Gamer Con March 2017

PauloMN

0ph0rce0 wrote: »

Yes it is. I've been to gigs at the 3 arena and due to lack of crowd management or Pat Downs taking forever on the way in I've queued for up to 2 hours to get in while it pisses down on us. at up to 100 per ticket. What's your point. These shows aren't oversold and that's the way it is. **** happens its to be expected.

I paid nearly 10 grand to go on a holiday to Florida just for the parks, When we got in we had to queue for 2-4 hours for rides. Was i expecting that, Not that long no way but I knew there would be lines.

Big demand for a big event. If people thought there would be no queues for entrance, games & meet and greets then they should have never bought tickets or stayed at home.

It still does not excuse people being turned away like I've said.

This is not a gig, nor is it a theme park. Comparing GamerCon to either is like comparing apples and oranges. I was in Disney California for holidays last year and planning was easy in there - plenty of non-queue or small queue alternatives to do after getting quick passes for the popular things. Plenty of places to rest/sit/get food/drinks etc..

People expect reasonable queues once inside, they (rightly) do not expect a 2+ hour queue to just get into the lobby to start their other queues for everything else! It was a total and utter fail from a planning point of view. The organisers got greedy and made ridiculous presumptions about how long people would spend on their visit. Not only that, but they didn't even have the staff in place that may have helped them with their presumptions i.e. get people off consoles who were there for hours on end.

Gigs are not over-sold - there is a space for every ticket holder to attend together. Once you are in, you are in - you are at the event. The point is that this event should have only sold enough tickets to let every punter into the building without delay at least. Every punter with a ticket yesterday should have been able to get access to the building with the minimum of fuss - the only delay should have been processing each ticket, NOT waiting for people to come out.

People were outside queuing waiting for others to come out, but those others were themselves queuing for lengthy spells to do anything in GamerCon.

ixoy

0ph0rce0 wrote: »

I paid nearly 10 grand to go on a holiday to Florida just for the parks, When we got in we had to queue for 2-4 hours for rides. Was i expecting that, Not that long no way but I knew there would be lines.

Actually, theme parks show generally how to do queuing right. In the likes of Disney you'll have an idea of exactly how long you have to wait. There's a very ordered system for queue control. Full capacity aside, it was the fact that we had no such information that annoyed people and no queue control once inside - such as managing people getting fair access to consoles or to stop people hogging them.
So it's not really the queues but how it was handled and that *is* a valid criticism.

sniper_samurai

Article up about it now on the UK Times website.

[url] http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mass-effect-gamer-hordes-left-in-the-rain-nzckhrhrr?shareToken=40e6028a1c27bafaf4f31e1dcd10316b[/url]

redshoes15

Calhoun wrote: »

Reminds me of the bah humbug guy on the independent article about gamers and to grow up.

Perhaps your friends have simpler tastes but they got in, some people traveled up from down the country and didnt.

There are allot of worse things going on across the planet but who cares, we don't just forget everything that happens locally because its worse elsewhere.

The same simple minds in Ireland look down on gamers yet don't mind skulling back the old pints yesterday while the young ones wait around or watch. At least parents going to this event were trying to bring a little fun to their families.

Are you accusing me of being simple minded or have I totally missed your point? I didn't say anything about looking down on gamers, I wasn't sculling pints around kids on Paddys Day and didn't say a word about parents attending this even with their kids apart from the fact their giving out on the GamerCon Facebook page was a little over the top.

Calhoun

redshoes15 wrote: »

Are you accusing me of being simple minded or have I totally missed your point? I didn't say anything about looking down on gamers, I wasn't sculling pints around kids on Paddys Day and didn't say a word about parents attending this even with their kids apart from the fact their giving out on the GamerCon Facebook page was a little over the top.

No i am saying there are allot of people out there who are basically saying get over it to folk who are trying to create a good memory for their family. Yet allot in Ireland pay no heed to the fact they spent the 17th getting drunk .

Dyr

Calhoun wrote: »

If your man's twitter Is anything to go by he is a startup. I highly doubt he will get another shot at this because 1. Most venues won't touch him after this negative publicity and 2. Reputation​ has been destroyed.

Not everyone had to be there to have an opinion on it though as a gamer crap like this is the least of what I want to see, that goes double as a parent blatant cash grabs aren't good.

Just do a Paddy Cosgrave and blame the venue, the vendors, the support companies and everyone bar yourself then demand Enda Kenny gets involved next time.

Rezident

Shame about the unacceptable queues, I was going to go to this. Maybe next time, if it's organised properly.

Calhoun

Bambi wrote: »

Just do a Paddy Cosgrave and blame the venue, the vendors, the support companies and everyone bar yourself then demand Enda Kenny gets involved next time.

Hehehehe indeed .

upinthesky

I went yesterday Saturday and got there approx 9.45, had vip so got took us about 10-15 mins to get in, there was two lines divided by fences one the vip and the other normal tickets, was soo happy i got vip as the length of the normal q was long.

Got in went straight to the retro section, kids played a game of mario kart and street fighter had a quick browse around at the merchandise and a few of the other consoles xbox one ect, left there and headed upstairs to level 4 i think it was,

This is where 4 youtubers where doing the q+a so stayed for 30 mins and listened to that, everything was running smoothly so i thought, headed back down stairs to level 2 for meet and greet and could not believe my eyes, in the space of 30 mins the place was jammed, got in the Que to me jreosome asf which was about 2 hours long,we were a family of 5, so got hubby to go get my son a hat so the youtuber could sign it, it took him 30 mins just to get up to the counter to pay,then he had to Que for the escalator back up, sent him for food, 1 sandwich 5.50, no way i was paying that for 5 of us plus 2.50 each for a drink.

So met the youtuber anyway which now i realize was so lucky as some had left before people got to see them, decided to leave as the place was jammed, they wouldn't let us use the stairs so had to que for another 30 mins to use the escalator to get out, absolute joke, i paid over 130 euro to play an Nintendo for 5 minutes and que for 2 hours to see a youtuber for 2 mins...

we were out of there about 2, went to mc'donalds and the museum just to salvage the day...

Shiminay

ButcherOfNog wrote: »

I was at a number of Gaelcons (including the first one) and part of the Irish gaming scene when the internet "happened", so looking at it objectively, I was amazed by the sheer numbers yesterday and the mix of people there. There are positives off the back of this disaster.

Jaysus, they're all coming out of the woodwork! It's been a million years man (if you have no idea what I'm on about, you'll remember me as Kharn).

I was coming back to make this same point. The way this has galvanised all the various so-called amateur events into sharing and cross promoting each other's work. IGA has a statement, Octocon has one, there are various shops and genuine supporters of the community offering raffles for ticket holders of this shambles etc. Yes, it's opportunistic, but you have to capitalise on the exposure when you get it. If any of these organisations had even a fraction of the massive budget that was spent on this, people would be talking about the results for years.

sniper_samurai

Shiminay wrote: »

Jaysus, they're all coming out of the woodwork! It's been a million years man (if you have no idea what I'm on about, you'll remember me as Kharn).

I was coming back to make this same point. The way this has galvanised all the various so-called amateur events into sharing and cross promoting each other's work. IGA has a statement, Octocon has one, there are various shops and genuine supporters of the community offering raffles for ticket holders of this shambles etc. Yes, it's opportunistic, but you have to capitalise on the exposure when you get it. If any of these organisations had even a fraction of the massive budget that was spent on this, people would be talking about the results for years.

Indeed, they had over €10,000 for advertising alone. Most of the other cons in the country are lucky to operate on half that.

Retr0gamer

For a professional con it all sounds very amateur. Just seemed to be a total lack of events, even the game's on show were stuff you could play at home. Any other con I've been to has had a variety of smaller events on throughout the day so the crowd gets split up and there's stuff for everyone. This seems to be throw in a few games to play and you tubers and it will be grand.

I hope the experience doesn't put people off the amateur ones as any I've been to in ireland have been fantastic and are run by people with a passion for the con's subject and don't just have it as a venue for people to pay to get advertised to.

ixoy

Out of curiosity, anyone know what sort of funds Dublin Comic Con had to play with versus this? DCC is the only other other con I've been to in the convention centre and I thought it was far better. From what I gather then it's because it was run by fans for fans.

Shiminay

It's about thirty grand to rent that venue from what I've heard from conversations with other events people.

vrt12

ixoy wrote: »

Out of curiosity, anyone know what sort of funds Dublin Comic Con had to play with versus this? DCC is the only other other con I've been to in the convention centre and I thought it was far better. From what I gather then it's because it was run by fans for fans.

Guys from DCC would be out and about enjoying the event as much as the fans including out at the queues filming, talking to people. DCC has a real buzz to it. Gamercon was created by an "entrepreneur". Says it all.

There was absolutely no thought put into the content of the event. Absolutely nothing worth seeing or doing. It was all about making money and they made no qualms about it.

CiDeRmAn

0ph0rce0 wrote: »

Yes it is. I've been to gigs at the 3 arena and due to lack of crowd management or Pat Downs taking forever on the way in I've queued for up to 2 hours to get in while it pisses down on us. at up to 100 per ticket. What's your point. These shows aren't oversold and that's the way it is. **** happens its to be expected.

I paid nearly 10 grand to go on a holiday to Florida just for the parks, When we got in we had to queue for 2-4 hours for rides. Was i expecting that, Not that long no way but I knew there would be lines.

Big demand for a big event. If people thought there would be no queues for entrance, games & meet and greets then they should have never bought tickets or stayed at home.

It still does not excuse people being turned away like I've said.

I think you are missing the point.
The event has been over sold.
The extent of the crowds waiting to get in underestimated.
The organisation inside is, by all reports, slap dash and non-professional.
I have been to Comic Con and had to queue, but once inside after a 40 minute wait, it was grand for all comers, regardless of vip status.
This does not appear to be the case this time, and as such is disappointing for many who paid considerable costs just getting there, never mind the price of the ticket in.

CiDeRmAn

http://m.independent.ie/irish-news/news/families-left-fuming-as-hundreds-turned-away-from-overbooked-gamercon-dublin-35543590.html

Lone Stone

damm what a mess my friend tried to get me to go glad i skipped it now, i feel so bad for the parents who tried to take their kids especially those who traveled to dublin for it.

Azza

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

http://m.independent.ie/irish-news/news/families-left-fuming-as-hundreds-turned-away-from-overbooked-gamercon-dublin-35543590.html

My god the snobby nature of some of those comments on that article is unreal.

EoinHef

Azza wrote: »

My god the snobby nature of some of those comments on that article is unreal.

Jesus,talk about condescending a**holes,so f**kin what if some people use gaming as a past time. As if their past times are in any way more valid.

Amazing the intolerance thats still about when it comes to games really.

bajer101

I didn't get in yesterday. I left after queuing for an hour and a half and had three kids with me. Reading the accounts we made the right decision to leave as it was crap and they didn't even have a nintendo switch!

johnny_ultimate

vrt12 wrote: »

There was absolutely no thought put into the content of the event. Absolutely nothing worth seeing or doing. It was all about making money and they made no qualms about it.

I reckon it's safe to say GamerCon was designed as a product first and foremost. I've seen Ferdi Roberts described as a 'serial entrepreneur' in at least one article, which appears to capture the motivation behind this event. Everything about it - from the aggressive branding to the presence of 'celebrity' YouTubers - gave the impression of organisers aiming to hit target markets first and foremost. Which is, in its own financial way, fine - talking in purely economic terms, the sheer amount of people who showed up illustrates there is an audience for this - but not really the sort of thing that has much (if any) cultural value behind it. While I admit I'm in a niche - GDC is the only sort of gaming expo I'd have any real interest in attending - there's something I guess very soulless about the way this was all sold and marketed.

No doubt it drew some enthusiastic people - whether that was the young fans of the YouTubers or those who were there to compete - but even if it ran 100% smoothly there was always the sense that this was an exercise in branding above all else (GameStop, Sony / MS, PornHub, GamerCon itself). But I suppose that's always the way when someone tries to translate 'hobbyist' (to use Mr Roberts' words) enthusiasm to a mass-market product - but I'm far from convinced this would have been a particularly successful attempt to achieve that even without the chaotic scenes yesterday

0ph0rce0

Loved the guys post on social media.

Not much to do, was ok, had an alright time but wouldn't be back

He ordered a pastry and juice. The server didn't smile so he put in for a refund hahaha brilliant.

Sieghardt

Sad to hear it was quite a mess but great to hear so many people were interested in this kind of thing, hopefully the interest shown will translate into support for more well organized events.

I was considering exhibiting at next years GamerCon but we'll have to see how things pan out

Dyr

I saw this show up on my facebuke feed quite a bit with a fairly aggressive sales pitch and I checked it out but tbh it smacked of a cash in once you looked at what was on offer so I steered well clear.

I think the oraganiser realised that Ireland is full of kids who's parents will mop this kind of stuff up

ibFoxer

I was there yesterday: this is just my opinion (however it is shared by the guys i went with)-

It was an unmitigated clusterf**k. We got there at 10.30am, and the queue was wrapped around the centre and back onto the front footpath, and wasn't moving at anything resembling a pace. Myself and one of the other guys had VIP tickets so we were able to bypass a chunk of the queue, however once you got to the end of the VIP path it merged with the other queue, which was utterly redundant. At the door at the time we got there, there were two people scanning tickets, two more joined but it wasn't helping to speed things up- one entrance for a capacity crowd is not enough, let alone 20,000 plus.

Once inside, on the ground floor, it was evident from the off that this was shambolic- queues for everything, as to be expected, but nothing moving. GameStop had a "shop" in more or less the middle of the floor, which had 4/5 tills, and no queue system, and i understand that the pos system, and most importantly the card system, failed out at at least one of the tills. They had loose GamerCon merch in the middle of the floor with nobody watching it, and there was plenty of it lifted. This area created a bottleneck that was really difficult to get around or through- there was plenty of room over to the left hand side where GS could have set up and left the middle of the floor free.

The whole area was understaffed, as pointed out in the now infamous Facebook post, and the staff that were there were under immense pressure from the off, and that is down to management and nothing else- you can't hold an event for that many people with only a handful of staff. The Convention Centre staff that we saw on Saturday weren't much better, we asked the same question to 6 different members (in respect of leaving and returning) and were given very different answers, i'm not entirely sure that anybody really knew what protocol was, and there was no clear answer given.

The escalator was stopped at one point because the second floor was at max capacity- at this stage the ground floor room was wedged, the foyer was filling up and there was nowhere to go. We took a walk around and tried to get a look at the retro gaming section (on the right hand side of the room as you entered) and that whole area was a shambles, there was nobody policing the area, and i found out later that some of the PC's set up for gaming had had parts stolen out of them, because apparently it was that easy to do. There was no rotation of folk sitting in the gaming areas, and there were some just sitting on the chairs and not even playing anything.

We eventually got up to the second floor and had a walk around the eSports area, which again was just mental- folk sitting all over the floor, the shambles that was Street Fighter, the delayed start and the real lack of anything of substance led to us abandoning this area and heading to the auditorium, which again was packed. And that was the tone the whole way through- every floor was packed out, and there wasn't space to breath, in fact i'd call it dangerous, and definitely a fire safety hazard.

We were there for a few hours and most of that time was spent trying to navigate the centre, a little bit of time spent outside in the air, and then the time the lads spent queuing for the razr bus, a queue that didn't move for 30 minutes and of which there was no clear indication of where to join. And this was the problem all over the floor- the only two areas that were efficiently managed were the PS VR zone and the Xbox zone- everything else was a disaster.

I will say this- the effort that went into the cosplay deserves every recognition, practically all of the costumes were absolutely phenomenal.

We left and decided we weren't going back on Sunday and there were a few reasons for it which i'll outline:

- This was definitely put together by someone who doesn't understand gamer culture; it was very much aimed at kids, without being anyway kid friendly
- It was impossible to do anything, you had to queue to join queues (obviously not really, but you get what i mean)
- The "Vendor's": GameStop of course took centre stage, but that should have been a warning shot to all, as we all know their business practices and the kinds of events they partner with; Logitech no showed, and i am currently unaware whether that was simply a lack of space or they balked; PS and Xbox were fine, everything you'd expect from those companies, but i'd warrant they will limit their exposure to this and sever ties rather quickly; I actually can't remember the rest of the vendors- over on the left wall there was a stand selling gaming related t-shirts, hoodies etc, there was one selling latex masks, cloth masks etc, and there was a Yugioh stand not selling anything, just taking up valuable real estate, which was utterly pointless
- The VIP pass was, as far as i could tell, of no use, except to skip the queue; i heard tell of plenty of VIP folk not getting to meet a Youtuber, and there was no indication of who had a VIP or not, nobody checking anything and no way to tell, although i did see a very small amount of people with lanyards saying VIP on them


This was very much amateur hour in full flight- extremely poorly organised, definitely oversold by at least 50%, and the layout was dangerous, in my opinion. I don't have much experience in running convention, just the odd yugioh tournament back in the day but i can say that i would have tried to run this very differently

I'm sure there's more i could add to this, i'm wrecked and can't recall.

ixoy

Azza wrote: »

My god the snobby nature of some of those comments on that article is unreal.

I'm not going to read that now - thanks for the heads up! - but I saw what I imagine would be similar comments on The Journal. The attitude is very annoying that it has less validity than, in particular, sports (the two aren't even mutually exclusive - people like both)

However, I also suspect it was shared by some in attendance who brought their kids along and saw it as a "kids event" rather than one for people of all ages. That's going by some comments I've seen elsewhere. I'd have thought it would have lessened a bit to be honest given there's many in their 30s who grew up gaming but it's still alive and well..

FAILSAFE 00

Another thing to remember is 1 ticket could be a family of 5 so when they sold 24000 tickets that could be way more than 24000 people.

Benzino

Sympathise with the staff that have to go through all the refund requests from tomorrow onwards. I wonder how long it will take or will it drag out.

FAILSAFE 00

Benzino wrote: »

Sympathise with the staff that have to go through all the refund requests from tomorrow onwards. I wonder how long it will take or will it drag out.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a delay with refunds. I don't think this saga is over yet.