[Editor’s Note: If you’ve been reading MFM for a number of years, you know that our primary focus has been on filmmaking. With that said, as time has progressed, we’ve observed a blurring of the lines between film and other forms of creative expression. Once relegated to paper RPGs, now every marketing graduate has learned about concepts like ARGs (Alternate Reality Gaming) to build audiences and a slew of marketers use QR codes to hide things these days (a trend, I might add, that MFM’s own World of Depleted was on the cutting edge of nearly a year and a half ago). This is because people want to engage in what they’re excited by and, after Blair Witch Project proved how passionate people could get, more and more people started to looking to game elements to hook people into their films. Well now, we’re seeing a trend that is using film as a portion of a role-playing environment to extremely high success. In fact, even MFM’s own World of Depleted Creative Community is talking to someone in the RPG industry on helping us create a World of Depleted Roleplaying Game as a way to further involve fans. With that in mind, it seems prudent for us to start covering festivals like Gen-Con, Dragon-Con, and even Comic-Con, as we track different places where low-budget creatives have shown they want to explore with their storytelling!-JH]
I attended Gen Con 2011 this year and found the fun and excitement of the Con was well worth the loss of sleep and disconnecting from the rest of the world for three days. Each year over 30,000 people from all over the world attend Gen Con, one of the largest Gaming conventions in the world. Gen Con's main core consists of multiple exhibit halls for people to come together and play board games, Live Action Roll Playing (LARPs), Table Top Role Playing games (RPGs), electronic/digital games, card games and any type of game format you can imagine. They then add in an exhibit hall filled with hundreds of vendors, writers and artists, offer panel/track programming/seminars for a large assortment of topics, run a film festival, organize performance events, host competitions and that’s just a start of what you can find in the 300+ pages of the program guide. So what is this Gen Con event that captivated me for three days? Let me share my adventure with you.
Apparently, Gen Con is designed for Orcs! Good grief!
Gen Con really can boast offering something for everyone. In addition to what I mentioned above, you can find kid’s themed events and special activities for the non-gamer spouses. Game sessions and activities run 24/7. I do mean 24/7. Picture this; it is 1:00am Sunday morning. I am sitting at a table in one of the gaming halls. The hall is filled with 100s of tables (I stopped counting at 118) piled high with games, gadgets, books, miniatures, dice, pizza boxes (yes a number of local food places deliver right to the game hall and at all hours of the day/night) and the shouts of glory and groans of defeat. That is the beauty, magic, kick-butt fun of Gen Con; you can find something happening at any time and in all of the multiple convention locations (Gen Con officially has tracks and events in the convention hall, as well as in four hotels and sponsored events in local businesses around Indianapolis).
The Con runs Thursday through Sunday, with special Wednesday activities. Additionally, there is a movement that’s been building over the last few years called MondayCon. Once most have left, these folks run games and other events for the brave souls wanting to squeeze out one last roll of the dice. I found out about it this year in the Gaming & Community Building panel and will probably take an extra day off work next year to check out this rebel, fringe group. But, for this year, I had three days to immerse myself in all the fun and activity.
Ummm...Giant Dice? Hmm, I will have to find out who they belong to!
Early Friday morning I checked into the Con. I had preregistered online months before. Gen Con has an easy to use online event planner which allows you to register for different games and events. In addition to the online system, I followed a few websites and used social media networks to get a head’s up about who might be doing what at the Con.
After registration, I walked around the convention center to get a feel for the layout. Very important advice, just as with NAB or Comic-Con, bring a good pair of shoes as you can do a lot of walking. As I looked around, I found flyers, cards, QR codes and many other notices scattered around the convention area. The social media sites and flyers helped me find out about a lot of impromptu events. I recommend you schedule some events ahead of time, but be willing to jump around as well. Gen Con has an awesome app (both Droid and iPhone formats) to help you keep up on news and events. I also used Twitter. Many of the film guests would tweet they were going to be at a certain place at a certain time with t-shirts or other special offers. I scored some nice swag that way. Filmmakers should definitely consider these venues and simple attendees should watch the social media streams and listen in for those last minute opportunities.
Okay, more giant items. This isn't making me feel any safer. However, this is No. 4, so maybe I'm geting closer?
After reviewing my bag of registration materials (which included a booklet of coupons for many of the vendors, thank you Crystal Dice for my free d6 and Scotty’s Pub for my free fried pickles), I headed toward the Building Transmedia Properties seminar. On the way to the seminar room, I stopped to take a snapshot of the QR code associated with a lifesize model of one of the characters from the new Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter campaign. I found out later these QR codes were located all around the Con and downtown Indianapolis. It became a cool scavenger hunt to find them all. Turns out with every QR Code I scanned, I was collecting virtual freebies for the D & D online community (I so scored some cool armor and other links to their NeverWinter community, which of course now I am spending way too much time investigating, darn you QR Codes). Did I mention that one of the codes was located in a local pub? More on that later.
I arrived early for the transmedia panel, so snuck into the panel that was in the same room, Patronage & Kickstarter: How to Get Paid Up Front. I am glad I did as I found out a lot of different ways people are using crowdfunding and crowdsourcing. I also met the creator of “Far West” an RPG/Transmedia project on Kickstarter that I am backing. It was so awesome to meet people that I had only “chatted” online with. I also highly recommend sneaking into panels you might not have originally registered for or would have considered, you might end up taking away some cool ideas. (Of course, as with sneaking into unpaid movies at the theaters, if it’s a paid ticket panel event, you may be thrown out if you’re discovered!)
AH-HA! I know it! Gen Con is designed for Orcs! Umm...But, now's the part where I move very quietly!
I caught a few other panels including a panel on building community, which is unbelievably important! The panelists really hit a lot of good points regarding the social elements of gaming and that a good community will make the difference in the success of your games and projects. They also talked about podcasting and a few other forms you can use to build and connect with fans and community. After a few more topics, I knew it was time to take a break and head “outside” of the convention hall.
Dinner was awesome as we headed to Scotty's Pub. Many of the restaurants and surrounding businesses got into the Gen Con spirit by hosting meet & greets, having their employees dress up and other fun events. Scotty's was a major hangout; it even had one of the Dungeons & Dragons scavenger hunt QR Codes. Friday they hosted D & D trivia and a meetup for a Star Wars group (the level of detail the members paid to their costumes was awesome). As we waited for our fried pickles and other delicious nosh, we watched Lord of the Rings on the multiple TV sets around the place. A neat bonus was the dining placemats they were using. Each one contained a complete tabletop campaign/game you could play. (I understand MFM editor, Jeremy Hanke, is a big fan of the German board game, Catan, which you can see on the table top pic!) Saturday at Scotty's was even more jumping as they hosted a meet and greet with the author R. A. Salvatore. I’ll be back to Scotty’s next year. (And no, Scotty’s hasn’t paid me anything to keep mentioning them. They were just cool!)
I've finally gotten away fromt the orcs and, what I should I discover, but more of the fun D&D scavenger hunt! Still, this guy is kind of intimidating, as is his pet!
After dinner, I headed back for some general looking around, which included stopping at various Gen Con Alice in Wonderland puzzles. Gen Con sponsors a puzzle/scavenger hunt every year. This year the theme was Alice in Wonderland. There were puzzles scattered throughout the Con. You had to solve the individual puzzle to find a word or phrase. That solution was then part of a larger puzzle. Once you solved that, you were entered into the running for 2012 Gen Con attendance tickets. These puzzles were not meant for the faint of heart. Many times I’d come to one, and there would be a group of people standing around. We’d all start working on the problem as a “community” and end up cracking the puzzles together. I met a lot of neat people that way.
Now came decision time; should I go catch the Troma film, Poultrygeist, attend one of the Gen Con sponsored raves (I do like music and there were a number of concerts and dances linked to the Con), or head to the gaming hall for some RPG fun. Lloyd Kaufman, with Troma Entertainment, has attended Gen Con many times. He always bring a number of films for con-attendees to watch (he brought two others in addition to Poultrygeist ). He also teaches a series of workshops, “So you Want to Make Your Damn Own Movie”. (I understand MFM may be reviewing one of Lloyd’s book in this series in the near future.) I ended up heading to the game hall, but after watching a trailer clip on YouTube, I definitely plan on catching Poultrygeist.
Don't you wish the lunch tables at your high school had been decorated with the killer German strategy game, Catan, as well? (Apparently, editor Jeremy Hanke believes he's a master at this game, but I laught at his claims and challenge him to a Catan Throwdown!)
On my way to the game hall, I stopped at Cardhalla. Charities are a big part of Gen Con with many events benefiting assorted organizations. One popular event takes all those Magic and gaming card that no one wants and puts them to good use. From the donated cards, people could stop by at any time and build whatever they wanted. There were towers and houses and many other structures. There was a replica of Big Ben with a dragon scaling the clock and many more awesome creations. Saturday night people got to throw coins (providing more donations) to destroy all of the buildings. There was also miniature speed painting for charity and, interestingly, a jail, which you had to try to get people to bail you out of. (It cracked me up one time as I walked past and Darth Vader was in jail calling for people to bail him/her out.)
Saturday morning started out with a panel on Writing Right: Dialogues and Dialects, a panel that could’ve been equally useful to filmmakers as to RPG creators! The highlight of the discussion coming from one of the authors as she kept breaking into different dialects with the audience trying to guess what dialect was being used. My favorite was one impression of a Kentucky sheriff talking about cars being burned out. The character was based on what she had picked up as she was a journalist that covered the police blotter and would listen to police transmissions.
Even the local bars are getting in on the action of Gen Con, with things like this great place mat adventure game at the Brewhouse!
I hopped next to World Building: Geography. One of the panelists had been in Japan during the March tsunami event and he talked to us about the island of Japan as an example of building a world. Very moving and amazing. He described this place that exists in one of the active volcanoes that is filled with heat and sulfur mist, the landscape desolate and burned out. He described it as going into Hell itself. And then, there, in the middle of this desolation is a Buddhist temple. He talked about taking his mother there and how the coins people had left have been burned black, soldered to the rocks. His story gave me and most of the audience goosebumps and a practical lesson on the right way to build a world. I will study Japan as a great example of the variety a “world” can have in a very small space.
Saturday afternoon was Film-fantastic as I spent the rest of the day previewing webseries, films and panels on assorted film topics. On my way to the film track, I stopped briefly at the Robot Rally Competition where people that had built robots were running them through courses. I really liked the R2-D2 themed robot and this little rectangle thing with a gimp arm that was leaving all the others in the dust.
They held most of the films and panels in the same area, making it easy to jump from place to place. Here are just a few of the panels I attended: Film Pre-Production Panel, Film post-Production Panel, Sharing Worlds and Work For Hire, Getting Started in the Movie Biz Panel, and HDSLR Filmmaking. I liked the casual, open atmosphere to the panels and seminars. For example, the director/creator of the film, “The Dead Matter” was hanging out in the room as the “How to Get Started in the Movie Biz” panel was about to start. The other panelists waved him up and boom we had 7 panelists. The discussions and stories shared were fun and informative and that panel was one of my favorite panels of the con. I also enjoyed the Creating Film and TV for the Gamer Audience. The panel included the creative talents behind the film “Gamers” (which has been critiqued here at MFM), the series “Aidan 5”, and the series “Gold”. I picked up a lot of great ideas and tips such as attending gaming events and cons and playing games with fans to build audience. Also, all panelists agreed that the most expensive production cost was usually food for the crew (which most of the other writers at MFM have attested to, as well).
Clearly she's seen the Orc, too!
A theme that ran through many panels focused on how to keep budgets minimal and production quality high. There were many submitted films and series that followed this concept and offered a look behind the scenes as well as showcasing their work. A few you might want to check out and get inspired by were:
As I decided to take 5 and catch my breath, I sat on a bench and just watched the people around me. Even a ‘passive activity” like sitting becomes active. I observed many COSPlay (costume playacting) characters parade by, some being stopped and asked to pose for pictures. In fact, many fans were elevated to celebrity status because of their costumes. I watched one group pose for pictures for over half an hour as people came up wanting pictures with them. This is one place where the odd and time consuming compulsive costume building activity of a fan pays off. I also liked sitting and listening in on other conversations. Topics would range from ‘who should be kicked off next in some reality show’ or ‘how the political boundaries in a certain game were analogous to the late 1900s in Europe’ to how a group went with black as the game’s theme color because the grandmother of one of the player’s hated red and so they all had to change everything. Ahhhh the wonderful quirks that make gamers and fans tick.
I jumped back to the film track to catch the screening of some sci-fi shorts. As I waited, I checked out the tables that had been set up outside the different event rooms. It was really fascinating to see the interaction between those running the booths and the fans visiting. I noticed one encounter where a fan asked a filmmaker to sign a DVD, and while he was signing it chatted about the DVD’s cover. The fan, a graphic designer, had created some work similar to the cover’s style and pointed out a few possible improvements. The two chatted and traded business cards. A micromeeting happening spur of the moment. I caught a lot of micromeetings. Waiting for the Western X series, the director/creator of one film was talking to another director comparing distribution methods and what was working and not working for them. Because Gen-Con isn’t exclusively film related, it actually can be a great place for filmmakers to get to know one another since there’s less pressure than at something like a traditional film festival and, because many of these folks are pushing the edges of distribution and marketing, there are tons of neat ideas to pick up!
In addition to checking out new franchises, I'm also showing my colors with this cool World of Depleted T-Shirt! Remember, Gavin Hesterdale was right!
Saturday evening was a mix of oddities. I caught a performance of The Bluebeard Show (which has an improv format) as Bluebeard hosts a talk show with the audience members becoming the interviewees. I then headed back to the main exhibit hall area to watch the Zombie Walk performance. I loved one group that came as a news crew, complete with a zombie cameraman and a zombie sound guy carrying around a microphone boom. I also caught a couple of the performing groups. In addition to the workshops and panels, there are performance areas around the convention hall. I caught a bellydancing trio performing to Lady Gaga’s Edge of Glory, a juggler, a folk music group that had a steampunk look and style, Abraham Lincoln on stilts giving his speeches, and a very amazing banjo player. (I understand it’s a lot like the Santa Monica pier or Seattle’s Pike Place Market.) And just as the gaming and panels ran continuously, so did these performances.
I closed out the night discussing games and working on characters for upcoming sessions with my gaming group (a number of us met in person at the Con). Our gaming group is planning on using Infrno.com so we can game virtually as we all live in different parts of the country. I like the idea that gaming can build communities in many ways.
Sunday morning I hit the exhibitor’s hall for some last minute purchases, talked to a couple of dice companies about how to make my own special dice with logos engraved (it is pretty cheap and will be a very ooo cool factor in future games), grabbed a few DVDs, and got to have the series creators sign the jackets as I talked to them. I stopped at a few of the steampunk booths spending time to discuss how they painted their goggles, picking up some good tips (I plan on going steampunk for Halloween costume and for future cons). My friend walked the artisan’s alley so she could have the artists that created the images for some of her gaming books autograph their creations. Another favorite activity I noticed was fans coming up to artists and asking them to “redesign” a game card by adding to the image. A lot of people were asking for these altered cards; a new kind of autograph. A final check on the winners of the film festival: Mind’s Eye for Best Independent Series, Unicorn City for Best Feature Film and Firemount for Best Short Film and I was back on the road.
I definitely am headed back next year, wiser, with connections to make, friends to meet back up with, and to explore all the new things I am sure I will find. So, anyone up for a road trip next year?
