No WotC At Gen Con This Year?

It looks like Wizards of the Coast will not be attending Gen Con this year. They've just posted a list of the conventions they'll be attending in 2016, and noted their intention to support conventions that they don't normally get to attend. "Gen Con is not on this list because we are changing things up to support more conventions and locations. Even though the Dungeons & Dragons team won’t be there we know our friends at Baldman Games will be hosting plenty of D&D adventures. It’s safe to say there will be ample opportunity to play Dungeons & Dragons during Gen Con. We’re excited to head to some new conventions this year and meet folks who don’t have the opportunity to travel to Indianapolis."

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The list of conventions WotC will be attending is Winter Fantasy (February, Fort Wayne, IN), Gary Con (March, Lake Geneva, WI), PAX East (April, Boston MA), Origins (June, Columbus OH), and PAX Prime (August, Seattle WA).

Chris Perkins will be hosting another Acquisitions Inc event at PAX East, and Origins will be the "D&D tabletop gaming event of the year" with sneak peeks and a return of the D&D Open. PAX Prime will have the highest concentration of D&D staff present.

Read more about their convention plans here.

 

[Umbran]

But isn't fan service an important thing?

Important? Well, in some cases it may be important, insofar as the material won't sell otherwise. Good? Generally not. Fan service is not like, "We provide good service to our customers".

The term has origins in Manga, where it was referring largely to sexual content that didn't otherwise add to the quality or substance of the work, present to titillate to keep the audience turning pages to see the next glimpse of skin.

In its more generalized form, it is still doing things to specifically ingratiate to fans, even though it isn't adding materially to the work: the long shot of a robot just standing there in a mecha show, stunt-casting a famous actor of the genre in a very minor role, and the like. In essence, "fan service" is a form of pandering. When does pandering make anything better?

So, yes, I was intending to be dismissive. I don't think the company should engage in going to a convention because the fans think they are entitled to the extra attention of the company, even if it doesn't make a lot of business sense for them to be there.

 

[Mistwell]

What will they do if they are up for an Ennie, just not be there to accept the potential award?

Several key people will be there, and I would not be surprised if they're at the Ennies. That said...you still get the award even if your representative isn't there.

 

[BrockBallingdark]

I was already eyeing GaryCon due to cost and now that WOTC will be there, that helped me make my decision for next year. I will say goodbye to the madness in Indy this summer and start a new adventure in 2017.

 

[ronaldsf]

I'm not fully convinced this isn't a bad idea... WotC isn't exactly small; they have Magic the Gathering don't they? And don't companies prioritize GenCon to create launch products and create buzz for future products?

 

[Thor]

PAX prime is about the same size as Gen Con, give or take a couple thousand people. PAX East is, I think, about half the size.

The PAX shows are great, but when they even release attendance numbers, they release turnstile numbers. That means if you attend PAX East three days in a row, you get counted three times. If they report 70,000 visitors, it's really somewhere in the neighborhood of 23,000 unique visitors, and that's probably generous.

Gen Con did 61,423 unique visitors in 2015, with turnstile of 197,695. Gen Con is massive; While PAX Prime and PAX East are very big, they don't even come close.

That said, I agree with the rest of your post. As in past years, WotC will have huge amounts of actual play going on through the Adventurer's League at Gen Con. They don't really need to have a booth presence. Seems like they're focusing on growing their audience in other places, which is a good thing.

 

[skerritthegreen]

The location that they had in the main hall was terrible due to the crowd noise, and made concentration on gaming very difficult.

BMG has moved locations at Gen Con and will not be back in the same location that made things difficult.

 

[Umbran]

And don't companies prioritize GenCon to create launch products and create buzz for future products?

Yep. But WotC is taking a "long and slow" approach that doesn't call for super-hype and buzz to support product launches.

 

[tomBitonti]

Important? Well, in some cases it may be important, insofar as the material won't sell otherwise. Good? Generally not. Fan service is not like, "We provide good service to our customers".

The term has origins in Manga, where it was referring largely to sexual content that didn't otherwise add to the quality or substance of the work, present to titillate to keep the audience turning pages to see the next glimpse of skin.

Ah, I didn't know that. (Funny, I saw it again today on the new thread asking for good recent manga.)

But WotC can a do a lot of valuable: Having a Q&A, previewing products, explaining the new SRD, allowing folks to see and a few members of the core team. That's good stuff that adds value and is not at all "fan service".

Thx!
TomB

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Interesting... seems like maybe that survey they put out asking people if they went to GenCon or planned on going to GenCon in the future gave WotC some info that suggested skipping the "big show" wouldn't be much of a problem for them.

 

[Drammattex]

Winter Fantasy, Origins, etc. are, in my experience, far better environments to play D&D and speak with the R&D team than Gen Con--which I think is what you'd want from a D&D experience. At those conventions (especially Winter Fantasy) people are there to play D&D and go to D&D Q&A events. The R&D team are everywhere. In the hotel lobbies, at the local establishments. It's easy to have a casual, or even intense, conversation.

I think of Gen Con as an enormous block party, Winter Fantasy as a game night with friends, and Origins as a medium-sized party with amazing food (NORTH. MARKET!!!) and a just enough of everything I love, with space and time to enjoy it.