Once upon a time, Zarathustra lived in the woods with a cool religious dude, and things were good. Then Zarathustra had the strange idea that he needed to give man a gift; he left the woods and the cool religious dude, and things got weird.
This Gen Con saw the end of the Forge booth as a place where wild haired designers, who don’t have strong connections to our community, could come and sell their first game at the largest RPG convention in North America, maybe the world.
I place no blame on Ron, or Vincent. Ron has been saying that the Forge will slowly wind down, and eventually come to an end, for years now. It started with jettisoning the more established folks, and this year the less established folks got the George Jettsons.
I wonder though; Is this what we want to see happen? Do new designers need to go back to starting their own booth, or trying to befriend one of the successful cooperatives? Two of those collectives disappeared this year, Pirate Jenny, and Play Collective, and last year we lost the Ashcan Front booth. Maybe Pirate Jenny and Play Collective are due back in the future?
I wonder if our community can survive the attrition of established designers that is due to occur? Or have we done like Punk, and Alternative, and gotten large enough that like minded weirdos formed their own thing, and splitting is just going to happen. The Kumbaya is over, and I go back to being a scene traveler?
I think a lot of this depends on your definition of community. Is there anything stopping someone from putting a flag in the ground and saying “Rally here!”? Why couldn’t someone from the old Forge booth contact other designers to put together a new booth? If this can’t happen, was there ever really a community or was it just a bunch of people being propped up by Ron?
Hey Clyde,
Gen Con isn’t interested in your creative relevance.
Paul
Hey Aaron,
That’s sort of a calling for a flag up there. I don’t have the ability to lead the charge, because podcasting is priority one for me. I could however dump organizational power before the con.
If it doesn’t happen, I don’t think that means there is no community, it just means they aren’t worried about helping the woodsie dudes.
Hey Paul,
How has that been going? Do you think the Indie comic conventions will hold the power of attraction for game design, guys and gals, out in the woods, that a Gen Con has? I think something like a PAX, Dragon Con, etc, might hold that kind of pull. What is attendance like? Is the excitement more about the DIY kind of deal. How is selling there versus Gen Con? I’d love to hear more. Want to talk about it, over Skype, or phone?
Clyde,
I am of the opinion that the attrition as you call it is a good thing. I think that barriers to entry that are not insurmountable, but certainly difficult force moments of pause. These are always good for both the individual creating, and for the audience as a whole.
Hey Keith,
I can kind of see what you’re saying from a market perspective. What about an innovation perspective? I want more things like Death’s Door, House of Horiku, Primitive, or on the other end of success, Steal Away Jordan, and Kagematsu. I’m not sure barriers help me get that. Do you not hold with the “All ships raised” argument?
Hi Clyde,
Innovation perspective? That is nonsense. How do barriers that must be surmounted with blood, sweat and tears halt innovation? The barriers are what create true innovation, because they must be tested as do their creators. They force hard questions, self evaluation, and the leveraging of hubris, all the shit needed to create great, well great anything.
Not sure what you mean by the all ships raised argument.
I think looking at GenCon is a waste of time. It seems to be very uninterested in any sort of quality or services for attendees.
Instead the con is geared towards making as much money as possible. I know for the last 3 or 4 years the con has been fun in spite of the GenCon events.
I predict that other cons will rise to prominence in the next few years. DragonCon and PAX, for example.
Clyde,
I’ve been hammering away at my lack of sound in Ubuntu (which is making Skype unusable). I might have it solved, but if not, let’s do it by phone. Email me.
Paul
Bummer to hear about the Forge booth. I would have never known.
Keith, your argument is only true if the filtering system is working well; get an “effort” barrier to entry, and guys who make games with all of their ability get through, so the lazy no playtest guys and the “it all felt into place” easy elegent designs don’t get seen. I can’t think of an example, but I’m sure there have been games that people have just been able to make and send out there, and have been good.
If you have a filtering system that’s not just about effort, but about the intensity of time you can put into something (eg learning the ropes when stuff gets changing, finding out which collectives are currently open to doing stuff) then someone will delay his game for 3 years until his kids get a bit older, because he has enough time per day to do a weakly playtest game and little more.
If your filtering system relies on totally different skills from game design, then people can get good at publishing crap, or get bad at publishing good stuff.
All of those can be dealt with, but they have to be actively dealt with (you have to do things for people to change it because their actions are already factored in). An established booth of randoms is one way to do that, but it obviously has it’s own biases too.