith show, and they cancel, TicketMaster keeps the $4.50. Not Aerosmith.
If you have any questions about this event, why it was cancelled, when the next show is scheduled (Yes, there are more shows!!)... Please feel free to visit www.videogameslive.com and join us on our forum.
The creators of this show are very passionate about this event, and we all want your support and feedback.
Becky Young - Marketing Coordinator
Lollapalooza suffered a similar fate in the summer of 2004, when a huge, countrywide tour had to be cancelled for lack of sales. Spreading these arena-sized tours across the country doesn't work anymore unless the act is a recognized, national draw, because it simply costs too much to book, promote and accomodate the shows to pull them off unless the venue reaches near-capacity. If it were a club tour, this would be totally different... but then again, this kind of show would be impossible to do at crappy local clubs. If they try this again in 2006, I'm sure they'll limit the shows to a few super-huge, guaranteed markets and the show will go on as planned.
When "Dear Friends: Music from Final Fantasy" came to Detroit, tickets sold like hotcakes. Four friends and I made it down for the second night of the engagement, and there wasn't an empty seat in orchestra hall.
While buying tickets at the box office a week before the show, there were no 5-seat blocks left in the cheap section, we had to bump up a grade if we wanted to sit together. The clerk said the cheap seats had gone "like hotcakes" as soon as news of the show broke, and the other sections were going "pretty fast".
Tell me again how gamers have no interest in getting out of the house, symphony music, or live performances in general?
I can understand why the tickets weren't selling - it's all music from new games that aren't particularly well-known for their music. If they wanted to do symphonic renditions of game music, they should have picked great game soundtracks and done arrangements of those, instead of just picking a lot of recent top-selling game soundtracks that few people ever noticed in the first place.
I don't think anyone would plan a tour like this deliberately to cancell it and make a bit from fees, anyone who thinks that is a bit paranoid and conspiracy obsessed. These people simply didn't realise that you actually need an experienced professional to organise a concert tour, not a few refugees from the games biz. They didn't hire a real tour organiser or tour manager and suffered the consequences, as did the paying fans.
I would say the cancellation was brought on by the realization that nobody would want to give their hard-earned cash to that douchebag, Tallarico.
I was actually hoping to go to the one in San Jose two weeks from now. Fine, they may be playing mostly newer game music, but it still would've been a cool place to go...and who knows? Maybe I would've met some game producers who were visiting.
Y helo thar
I certainly hope you are some troll and not really the marketing coordinator for this company. I can't believe a supposed professional would send out such childish communications. Petulantly denying any wrongdoing while at the same time talking about how great you are when your customers just got the shaft probably isn't the best way to market your company.
But what do I know, I'm not a "Marketing Coordinator."
You should notice that you aren't charged a restocking fee on defective hardware, nor are you charged for returns when the manufacturer recalls them due to a safety defect. Paying for somebody else's screwup is never good.