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Made in us
Lieutenant General





Florence, KY

TMP Link

<h3>Greetings, Gamers!</h3>

Today we have some sad news for you – we are announcing the closure of Gen Con So Cal. This event will not happen in 2007. We would like to thank all the companies in the hobby game industry who worked hard to help create this show, and to our volunteers who regularly sacrifice vacation time to work long hours to help us entertain gamers, and all of the fans who have supported us and come to So Cal over the years.

There were several factors that contributed to the decision about the show. Additional information about this decision, including a detailed open letter from Peter Adkison can be found here.

In the absence of So Cal, we would like to encourage you to support your local gamming conventions – there are many great conventions on the West Coast that we've worked with and we think you'd enjoy if you aren't already attending them.

If you are interested in information about these shows, please let us know and we will forward your email information to them so they can add you to their distribution list. We will not share your information without your permission. If you would like us to share your information with these shows, please go to the So Cal registration page. Login to your account and click on "Change Your Account Details". Towards the bottom of the page there you can select if you would like us to forward on your information.

<h3>Thank you!
</h3>

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Made in us
Plastictrees



Amongst the Stars, In the Night

Here is a direct link to the open letter mentioned above:
The End of Gen Con SoCal: An Open Letter by Peter D. Adkison.


OT Zone: A More Wretched Hive of Scum and Villany
The Loyal Slave learns to Love the Lash! 
   
Made in de
Trustworthy Shas'vre





Augsburg/Germany

Hm... the good guy forgot SPIEL in Essen.... when considering GenCon Europe.

André Winter
L'Art Noir - Game Design and Translation Studio 
   
Made in us
Foul Dwimmerlaik






Minneapolis, MN

Looks like homeboys predictions for 2007 are quickly coming to pass with the drop of so cal gen con.

Thats alot of business being promoted, even if the numbers have been down. Now its non existant for that.

   
Made in us
Clousseau





Wilmington DE

That's too bad, but as he said, that's business. At least he pulled the plug before it became a total loss.

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Made in us
Plastictrees



Amongst the Stars, In the Night

While I don't live anywhere near SoCal and am generally not much of a convention goer, I did appreciate his frank and BS-free explanation when most companies would just cut their losses with little more than the press release. He makes it clear why the plug was pulled but also in a way that is respectful to those who've participated in the past events as well as potential future customers (repeat or new).

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Regular Dakkanaut



California

The honesty in that letter erased all feelings of being pissed off.

Chuck

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IG fan 
   
Made in us
Foul Dwimmerlaik






Minneapolis, MN

Yeah, its great when a company communicates to its customers regarding big changes.

"for good or ill, this is why this is, as Ill be very frank about it"

Nice.

   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut






Getting my broom incase there is shenanigans.

Back in the day I use to play every game under the sun, but now that I am an old fogey, I only play GW games.

The Las Vegas gamers ran a 40k RTT for So Cal Gen Con 2005.

The cost of this 3 game RTT was:
Parking $12
1 Day Bage $35 (Might have been $45)
And then $30 for the 40k RTT event.

So it cost over $75 for an RTT. Needless to say that I never returned.


 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka






Im only glad that my gaming dollar pays his snowboarding bills, I hope he got a couple of good brazillian hookers as well.

Maybe if he would have curbed a few of his extravagances, and paid a little more attention to improving the game, the Gen con might have been more then just another way to milk $$$ from the masses.



At Games Workshop, we believe that how you behave does matter. We believe this so strongly that we have written it down in the Games Workshop Book. There is a section in the book where we talk about the values we expect all staff to demonstrate in their working lives. These values are Lawyers, Guns and Money. 
   
Made in us
Banelord Titan Princeps of Khorne






Grot 6,

You obviously didn't read the letter. The snippet of "living like a rockstar" referred to a time when Mr. Adkison didn't work for Hasbro, WoTC or GenCon. In fact, he wasn't working at all. So he's well within his right to blow money left and right on whatever he wants.

When he bought the rights to Gen Con, I think he did just about everything he could right, including taking a big business risk to adding a show on the Gen Con circuit. Sometimes, however, risks don't pan out. Thats why they are....risks.




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Made in ca
Deathwing Terminator with Assault Cannon






It's a well-written letter I think.

Grot 6: He's one of the few people who made a fortune in the gaming industry and then sunk it straight back into the industry.

Gaming needs more people like him. (I wonder if GW is in the market for a new CEO?)
   
Made in us
Tunneling Trygon





I defense of Grot, that part did jump out at me. I don't begrudge folks their successes in life and in business, but when you're writing an open letter of that sort, it's probably not the time to mention that you've been so paid, you can take a year long world spanning vacation.



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Fixture of Dakka






Posted By whitedragon on 01/28/2007 9:04 PM
Grot 6,

You obviously didn't read the letter. The snippet of "living like a rockstar" referred to a time when Mr. Adkison didn't work for Hasbro, WoTC or GenCon. In fact, he wasn't working at all. So he's well within his right to blow money left and right on whatever he wants.

When he bought the rights to Gen Con, I think he did just about everything he could right, including taking a big business risk to adding a show on the Gen Con circuit. Sometimes, however, risks don't pan out. Thats why they are....risks.





Oh. I read the letter alright. I say that it isn't as much of a risk as he makes it, and just the fact that the $$$ are the reason behind closing it. Nevermind the fact that he is riding this horse for all its worth, and not leaning forward in thinking.

 

Like I said, I hope his fun times were worth it, maybe he can go to Eastern Europe for some cheaper ones this time around.

Just don't be suprised when the prices in the other two shows rise to the point of lowering attendence, or producing more hype then substance. As long as we're going to foot his bill, get him three for the price of two.

You don't risk on a loser, either. You analyze, plan, study your markets and make it as best a DECISION that you can. Losers risk, winners plan.




At Games Workshop, we believe that how you behave does matter. We believe this so strongly that we have written it down in the Games Workshop Book. There is a section in the book where we talk about the values we expect all staff to demonstrate in their working lives. These values are Lawyers, Guns and Money. 
   
Made in us
Foul Dwimmerlaik






Minneapolis, MN

Only half true.

Losers risk blindly, winners plan and risk wisely to the best of their ability.

Any businees you run has risk involved. No amount of planning will negate that fact. Planning can only reduce the risk when compared to just simply throwing money at something and hoping a money tree grows.

   
Made in us
[DCM]
Tilter at Windmills






Manchester, NH

Agreed. While that one (brief) section about living the good life seemed a little gratuitous, I was 100% on board with the description of his reasoning about the business. It was operating at a loss, which he accepted as normal while it was growing, but the growth didn?t work out, and so the chances that the So-Cal was going to work out were small. He?d be a ?loser? if he ignored those facts and kept dumping money into a sinking ship. Grot 6, I really think you're off base.

I really liked the discussion about the importance of non-profitable convention activities (like costume contests and such). He might have been able to make So-Cal more profitable by cutting some of those activities, and by bringing in some other types of vendors, but it wouldn?t be what we all know as a sci-fi/fantasy/gaming convention anymore. Rather than change it into something else that would alienate games/sci-fi/fantasy fans, he cut his losses and put the focus back on the main show we all know and love.

Makes sense to me.

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Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




Grot 6, I really think you're off base.


Agreed.

When I take into consideration Mr. Adkinson is responsible for successfully running GenCon Indy and Star Wars Celebration, I have to trust his judgement when he decides to cancel GenCon SoCal. And he has my respect for openly explaining why he made that decision.
   
Made in us
Banelord Titan Princeps of Khorne






Agreed as well.

Sheesh, if it was so easy to just make it successful, don't you think it would have been done?

Veriamp wrote:I have emerged from my lurking to say one thing. When Mat taught the Necrons to feel, he taught me to love.

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Incorporating Wet-Blending





Houston, TX

Actually, winners plan. And get lucky.

I am still wondering if you read the letter, though. He took a break as CEO, living it up, and it wasn't until a FULL YEAR later that GenCon came up for sale. At which point he stepped back in. And spent 4 years working on it.

Cut him some slack. Or not.

-James
 
   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User





He took a break as CEO

Having spoke with him a few times (in person he is very personable, open, and down to earth), I feel fairly confident in translating this as "got sick of fighting with Hasbro and upset about various layoffs and took his option to leave".  Any cynic would have been able to guess that the amount of control he would have over WotC once it became a division of Hasbro would be about nil, no matter what assurances he was given, but he doesn't come off as much of a cynic.  He also left out from his big explanation that events in his personal life wiped out a large (say, 50%ish by some estimations) portion of the proceeds from the sale of WotC to Hasbro.  Thus his "rock-star" life style wasn't as glorious as one would think, and the funds wouldn't later be there to either sit out a prolonged bleed from unprofitable conventions or to buy much more of the WotC/TSR components from Hasbro then he has with GenCon.

In any case, I don't know if cynicism would have helped the situation with SoCal much: The model followed has worked for some time in the Indy convention, so it would have seemed viable for a high population territory like California.  Unfortunately a lot of little differences caused major problems: One of my favorite examples was the media guests (sci-fi stars and the like), which are a huge draw at Indy but are virtually ignored at SoCal because people have so many more opportunities to see them at other local events.  It didn't help that in the first year, of the two main guests, one had a horrible cold (William Shatner who still held out to sign for quite a while) and the other ran off early in his signing time because he was allegedly wierded out by the gamers (Val Kilmer).  The local unions were a huge initial problem, the first year I must have overheard a dozen conversations between vendors complaining about them.  This was replaced as of the following year by the complaints that nobody was buying anything "just like last year" (maybe if they had more older stuff, which is my main draw for convention shopping, but I don't know),  and then in the final year by frequent complaints that Adkison's plans to merge in more E3 type stuff would marginalise the tabletop gaming.  Since it was to big for a smaller venue, but to small to consume the whole convention center, there were always other conventions in rooms often literally in between GenCon ones (my favorite was one for fundamentalist Christians, which my wife accidentally wandered in on at one point).  The hotel would not allow advance booking of the large ballrooms, which caused problems for things like True Dungeon (they had to cut out a room and the entire bar section do to a surprise lowering of their available space in 2006).  2006 also had the main attached hotel doing a huge amount of remodeling messing up foot traffic horribly.  Games being canceled do to the person running them not showing up (and not calling in) was a huge problem the first couple of years, and the attempt to fix it by cutting down gaming days to three in 2005 backfired by upsetting people who wanted the advertised 4 days of gaming, and confusing them in 2006 since they expected it to be 3 days again even though it had been set back to 4.  The costs to attend and play were unpleasant to of course, but didn't strike me as particularly worse then Indy was pre-WotC/Adkison (though it has been a while).

That all being said, I still had more fun in 2006 then previous years.  Most of the games went off and the events all were well set up and had a lot of crazy options like lazer tag in the back.  The dealers area was pretty blah, but I had come to expect that.  I even ended up talking to them a bit about volunteering to help out at the auction next time since I always hang out there anyway.  Guess that won't happen.

-Serpine-


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Made in us
Hunter with Harpoon Laucher




Castle Clarkenstein

Posted By Phryxis on 01/29/2007 12:03 AM
I defense of Grot, that part did jump out at me. I don't begrudge folks their successes in life and in business, but when you're writing an open letter of that sort, it's probably not the time to mention that you've been so paid, you can take a year long world spanning vacation.


Well, it's not like it's a secret or anything that he made a ton of money selling WOTC to Hasbro. His cut was well into the millions of dollars. He gave up the ability to do more of that lifestyle, by investing money trying to build of SoCal Gencon. He's one of the best guys in the gaming industry.

....and lo!.....The Age of Sigmar came to an end when Saint Veetock and his hamster legions smote the false Sigmar and destroyed the bubbleverse and lead the true believers back to the Old World.
 
   
Made in us
Hunter with Harpoon Laucher




Castle Clarkenstein

Posted By Grot 6 on 01/29/2007 5:02 AM

Like I said, I hope his fun times were worth it, maybe he can go to Eastern Europe for some cheaper ones this time around.

Just don't be suprised when the prices in the other two shows rise to the point of lowering attendence, or producing more hype then substance. As long as we're going to foot his bill, get him three for the price of two.

You don't risk on a loser, either. You analyze, plan, study your markets and make it as best a DECISION that you can. Losers risk, winners plan.

No idea where your getting this trash attitude from. The show was losing money, and on a downward slide, and going to lose more money. It was his money, his call. You talk about the cost of the other two shows going up, what the hell do you think was going to happen if they were taking profits from the other two to fund the unprofitable show? And the time and effort that it takes away from the other two.

The guy worked hard for years, built up a company, sold it, and took a vacation. Then he worked for four years, losing money, and made the decision to cut the show. Then was honest and told us why. Not sure what else you expected to happen.


....and lo!.....The Age of Sigmar came to an end when Saint Veetock and his hamster legions smote the false Sigmar and destroyed the bubbleverse and lead the true believers back to the Old World.
 
   
 
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