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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Erik Mona" data-source="post: 5142794" data-attributes="member: 2174">Jim Lowder's post is spot on from my perspective. I think he accurately outlined some of the major challenges faced by the show, and I think the point about a downward spiral is particularly apt. One of the best things Origins has going for it, frankly, is that it is NOT Gen Con. It's no where near as crazy as Gen Con, and the smaller size means that you can pretty much find 92% of all attending professionals at the Big Bar on 2 every night. That's GREAT for networking, and heck, just for saying "hi" to old friends. As fewer and fewer publishers attend, there's less and less reason for freelancers and other industry folk to attend. We're very deep into self-fulfilling prophesy territory here, and at some point the gravity well is going to be impossible to escape.Proximity to Gen Con is a huge problem, and one that Origins has dealt with since as long as I've been going to the convention (about 15 years). I can understand why staying in the same locale has some long-term cost savings, but for the show to escape Gen Con's shadow, it really needs to get its butt to a different month. I know the idea is to keep it in the summer to make it easier for children to attend, but I don't see a whole lot of children around the show one way or the other, and the convention is held on a weekend anyway, so I think this is an overrated reason to keep the convention in July. One of the problems with putting the con in July, and one of the reasons I have heard GAMA folks cite as a problem with the con, is that publishers do not plan specific product launches to coincide with the show the way almost everyone does for Gen Con. That's due to a few factors:1) The con no longer attracts enough RPG customers to make monkeying with the schedule worthwhile.2) Everyone is going to time their big releases for a month later anyway, because while there are many things Origins can do to avoid a death spiral, they ain't never going to be Gen Con. A publisher like Paizo can only schedule (and produce!) so many "major" product releases, and it just doesn't make sense to bunch them so closely together. For one, most RPG companies can't afford major product investments within a month of one another, and adding two cons worth of expenses to ship a booth and a staff across the country on basically the same budget month is a recipe for disaster.I really, really, really wish that Origins would experiment with a different month and perhaps even a different venue. I was not a regular attendee when Origins used to be a moving convention, but I hope the GAMA board and leadership have very seriously considered trying that again, and I further hope that the reasons they have decided not to do so in the last 15 years involve more than simple inertia. The Gen Con shadow is probably the single largest contributor to the lack of attendees at the show. Moving the convention to a different month (or perhaps even a different season) would be, in my opinion, the smartest possible major change they could make to jump-start the convention and return it to its former glory.Otherwise, I think it's just going to keep shrinking.--Erik MonaPublisherPaizo Publishing</blockquote>

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