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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...
I don't know why everyone was dissing the Booth Babes at E3. So what if some of them were scantally clad at times. That was probably the closes thing that most people would get to being near a half-naked woman.
At any rate, I miss the ladies. That was the whole point of E3. It was like the video game convention version of Hooters.
If there is no place to release the natual emotions of male chauvinism, then eventually it bottles up.
I'm tired of these born-again-Christain-type people ruining my fun or obstructing me from having a good time in an environment where I can still be a nerd but at the same time be swooned by hot women wearing next to nothing. You know what pisses me off? The Chirstian mens group at my university had a Halo 2 Tournament last year, yet I can't access my webserver using SSH or chat using IRC. Christains and their guns. Booo! What ever happened to Christains and their hot women? Most other faiths would punish a woman for being such good looking.
Now, because the Booth Babes have been told to go away because my mind could "be corrupted by sin and sexual thoughts" by some Bible-thumping "family advocates" who care about everyone elses family but their own (I'm talking to you, Senator Hillary Clinton), men are denied from being men and women are prohibited from being women.
Call it sexism, but it is true.
A man can not be a gentlemen unless he has expressed chavanism and a woman can not be a ladies unless she has expressed her feminine wyles.
Restore the natural order of reality. Bring back the booth babes and save E3!
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Join Tor today!
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...
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
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.
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!!!