RE: Worried about GenCon.

Interested in coming to Canberra in Australia?	Our club runs a
convention called CANCON over the Australia Day Weekend (24-26 January).
We get about 650 people, two hundred of those are wargamers , 350 are
roleplayers and the rest are magic and board gamers.  Full Thrust runs
plus hopefully Dirtside and Star Grunt demos.

Simon LeRay-Meyer
CANCON Dealer Co-Ordinator

		-----Original Message-----
		From:	Ground Zero Games [SMTP:jon@gzero.dungeon.com]
		Sent:	Friday, 6 February 1998 7:42
		To:	FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
		Subject:	Re: Worried about GenCon.

		>On Wed, 4 Feb 1998, Alfredo Lorente wrote:
		>
		>> How many people actually go to those smaller
"engagements"?	And for
		>> Jon and KR at GeoHex, which are more profitable, in
terms of sales
		>> per people seen, instead of total volume of sales?
Or is that
		>> confidential info?
		>
		>The smaller engagements is all we've got in the Greater
Seattle area.  The
		>largest gaming con is Dragonflight, and even that
generally only runs
		>between 600-1000 attendees.  Then there's Enfilade put
on by the NWHMGS
		>which fills one ballroom plus a couple meeting rooms.
There are other
		>medium sized regional conventions which I don't get to,
but nothing like
		>what's available in California or the east coast.  How
does Great Britain
		>and the other European nations fair?
		>

		Well, over here EuroGenCon is our only sizeable RPG
show, but we have a
		load of wargame shows of varying sizes. EGC is usually
around 1500-2000
		attendees, so it is still VERY small compared to US
GenCon. A 10'
		tradestand cost us £250 last year, but for EGC '98 it
is
up to £300 - a 20%
		increase, not as bad as the US one but still bad enough.
This makes it more
		expensive than the biggest wargame show (Salute, a
one-day show with about
		3000 people in) which costs us more like £270 for 12'
of
stand. At an
		average, at Salute we take 50-100% more in the one day
than we do over 4
		days at EGC.

		Our smaller shows are usually 300-500 people, but the
stands tend to only
		cost £20 - £50 and we can still take a proportionate
amount per head of
		customers.

		EGC is held at Loughborough University campus, and uses
student
		accommodation for the attendees; the dealers' room is a
single sports hall,
		the gaming is in other halls. Salute is held in
Kensington Town Hall, and
		fills the building (two large halls and many smaller
rooms), while most
		provincial wargame shows tend to be in sports halls,
leisure centres and
		such.

		Remember that the UK is small enough that we can drive
to most shows on the
		day (even if it means a 4am start!), and only at a very
few do we have to
		stay over the night before the show. We also tend to see
a lot of the same
		regular customers at lots of the shows, as some people
seem to get to
		nearly everything!
		When I came over for GenCon '96, the concept of
everything for the trade
		stand having been shipped by road days (weeks?) before,
then the stand crew
		flying to the Con, seemed REALLY strange.....

		Getting more back to the original topic of this thread,
EGC '97 was
		actually pretty good, with the WoTC presence not too
overpowering (OK, the
		usual crop of Shufflers and Deckheads, but a lot of good
gaming going on as
		well) - most of the traders live in the bar after the
dealers' room shuts
		anyway, so it doesn't matter a lot to them... ;)
		'98 will be interesting, however; I really hope it
doesn't start to go the
		way that the US one is, if the rumours are right. Sadly,
that seems to be
		what happens once Big Business (and thus Accountants)
takes an interest in
		a "little" industry like ours..... :(

		Jon (GZG)