balticon: [No] Video Gaming at Balticon 42

Daecabhir, Lord of the Leaping Shadows (

daecabhir) wrote in

balticon,
@ 2008-03-16 01:52:00

Entry tags:

balticon, update, video game room

[No] Video Gaming at Balticon 42

I started a post on the topic of video gaming and Balticon 42, and where things stand with the Baltimore Gamers Alliance, but my LJ client decided to exercise "editorial oversight" by tanking on me before I could post or save the draft. Therefore this post will be shorter by far than the original, but will cover the same ground in bullet form. To whit:

There will be no official video game room at Balticon 42.
The reasoning for this is as follows:

With the departure of the BGA, there was no "heir apparent" to take over the video game room.
Certain tracks within programming had gotten short shrift at Balticon 41, and therefore we wanted to ensure that adequate space and time were provided to those tracks for Balticon 42.
Of all the activities supported by Balticon in the past, video gaming is the most tangentially related to the core focus of Balticon, which is the written expression of the genres of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.
If we were going to experiment with not having video gaming at Balticon, this seemed like the best time to do so.

The decision was ultimately mine as Chair to not have a video game room at Balticon 42.
The departure of the BGA was largely driven by the BGA, for the following reasons:

The BGA was getting burnt out by the demands of staffing the room, providing the equipment and dealing with situations such as parents using the video game room as a substitute for babysitting.
In spite of this, the BGA had a desire to offer additional related program content outside of the video game room, in addition to the effort they were putting forth in the video game room.
Although this desire had been communicated by the BGA, the program coordinator at the time (that would be yours truly) dropped the ball in terms of following up with the BGA.
During the same time period we "split" what had been "General Programming" into Literary, Fannish and New Media tracks, which consumed most of the available time and space in the schedule.
With the reality of the fact that the video game room would quite likely remain not much more than an "amenity" for Balticon, the BGA informed me during Balticon 41 that they would not be returning to run the video game room.

The BGA were not asked to "leave" Balticon - they decided that it was in the best interest of the member of BGA to not continue to staff the video game room.
I, for one, am extremely grateful to George and the crew from BGA for all of the work they put into the video game room in recent years. They introduced a number of new features, ran tournaments and made the best of the situation when the space for the video gaming room shrunk with the move to the Marriott Hunt Valley.
Contrary to some rumors, the door was not "slammed" on the relationship between Balticon and BGA - they did a heck of alot for Balticon, and we only wish the BGA the best with its future projects. If you see George or one of the other folks from BGA, and you've reaped the benefits of their efforts in the Balticon video game room, please be sure to thank them - they deserve that at the very least.

Best regards,
Greg Wright, Balticon 42 Chair

(Post a new comment)

	netpositive 2008-03-16 06:15 pm UTC (link)
	Greg - this was a locked post of some sort. Did you intend to lock? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	D-O-H daecabhir 2008-03-16 06:48 pm UTC (link)
	I am apparently technology challenged this weekend - the default option in my LJ client is "Friends Only", and I did not think to change it. The entry has now been opened to everyone. (Reply to this)(Parent)

Sure, I guess..
(Anonymous)
2008-03-19 03:38 pm UTC (link)

I planned on coming to the Balticon wrap up party but I was so disenfranchised that I thought it would be counterproductive. I've been holding this in since last year so (deep breath) here it comes.

Firsty I appreciate all the nice comments about our group and the things we've done. While I'm sure we could have done better with the time and space during the four years and maybe toned down some of our antics, all in all I can honestly say we did our job while there. We provided fun and somewhere to hang out at the con for the youth and young adult section of Balticon's yearly population.

I know you had to leave some truths out of this post due to drama-llama reasons and that's understandable. It's over and there is no changing some of the things that happened over the course of our relationship with the BSFS.

I will say this, you WILL have a lot of disappointed kids there at Balticon. For something so unrelated to the core of what Balticon is about, it sure was a smash hit year after year.

Last year the committee decided to go with more and more of this new media track. Wheb I walked around the con looking at those rooms they were mostly empty or had maybe one or two people in them. If so much time and room space can be given to a track that seems to focus mostly on Podcasting that most people don't even goto, it's kind of laughable to say the video gaming room was a waste of space.

Last year we had plans for several out of room events, including a Kareoke Party and special time set aside for what we had hoped would be a yearly event "King/Queen of the Console". We were told that there was no space e or time blocks allowed since New Media had sprawled so much.

The point I'm getting at is to exclude something successful from the con because it doesn't tie directly to the categories you listed above is just moronic in my eyes.

Our group will be taking a real vacation this year on Memorial Day without the need for constant fabreeze, watching our backs because of a power tripping head of security, or having our schedule critiqued by petulant little children.

Enjoy your new and improved con experience.

-George of BGA infamy.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: Sure, I guess..

ravynmaniac
2008-03-20 01:19 pm UTC (link)

i respect your grievances, George, but there was no reason for you to get nasty. Especially when it seemed directed at one of the few people who actually fought to keep the video gaming room in the con over the past several years, and who always supported and appreciated you.

Also, note that he said this was an experiment. He did not say that video gaming was gone from Balticon forever. Many things go into programming decisions, and the next Chair could well decide that the video game room is worth bringing back, even though as long as we're at Hunt Valley, the conditions will probably not improve.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: Sure, I guess..
(Anonymous)
2008-03-20 09:05 pm UTC (link)

Let me just say that if my words appear to direct fault or harm towards Greg, than I need to rewrite them.

I find no fault in Greg or you Nora as I've told you both in the past. You both have put up with a lot of crap from me while also being steadfast with any support you could give us before, during and after the con. I think our whole organization highly respects both of you and the great work you guys do for the con.

My gripe is with the organization as whole, I think. We tried to provide programming our first and second year that fit the format of Balticon. It was either poorly publicized or widely ignored if it was. The only "round table" that we did that brought in a huge response was our segment on Maya.

During the course of the next two years, we focused on tournaments and events slightly outside the realm of video gaming... But the response we heard from the people inside BSFS was they were not interested. We got the feeling that we were the babysitters of the Convention, that we should just stick to keeping the room open as much as possible and not worry about going outside our original scope of programming. There's only so much equipment and people you can fit in a small, poorly ventilated room. There is no way we could have held round tables in the gaming room as it was setup. Besides, you guys just would have had more complaints from patrons looking for the room to have open gaming.

In hindsight it's just really frustrating. We could have provided programming that would have tied into Balticon's "theme" more but it always seemed we were the outsiders within a closed niche (excluding some really cool and open people working the convention) that just wanted us for a service.

Did we get promotion in exchange? Sure, but by year three BGA didn't really want the promotion. We stopped trying to grow and just focused on being a private gaming community in Maryland.

This is all pretty much just me venting my anger over last year, delayed as it is, I think I make a lot of good points. It's pretty moot me even posting here considering I wouldn't come back nor could I get the rest of the guys back another year; Especially not under someone besides you or Greg.

As one of my members said on our forums "they can't truly grasp the loss of "babysitting" until they go through a con without it." Experiment or no, you will have a lot of unhappy people at Balticon. I don't say that chest out like we did some amazing job there, but the amenity itself will be missed.

If LARPing can be associated with the con I don't see how video games can't be. They both provide the same outlet. One is just pre-scripted while the other is on the fly. I just don't buy the argument that Video/Computer games can't be related to Literary and Science Fiction. But alas, it's the BSFS Con to run and not mine, so whatever.

And in response to Greg's post, we would have been happy to have a full blown computer room at the past 2 Cons, but we weren't provided adequate space. If we had a larger space, we could have filled the room with computers AND consoles like we did in years past.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

(Anonymous)
2008-03-20 03:53 am UTC (link)

George hit the nail on the head. I had posted earlier looking for a definitive answer and just got it. You guys just lost a 5-year attendee to Balticon. Hate to say it but I honestly attended Balticon for the Gaming room and the Anime room, science fiction definitely never interested me that much. Balticon was during break, 24 hrs for four days, and extremely local. Looks like I'll be looking into MAGFest and other local LAN-related meetups to replace Balticon.

Don't know why you guys didn't try to contact Cyberden or something even though the BGA hated them, they are more than equipped to handle something like this and promotion would be just what they need right now since their nightclub aspect fell through.

Again, I hope the word spreads to all the young adults and kids about this since I am pretty sure some of them feel the same way I do. And if not, I hope the Anime room has capacity to take over for babysitting.

I really appreciate what George and his crew have done these many years, you guys put up with ridiculously high amounts of stress for a volunteer group over the years (I still remember when those hockey or soccer or whatever kids in the Wyndham tried to start stuff with us) and I graciously thank you for it. Hope to see some of you around in the future.

-Lain

(Reply to this)(Thread)

daecabhir
2008-03-20 02:02 pm UTC (link)

If your interest in attending Balticon came solely from the Anime Room and Video Gaming, then it would make sense that you would look elsewhere for something to do during Memorial Day weekend. Balticon is a convention run by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, which is a 501(c)3 educational organization whose focus is the literature of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Because of this, and because of the desires of the membership of BSFS, the focus of Balticon has been the written expression of those genres and closely related fannish activities. Not too long ago, there was no "video gaming" room... it was a "computer room", where hobbyists would bring their computers and fiddle around with a variety of things including computer games.

Every convention faces the same kinds of problems related to how much space they have to put on the convention, how much the space costs the convention, and how to allocate that space in the best way possible. As long as we are at the Marriott Hunt Valley, space will be a much bigger concern than when we were downtown at the Omni / Wyndham. Unfortunately, holding a convention downtown is MUCH more expensive right now, both for the convention and for the attendees (e.g., no free parking, more expensive hotel rooms, less options for food). This means we have to make do with the space we have at the Marriott Hunt Valley until such a time as we are able to move to another hotel with more space. Such a move is highly subject to availability and cost - there are very few hotels in the Baltimore area that can accommodate Balticon's function space needs, and most are significantly more expensive than the Marriott Hunt Valley AND located in downtown Baltimore.

Also, the program track that got short shrift last year was the literary track, which is aimed at the core demographic for Balticon. When we looked at the space allocation for this year, we had to answer the question of "How do we ensure that the literary track has sufficient space for Balticon 42?" Because of the core focus of Balticon, I decided based on the input of the other members of the ConCom that we would experiment with not having a video gaming room this year, and turn that space over to the literary track as a dedicated space for literary programming. At the end of the day, that is what Balticon is about at its roots. The new media track reflects this in that the majority of the program participants for that track are writing SF&F and horror stories, but presenting them through audio media in addition to the written word - the rest are advocates of the technology and the podcasting / podiobooks communities.

I knew when this decision was made it was not going to be popular, which is probably why I subconsciously put off posting anything online about the topic. However, based on the circumstances, it was in my opinion the right decision to make. It may come to pass that the chair of the next Balticon may decide otherwise and reinstate a video gaming room, or it may be that we end up not having a video gaming room for quite a while. We appreciate feedback on these kinds of decisions - it helps the ConCom when weighing the options for the next convention - but let's keep it civil. Otherwise discussions tend to degenerate into name calling and insults, at which point the discussions are no longer productive.

Greg, Balticon 42 Chair

(Reply to this)(Parent)

Re: [No] Video Gaming at Balticon 42

darthed
2008-04-01 03:26 am UTC (link)

Hey Greg,

I don't read this community very frequently, so apologies for the lateness in my response.

I'm sad to read there won't be a video gaming room this year. I certainly hope that Balticon will address this next year. I've been attending Balticon each year since 2000, except last year when Balticon conflicted with Star Wars Celebration IV. I have been a member and moderator of multiple panels at Balticon in that timeframe, and I truly enjoy attending Balticon each year. I'm not a member of the BGA.

I'm not the sort of person who needs much sleep at night, and I'm a bit of a night owl as a result. When all the daily Balticon programming was over, one of the things I really enjoyed doing was stopping by the video gaming room and playing games until the wee hours of the morning. Some of my favorite Balticon memories are playing Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 with a dozen other players at 2:00am or so.

Before Balticon moved back to Hunt Valley, there were probably a dozen or so high-end computers in the video gaming room, all networked together and loaded with popular games. If you weren't a member of the BGA, you could still go in the video gaming room and play as much as you want, as long as nobody was waiting to play, of course. If there was, you would rotate out after each match as needed. But there were usually more computers than players, especially late at night, so that didn't occur very often. The other sensible rule was that, if the owner of the computer asked you to move to another computer, you had to move. Also, kids weren't allowed after like 9pm or so. It was called "Adult Swim." This system worked very well from my perspective.

Following the move to Hunt Valley, the BGA started putting up signs on the video gaming room door that said that only BGA members were allowed in the room "after hours" and the door was closed. I don't know what the reasoning was for that, whether it was a staffing issue or a space issue or if the BGA was concerned about non-BGA people using their machines or what, but this hampered my usage of the room. When the room was open during the day, it was smaller and didn't contain nearly as many networked computers as in previous years. Overall, it was kind of a sad decline. I wasn't at Balticon last year, so I don't know what the situation was then. In any case, I'd certainly like to see the video gaming room return to its former glory in the future, and I implore the Balticon staff to take whatever steps necessary to implement that. It really is a fun addition to the con-going experience, regardless of whether it is directly related to Balticon's main focus on SF literature or not. I certainly find it a more attractive option than filking. Not that there's anything wrong with filking, but it's not my cup of tea and it's really the only other option for late-night con-goers who don't want to sleep. Well, that and the anime room. I hope the anime room isn't going anywhere! :-)

(Reply to this)

	O/S octoberland 2008-04-26 05:29 pm UTC (link)
	I am trying to find out vending information for BaltiCon but I couldn't find anything on the website. Can you point me in the right direction? Thanks! (Reply to this)

Mini Sitemap:

Username:		Create an Account Forgot your login? Login w/ OpenID
Password:
	Remember Me
	English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…