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Gen Con To Take the Place of E3?
Venues like PAX, Tokyo Game Show, and GDC are taking stock in the wake of E3's 'demise', and coming to terms with what this will mean next year. Gamasutra reports that another trade show is stepping up the the plate: Gen Con. From the article: "In order to better accommodate the video game business into its existing shows, Gen Con organizers plan to expand its venue space at the Indianapolis show in 2007. An additional 43,000 square feet will be added to the exhibit hall with additional space expanding into area hotels as well to accommodate the thousands of games taking place over the four-day event. In addition, Gen Con So Cal, the companies' show traditionally held in Anaheim, will be moved to the Los Angeles Convention Center, the former site of the annual E3 trade show, for an unspecified 2007 date, and will attempt to attract further video game companies to exhibit alongside the traditional paper-gaming and CCG Gen Con stalwarts. 'When the news came out about the drastic changes at E3, we began to hear from some industry players about Gen Con increasing its capabilities to better accommodate the industry,' said Peter Adkison, CEO of Gen Con, LLC." This is truly surreal.
I just don't think GenCon has the infrastructure... But it would be cool to see.
Gas prices being what they are, and budgets being crunched, I think you will see a lot of shows combining in the near future.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
The real purpose of E3 remains - a venue for publisher, developers, and distributors to meet and setup meetings for deals.
The only thing that has changed is all the effort that was being wasted on providing crap for thousands of fanboys who managed to land themselves tickets.
Kock yourself out Gen Con, no one but EB employees and fanboys cares what you do. The real work/action will still be in LA at E3.
when the news about E3's changes first broke, everyone went on about how big, expensive and ultimately how little benefit the event offered. this sounds like the first steps to building up another such event. i guess whatever works for some.
No sig for you!!
Gen Con gets booth babes?
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
for an unspecified 2007 date
It would be really strange if the new big show (dare I say "e3 killer"?) was at a time other than the traditional spring. For instance, if it was during the end of summer/early fall, imagine how long the advertising ramp-up for Christmas would be.
Geez. And you thought Christmas started too early already...
They should move it to Las Vegas. Isn't that much different from E3, except some of the games are very different.
What the video/computer game industry needs is something like comic con that is geared toward the gamers and fans and everyone else who was going to E3 but wasn't actually there for the original reasons of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, which was more for companies and journalists than the fan base that was growing up around it.
How cool would it be if the companies could all get together and set up something like a mega-arcade that operated on a semi-permanent nature where new games and companies could use it for publicity, etc...
Nice troll!
I worry more about the already laboring tabletop RPG and CCG markets. How long before they get pushed to the edges of the floor, or segregated into their own smaller room? Two years? One year? Five seconds?
... but World of Warcraft is even better crack than Magic: The Gathering.
ComiCon (in San Diego, Chicago, and everywhere else) have absorbed the media presence, so the original supporters of GenCon might be all right
Dude, you have clearly never been to Gen Con. Even aside from the armorers' chick's in chainmail bikinis, there's enough people who go that there are scads of good looking geek gamer girls dressing up... er down, depending on how you look at it.
Why would anyone want to become the next E3? The ESA said it themselves, the members themselves decided unanimously that E3 was too big and cost too much. Those are the same people who are going to look at Gen Con and say : "You know guys, there's a reason why E3 is dead. We won't take part in your E3-wanna be project. It just costs too much."
Then what do you call "Prey"!????
Exactly! It's not that ESA dropped the ball and said that they didn't want to host E3, it's that the companies said they didn't want to play that game anymore. You can't have E3 without the companies.
So far, (and it's early), you've already been ousted as a chauvinist. I find this sad, because as a straight female, I heartily agree. Go Booth Babes.
I'm all for this. Now, I may be wrong, but to get into E3, don't you need a press-pass? And now that they are scaling it back and giving it a more developer-focused feel, say, like Apple's World Devleopers Conference or something, that's less commercial- three month unplayable demos to tantilize the consumer.
Which is a shame. There needs to be an outpouring of consumerism for this industry, at the very least to get National media attention on videogames (other than the occaisonal blame for school shootings). On the more generous side, these widespread events gives up something to talk about. And in America, nothing says mainstream consumerism like scantly-clad women hawking wares.
Go Booth Babes, go consumerism, go Gen con.
Bible-thumping "family advocates" who care about everyone elses family but their own (I'm talking to you, Senator Hillary Clinton),...
Dude, Hillary is anything but a Bible-thumping "family advocate".
The decision remove booth babes had everything to do with sexual objectification of women and nothing to do with sin and fun.
Take one under-airconditioned gaming convention stuffed full of prepubescent boys (and immature men) for whom Xena (or Gabriella, or Callisto, depending on your particular fetish) is their idyllic archetype of femininity.
... nerd-vana.
Add one electronic gaming convention, famous for its babealicious flesh-pottery and heedlessness of social convention in order to market its products.
It's going to be like
At least you've got decent odds that you'd have a Gen Con where the attendees *maybe* took a shower, if only because it's the closest they've come to a nearly naked breast and DEFINITELY the closest they'll EVER come to booth-babe-caliber hotties.
Then again, recalling the stench of some of the anticipatory crowds at the E3's I attended...maybe not.
-Styopa
So let me get this straight... E3 is getting slashed down to almost nothing because the game companies were sick of spending lots of time and money getting ready to preview products at a massive convention, or at least that's what I took out of the news stories circulating last week. So now the Gen Con organizers want to relocate the show to the LA convention center and try selling the extra space to video companies that have already made it clear they don't want to do conventions? Someone over at Gen Con isn't thinking this one through...
GenCon already embodies the spirit of what E3 had become basically: a huge con were geeks get togeather to play. GenCon has been growing every year. As a gamer the top to conventions that I wanted to attend every year were GenCon and E3 (in that order). I suspect I am not alone.
Companies can claim that its too expensive all they want. However they will not avoid the oppourtunity to reach 25K+ of thier most passionate customers all in one place. There booths may not be as big or flashy, but they will be there. It makes too much marketing sense not to be. Here is quite possibly the most fertile ground they can find for growing thier most faithful fanboys.
GenCon is already built, the fans have already come to play. It's the biggest 5 day gaming party of the year, why would they NOT want to be smack dab in the middle of it?
Vesuvias
Will they have booth babes?
ok guys i'm gonna roll a twenty sider to see if I score with the booth babe... 20!!! WTF OMG CRIT PENETRATIONNN!!!
Anybody who wanted to get in to E3 could score a pass. Getting fake credentials was as easy as using a business card design template for MS Word. Do a fake card layout, print, tape to the E3 application form, fax to E3. Done.
Maybe the new E3 will actually make some effort to check those credentials, but I guarantee fakers will still get in, and some vendor/game company will still employ booth babes.
Personally, I am all for Gencon or Comicon or someone else stepping in to do the "video game show for the public" complete with booth babes and the whole nine yards. BUT I can't see the game companies getting in on it. They went to E3 with the illusion that it would make them industry money, not appeal to the public. They don't want to deal directly with the public and have no reason to move their thing to Gencon or wherever. Nothing in it for them.
The public woundn't appreciate it either. E3 had become a contest of biggest, flashiest, loudest and most jiggly, with the winner of those categories declared the winner of the whole show. Along the way, people forgot that there wasn't supposed to be A single winner, that it was about providing entertainment of all sorts to all sorts of buyers. If the public gets in, they're going straight back to that biggest, loudest, showiest thing and lots of good games will get kicked to the side. The industry put up with that from E3. They will not put up with it from the general public.
Like anything I say matters.
I do say, bring on the babes! Life's more interesting with good things to look at and boost morale. Every workplace should have cheerleaders and/or cute mascots of both genders.