A Call To Action Comrades

Steve X2

In fairness, sleazy and low rent is kind of a speciality of this forum

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Myrddin

Steve SI wrote: »

In fairness, sleazy and low rent is kind of a speciality of this forum

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It's certainly a departure from the idea of having lectures on BASIC, that's for sure

OwaynOTT

Jazz it up with jazz hands. The clean enjoyable fun.

Jack burton

More than likely I wont be able to meet up to chat about this but when ye all find out what the craic is and give me the 911 on it I'll help out as much as I can

Steve SI

Steve SI wrote: »

So, we still need to meet up discuss this but for a start how do people feel about a retro convention(either on its own or as part of another convention/event) around the December 2012 time frame?

Just a cautionary note. I've been involved with running public events before, both in a professional capacity and privately, and there's a staggering amount of things to consider. It really isn't a game for beginners. If you're getting into it without much experience, be careful. If you can piggyback on anther event, do, and if not, make sure you have a solid team of people behind you who are committed to seeing it through and who know what they're doing, and that any money you invest is money you can afford to lose.

It's just my gut feeling, but I think it would be very difficult to make a retro gaming convention in Ireland reach breakeven, what with the high cost of everything involved versus the fairly low numbers in the retro gaming scene here. Even if you got into a readymade venue like a hotel or conference centre that would handle a lot of the logistics for you, there's still a huge amount of things to consider. You'd basically be spending a lot of money upfront in order to tap into an as yet untested and undefined market. That's a very risky business proposition for anyone putting up any cash.

Would you think about maybe organizing a boardsies trip to an existing, established convention instead? Maybe someplace that's sunny and has cheap beer?:D It's a lot easier to negotiate group rates on hotels and travel than getting into marketing and PR costs, insuring of valuable retro gear, public liability, staffing, venue hire, maintenance, electrics, lighting, sound, security, cash handling, and a million other things you would need to run an event big enough to make it credible.

There are loads of conventions to choose from (link below). You could even use it as a reccie, a chance to meet the organisers, etc to figure out the financial viability of doing something similar back here another year without taking any big risks first.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gaming_conventions

Steve X2

Hey, if we can tag our little convention onto a larger one without making too many compromises I'm all for it if the other peeps here feel the same way.

If we did that we might need to scale down some of the larger ideas we/I have but it would be a start. We have to remember this would be are first bash at it so it's not going to be everyone's perfect idea of a retro convention.

As for the funding well that probably needs to be discussed a bit more. I've a few thousand euro promised to me from a sponsor(a large Irish company) who we can count on to follow through with the funds if we go ahead with it. Plus I'm willing to put some of my own cash forward. But as you say, any cash that we put into it personally we have to be ok with not getting it back.

Much more to discuss on this subject of course.

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Steve SI

Steve SI wrote: »

Hey, if we can tag our little convention onto a larger one without making too many compromises I'm all for it if the other peeps here feel the same way.

If this is a flyer for you guys, i would think about approaching some of the major irish colleges which run game development and programming courses. They run some annual college-affiliated gaming conventions (the wiki link i posted has info on a handful of them). In my experience, these kind of events are usually run with the purpose of showing off the capabilities of the college and it's graduates, and fostering ties with the industry for graduates and staff to take advantage of.

I would expect any such conventions, by their nature to be biased towards showing what the college's graduates can do, so closed to inviting most gaming groups, but a non-threatening group like the boardsies retro guys wouldn't really impact that, there's no real commercial angle there. I can't see any reason why a con like that wouldn't be happy to have a retro section. It would only add to the wider appeal of their event, and show the industry a deeper love of video games than just the most recent technology. You could even take it on the road if you got interest from a few groups.

If you do get a retro section going at something like that i will visit the sh*te out of it and bring as many people as i can drag along. I would love to see retro getting more love in gaming circles.