#bay area conventions

[duckmeat-woohoo]

I’m gonna be at SJMADE Summer Fair 2024 this upcoming weekend, July 6-7!

You can find me in the Weird & Wonderful section at table K10.

Location: Santa Clara Convention, 5001 Great America Pkwy, Santa Clara, CA 95054

Saturday: 11am - 5pm Sunday: 11am - 5pm

Free admission and free parking!

[bayconnews]

Team Skorpios is back!

Zac and Diana return to BayCon with the Battlebot Skorpios, who took down Tombstone in a memorable match just a couple years ago. If you're a fan of robot fighting, don't miss these guys.

Team Skorpios will be onsite Saturday and Sunday in our Dealers Room. And this year they're bringing the BOT BASH ARENA, an enclosed arena where you can reenact the carnage with miniature battlebots. $5/participant.

Come out and have some fun with metal mayhem!

[shannanigansart]

Summer 2023 convention lineup!! 🌸 I’m so excited to see everyone and hangout and chat with all you lovely beans!! 🥹💕💕💕

[failedbyfanime]

FanimeCon is in 40 days.

Where is the updated code of conduct they've promised?

Why are there still known harassers on staff?

Why is the Chair team focusing on a BALL PIT instead of supporting their volunteers?

[prokopetz]

Ways your fortified points-of-light fantasy city with no discernible agricultural base supports itself that aren't "they eat the monsters":

There's no farmland spreading below the city's mountain fastness because all of the crops are above. Most of the mountain's surface area below the permanent snowline is taken up by a series of colossal hydroponic terraces fed by seasonal meltwater from the snow pack above. (Don't ask who built the terraces.)

The city's famed heaven-piercing towers are aviaries for millions upon untold millions of fruit and seed eating birds, which forage the surrounding countryside by day and roost there at night; their meat and eggs form the community's staple diet. In order to fend off ecological depletion, crack teams of combat-trained wilderness maintenance experts venture forth daily, escorting great cartloads of birdshit on targeted fertilising missions (though in truth they hardly need their swords, as the smell keeps the monsters at bay).

Those weird caverns that seem to be present under every random shed and outhouse are all connected. That's why the giant mutant rats in the basement of the local inn are such a big deal – they're not just annoying the guests, they're also obstructing the community's principal trade route!

For Reasons, the city's population is only about ten percent of its carrying capacity. The city's interior green spaces are presently sufficient for food production, and its citizens take turns dressing up as soldiers and manning the walls once a week to create the illusion of a robust military presence. Unfortunately, the ruse can't last forever, as they lack the manpower to maintain their crumbling infrastructure, nor will they be able to defend themselves when – not if, but when – the neighbouring city-states figure it out.

There's actually plenty of conventional farmland; it's just that the entire campaign takes place south of the city, and the farms are all to the north. Why don't the farms expand southward to claim the clearly arable land? Well, there's a funny story about that...

[transit-fag]

The Bay Area is fascinating

The metro and Regional Rail Systems have a booth at an anime convention

[nostalgebraist]

Steve DeCanio, an ex-Berkeley activist now doing graduate work at M.I.T., is a good example of a legion of young radicals who know they have lost their influence but have no clear idea how to get it back again. “The alliance between hippies and political radicals is bound to break up,” he said in a recent letter. “There’s just too big a jump from the slogan of ‘Flower Power’ to the deadly realm of politics. Something has to give, and drugs are too ready-made as opiates of the people for the bastards (the police) to fail to take advantage of it.” Decanio spent three months in various Bay Area jails as a result of his civil rights activities and now he is lying low for a while, waiting for an opening. “I’m spending an amazing amount of time studying,” he wrote. “It’s mainly because I’m scared; three months on the bottom of humanity’s trash heap got to me worse than it’s healthy to admit. The country is going to hell, the left is going to pot, but not me. I still want to figure out a way to win.”

Re-reading Hunter S. Thompson's 1967 article about Haight-Ashbury, I thought: "huh, this guy sounds like he's going places. I wonder whether he ever did 'figure out a way to win'?"

So I web searched his name, and ... huh!

My current research interests include Artificial Intelligence, philosophy of the social sciences, and the economics of climate change. Several years ago I examined the consequences of computational limits for economics and social theory in Limits of Economic and Social Knowledge (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).  Over the course of my academic career I have worked in the fields of global environmental protection, the theory of the firm, and economic history.  I have written about both the contributions and misuse of economics for long-run policy issues such as climate change and stratospheric ozone layer protection.  An earlier book, Economic Models of Climate Change: A Critique (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), discussed the problems with conventional general equilibrium models applied to climate policy. From 1986 to 1987 I served as Senior Staff Economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. I have been a member of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Economic Options Panel, which reviewed the economic aspects of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, and I served as Co-Chair of the Montreal Protocol’s Agricultural Economics Task Force of the Technical and Economics Assessment Panel. I participated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, and was a recipient of the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007. In 1996 I was honored with a Stratospheric Ozone Protection Award, and in 2007 a “Best of the Best” Stratospheric Ozone Protection Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. I served as Director of the UCSB Washington Program from 2004 to 2009.

I don't know whether this successful academic career would count as "winning" by his own 1967 standards. But it was a pleasant surprise to find anything noteworthy about the guy at all, given that he was quoted as a non-public figure in a >50-year-old article.

[gallusgalluss]

Portraits of the last Stone Era Snaktooth Island matriarchs (before Queen 1 came in and basically destroyed this whole system).

Below cut is some information about these grumps

Captain Seaside (this is the title she goes professionally, she uses her actual full name in more casual spaces) ruled The Coast, or where present day Boiling Bay would be. The two grumpuses next to her are her subordinate brothers. She's the youngest matriarch of this era and was the most likely to take risks and challenge her superiors (the other matriarchs) if it's to help her communities. She doesn't consider herself a bugsnak "worshiper", but she does acknowledge how important they are on the island. The only bugsnak she'd consider "worshiping" would probably be a Megamaki, as she considers it the most powerful (and coolest) bugsnak in the area.

Olsa Patchfern was the matriarch of the Falls Valley, or where present day Garden Grove and Flavor Falls would be. She's the complete opposite of Seaside, being the oldest matriarch of the era and was very insistent that the word of superiors and the islands practices must be upheld at all times, even if it may lead to the harm of hers or other communities. She worships the bugsnax and believes they're mystical beings with unimaginable powers (which is sorta true?). She was the matriarch of Alabee Smoothpebble, the grumpus who became the first Queen of bugsnax, and they were both very close and respected on another... until Alabee got sacrificed and like. Everything happen. She also has a very close relationship with Elass in the past but shhh don't worry about that right now.

Lentha Breezeblow (or more commonly known as Monohorn) ruled The Peak, or where the Frosted Peak would be. She and her communities are very powerful, but due to living on the literal top of a mountain, communications with the other island grumpuses is difficult. She doesn't particularly view the bugsnax as something that should be worshiped (seeing how there's no snax imagery in her portrait), but just as a very convent food source. And while she's very physically strong, she's incredibly timid and prefers being a more passive grumpus in the face of difficulties. She typically leaves more difficult work to her subordinates to deal with.

Elass Dunecuts ruled the Desert, or where Sizzlin' Sands would've been. She's a more mellow matriarch, being more of a listener compared to a talker. She has mixed feelings on bugsnax, and just being a matriarch in general. She's aware of the importance of bugsnax in her society, but she can't seem to shake off the concerning aspects about them. Yes, grumpuses have been living on the island and eating snax for centuries, but Elass still hasn't gotten over how weird is was that bugsnax transform limbs, or how you need to eat them raw or else they'll turn to mush, or how some fully snakified grumpuses would seem to disappear from their communities for no reason. She frequently asked about these at a young age, which just lead to "Oh don't worry about it!" types of responses, so she'd given up on asking others her questions. Still, those concerns never went away, even if she regularly eats bugsnax. She was very close to Olsa at a younger age, with the two of them meeting up in secret frequently, they really loved each other a lot. But they've grown distant after becoming matriarchs. And while Olsa is still very kind to her, Elass just doesn't feel that old connection anymore. Zereh Quickcuts (Queen 2) is one of her very distant relatives (from one of her sister's sides, but still related either way).

[lakesbian]

“The heroes of the hour are the young members of the Wards, Clockblocker and Vista, who played a pivotal role in managing a crisis with a superbomb, allegedly used by the supervillain Bakuda in an attempt to hold the city ransom and guarantee her safety.  While experts on the scene refused to offer hard numbers, a local cape was quoted as stating the superbomb could have had a yield of nine thousand kilotons of energy.  This device, containing power on par with conventional nuclear bombs, was fashioned with household materials scavenged from the area, after fighting in the Docks and pressure from local authorities forced the bomb’s alleged creator to relocate to a derelict boathouse just days ago.  Were it not for the efforts of the Wards, this might have been a tragic day for our nation. “As much as we might wish for a period of somber reflection, other local villains have shown little interest in putting recent matters to rest. Less than an hour after suspected ABB leader Lung and alleged accomplice Bakuda were brought into custody, the head offices of Medhall Corporation were assaulted by armed forces, in an altercation that drew the attention of members of local Aryan villain group Empire Eighty-Eight. This appears to have prompted a rash of more than six major incidents in the past hour-”

can you fucking imagine being a brockton bay citizen and having to turn on your TV to a news segment going "BREAKING NEWS: the entire city almost got blowed up by a nuke made of kitchen forks and twine but our 16 and 12yo child soldiers saved the day so its fine. that said in other news we are under fucking attack" living here SUUUUCKS

[meeedeee]

My Fandom Journeys

Hi, I am Morgan Dawn. I am over 60 and have been in fanfiction/fanvid fandom for 30+ years. I have a love of fandom and its history. I am disabled and use voice recognition software to write so there may be typos and the occasional word salad. Please feel free to reblog or link to my tumblr. I love to meet fans by phone or video and live in the SF Bay Area.

Look for my fandom history posts under the #fandom history tag and my personal experiences across 30 years in fandom under #my fandom journeys

Fun things I am working on 1. Scanning and preserving fanfiction fanzines from the 1960s-2000s

2. Digitizing fanvids made on VCR videotapes (1980s-2000s)

3. Promoting a DIY Oral History project for fanfiction/fanvid/fanart/cosplay (transformative) fandom. Grab a friend and join the party

4. Documenting fan run conventions, fanzines and fanvids on Fanlore, the fan-run wiki run by the Organization For Transformative Works (OTW).

My Asks are open but I often take long breaks to rest and recharge so if I don't get back to you, please be patient

Note: this blog is for adults only. If you are under the age of majority in your country, please pass it by.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

This 1856 Gothic Revival mansion in Oyster Bay, New York (which is out on Long Island) is over-the-top. 6bds, 11ba, $10.888M.

Who painted all the woodwork beige? Good Lord, look at this.

Very elaborate, ornate sitting room.

The 2nd sitting room is just as maximalist, ornate, and elaborate. It's difficult to see the architectural details with all the furnishings.

Here's a small sitting room. Notice how the decor mirrors itself.

Very large dining room open to what looks like a sun room. What a fireplace- Look at how raised the firebox is.

This is a nice room. There certainly are a lot of places to sit.

The kitchen has a vintage/modern look. I don't think I've ever seen the area under the upper cabinets so brightly lit. The cabinetry and counters are all beautiful. The massive island looks like an antique piece.

Through the kitchen is what looks like an everyday dining room.

What a room. Look at the ceiling. It reminds me of a refectory in an old gothic convent.

This looks like the primary bedroom. Not only does it have an amazing sitting area, but it also has a loft. This house is crazy, but as per usual, when it's a mansion like this, they rarely show much of it.

This looks like a greenhouse.

There's a lot of land- 16.14 acres.

A beautiful view of Oyster Bay Harbor.

The home itself has a huge brick patio and this is one of two ponds.

[rabbitcruiser]

Downtown Calgary (No. 3)

Commercial core

Calgary's dense business area comprises the bulk of the downtown community. It is a core of skyscrapers. As of February 2017, eight of the ten tallest buildings in western Canada, and a few of the tallest in the country, are in Calgary. It is arguably the densest downtown area of any city of its size in North America. Many of the buildings are connected via an 18 km (11 mi) long network of elevated walkways and bridges. The system, known as the "+15" is the largest of its kind in the world.

The area surrounding the Stephen Avenue Walk is Downtown Calgary's primary retail area. Stephen Avenue (8th Avenue SW) is a pedestrian mall lined with historic buildings containing stores, restaurants, cinemas, and drinking establishments. Immediately adjacent to the outdoor portion of Stephen Avenue is an indoor complex of two shopping malls. The malls, The Core Shopping Centre (formerly TD Square/Calgary Eaton Centre) and the Scotia Centre are bordered at either end by the historic Hudson's Bay Company store and Holt Renfrew's upscale department store. The street is also home to a number of galleries, restaurants, pubs, off-beat cinemas, and nightclubs. Other attractions in the commercial core include the Devonian Gardens in The Core, the Calgary Tower, the Art Gallery of Calgary, The Glenbow Museum, Olympic Plaza, Arts Commons, and the Telus Convention Centre.

The commercial core is also divided into a number of districts. They include the Entertainment District/Stephen Avenue, The Olympic Plaza and Cultural District, and the Government District.

Source: Wikipedia

[bayconnews]

Nerdy T-Shirt Swap!

Do you have fannish or nerdy T-shirts that no longer fit you, either literally or figuratively? Don't let them gather dust in your closet! Bring them to our T-shirt swap and find new treasures that suit you better. Whether you're looking to trade in an old favorite or discover a new one, this is the perfect opportunity to refresh your wardrobe with fellow fans' gear.

Join us for a fun and eco-friendly way to update your collection and connect with the community. Happy swapping!

[arimiadev]

(you can read this article down below or on my blog!)

How to Sell Visual Novels at Conventions

Or, “how do you table at an anime convention and actually get people to stop by your booth and actually get interested in visual novels????”

Picture this – me, someone who’s never been to California nor flown alone arrived to the Hyatt at the San Francisco Bay, being greeted by several online friends I’d known for years but never met in person. After a great time walking around the surrounding Burlingame area and meeting back up with the rest of our group, we had to actually put in some work for the day.

That is, setting up our booth for the convention starting the next day.

We unpacked box after box, taking turns standing around with our hands on our hips and heads tilted wondering “how the hell are we going to set all of this up?”. I decided to make it my job to set up our keychain display. All I had to do was get a copy of each keychain we had and pin them up – we even had a box from prior conventions that had a single copy of (most) of our keychains, for displaying. But as I opened more boxes, I found more and more keychains…

After threatening to change the password on their Vograce account, I found we had 10+ boxes of merchandise for niche visual novels that we were trying to sell at a vtuber convention. Not an anime convention, not a gaming convention, a vtuber convention! Going to bed that night, already tired, I was sure there was no way we would make a profit…..

…And yet, we made more on Friday than they had for the entire convention in 2023. By Sunday, we had made more than double that, having sold items to over 100 customers with most purchases around $40 each. We weren’t selling fanart, we were selling a majority completely original art.

We lived the dream of a lot of indie developers – we sold physicals of our indie games and people bought them. But how did we do it??

a little context

Some background – OffKai Expo is an annual vtuber-oriented convention in Burlingame, California, a suburb of San Francisco and just 15 minutes away from their airport. If you don’t know what a vtuber is, just go watch my oshi Gavis Bettel. In 2023, Studio Élan had a booth at the convention as it’s somewhat local to some of our members. We decided to have another booth at the convention for 2024 and I offered to work at it (what’s a booth without a marketer?).

The only anime convention I’ve ever been to was the local one in Memphis, namely Anime Blues Con, but those are….lacking, to say the least. Not much to do, very limited artist alley, waning attendance (which was already small to begin with), barely any new artists nor sights year after year… I’ve always wanted to go to a convention outside my area, to say the least.

But how did we manage to make the weekend successful?

conceits

What we did won’t be entirely replicable for most devs reading this, but there will be some insights and takeaways that I’ll highlight that are applicable to anyone wanting to table at conventions and sell their games.

Our table was for Studio Élan x VirPro – it was a joint table between our yuri visual novel studio and our indie vtuber friend streaming group, Virtuality Project. We sold some merch for VirPro, but I’d estimate that was no more than 20% of our sales – we still would have made a profit even if we weren’t selling that merch.

this table held our limited VirPro merch. we were able to hang our Élan prints on the wall behind it thanks to our friends at Studio Nekomata allowing us to tape our prints to the backside of their display. we also had a Miho cutout, but she didn’t want to stand up this weekend…

However, it is important to note that Studio Élan is not a new studio. We’ve been around for years, have 15k followers on Twitter, and have several visual novels released. We’re not extremely well known, as we are within a niche within a niche, but we aren’t unknown either. Some people actually cosplayed our characters at the convention! It’s definitely possible some locals came to OffKai Expo just to see our booth & panel (we also held a panel on Saturday where we announced 2 new games).

Another thing to note is that we have a stock of merch from running an online store and having held Kickstarters before. Specifically, we have physical copies of almost all of our games as well as artbooks, soundtracks, clothing, and more. We had tons of keychains and 11×17 prints, sure, but we also sold a lot of merch that is much harder and more expensive to produce.

So, tl;dr, things we had going for us:

We are established developers with a following & released games

We have a sizeable amount of merch already made for our online store, including physical games & artbooks

We were boothing with our indie vtuber friend group and selling their merch on the side

But our main problem:

We were boothing at a vtuber convention, not an anime or gaming convention

Now, with all of that out of the way….

convention standards

First off, let’s look at some basic things you can expect while tabling at a convention. (for the purposes of being specific to visual novels, when I say “convention” I’m only referring to anime & gaming-adjacent conventions—OffKai falls under this as vtubers are both anime & gaming-adjacent)

At a convention, you will typically be selling in either the artist alley or the dealer’s room, which are both referred to as the vendor’s hall. For small conventions, these two may be the same area. The artist alley is typically for artists selling keychains, prints, and more. The dealers room is for vendors that sell larger merch or have more items to sell – this can include artists but also includes people selling imported items (such as anime figures) and companies.

Conventions have a set amount of hours that the events go on and the vendor’s hall is usually not open the entire time. These rooms will usually open in the morning, around 10AM or so, and allow vendors an extra hour for fixing things before opening every day. For OffKai, we had to stay at our booth for about 8~ hours every day, except for Sunday. Sundays are always the shortest days for 3-day conventions, as the convention will usually wrap up around dinner time (if not earlier).

Vendors get time the night before the convention starts (usually Thursday night, with most conventions I’m referencing being Friday-Sunday events) to set up their booths. It took us around 3 hours to fully set up our booth, with 4 of us working on it. Setting up your booth will go a lot smoother if you do a trial run before the convention.

Every convention I’ve tabled at or known a vendor at provides vendors with at least 1 table and a chair. More chairs are usually easy to get, you just need to ask staff before the vendors hall opens up.

tip 1 – bring a friend

Conventions provide tables and chairs, but they don’t provide helping hands! You’re probably going to need help unpacking and setting up the table, but you’ll definitely need to take breaks during the convention for the bathroom, food, and more. You can’t just ask staff to sit at your table and you can’t just hide everything while you’re gone. Bring a friend to help out!

If you have to go alone, make friends with the people boothing next to you and ask them to watch over your table if need be. Be sure to keep your money and payment processors with you if you ever have to step away. And bring snacks & water!

our merch

Like I said, at Élan we have typical merchandise for our visual novels like keychains and acrylic standees, but we also have physical copies of our games for PC & consoles, artbooks, soundtracks, and more.

We had these types of merch:

Acrylic & wooden items

Keychains

Standees

Pins

Print media

PC discs

Console discs & cartridges (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 & 5)

Artbooks (game artbooks, limited edition anniversary artbooks)

Soundtrack discs

4×6 prints (CGs, key artworks)

11×17 prints (key artworks, exclusive convention artworks)

Clothing & fabric

T-shirts (4 designs, 1 color each)

Hoodie (new collaboration design, for all of our games)

Scarf (new collaboration design, for 1 of our games)

Fabric flags (key visuals)

Misc.

Grab bag (misc small items)

$5 bin (misc small items)

Pencil bag

Mousepad

Enamel pin

Plushie (limited Makeship leftovers)

Some of these were items we’d never sold before such as the hoodie, scarf, and 11×17 prints. Some of them were also much more of a hassle than others.

In terms of storage and cheapness to make, prints and stickers are by far the winners (we didn’t sell stickers at OffKai but plan to in the future). Prints are basically the best thing you can sell for production cost:profit, as a 4×6 print can cost you $0.20 but sell for $5+ and an 11×17 print can cost $0.60 and sell for $15-20.

On the other hand, t-shirts can be some of the most difficult merch to work with. They take up a lot of room (we had at least 2 boxes of just shirts/hoodies) and require you to have multiple different sizes. The plushies were great & easy to sell, but at the same time they cost a lot per unit and take up even more space than shirts.

The physical copies sold great, but the cost to produce & room to store them makes them unwieldy for most developers. I would recommend them over more bespoke merch like clothing, though—several people came to our booth, having never heard of our games, and left with a physical game. CD discs rather than DVD cases are much easier to store and can be handmade, although ours are manufactured.

tip 2 – be selective with what merch you make & bring

Unless you’re lucky enough to have a convention down the street from you, chances are you’re going to have to travel to the convention. That means packing everything up, possibly shipping it, etc…. You need to be picky with what you bring if you don’t have multiple cars to throw it all in.

My merch recommendations:

4×6 prints

Ours were $4-5

Dirt cheap to print, easy to store

Easy for people to buy because of the low price point and ease of carrying

Idea – these are so cheap to print, at the very least print some of your key visual & logo to hand out to people for free

Stickers (die-cut or sticker sheets)

Dirt cheap to print, easy to store

Easy for people to buy because of the low price point and ease of carrying

Idea – some conventions won’t allow you to hand out free stickers. For conventions that don’t, I would sell either singular die-cut stickers or sell them in packs

Keychains

Ours were $12-15

Cheap to print, not very hard to store

At this price point people want to have an attachment to the characters before buying

Idea – if your game is relatively unknown but you still want to print keychains, consider packaging them with something else like the game or a sampler CD of the demo / soundtrack

Physical CD disc games

Ours were $30

Not cheap to print, not very hard to store

People will buy copies of games they’ve never heard of because it’s an interesting item to own and seen as more value than a digital copy (even if physical is more expensive)

Idea – it doesn’t cost much to get a 50 pack of CDs, the cost comes from the packaging and time to make the entire thing. If you don’t have a finished game yet, consider printing your demo out on CDs in paper slips to hand out for free

our booth

Now that I’ve talked about basics for conventions and what merch we sold, what did our booth actually look like?

We didn’t have a pre-convention trial run, so we were essentially winging it. With all of the merch I outlined, could you believe we crammed all of the display copies on 1 table, 2 shelves, and 1 clothing rack?!

Our main focus was making sure each of our physical games were visible. After all, we were at a vtuber convention where most attendees didn’t know us, so we wanted to have a way to show off our games. We spent a lot of real estate on showing individual game copies and having brochures spread out.

tip 3 – have an idea of how you’re going to display things before the convention

We also brought several items to display merch. For keychains & pins, we had a simple corkboard leaning on a photo stand / easel. For acrylic standees, we had a clear nail polish stand. For physical copies, we had photo stands and bookends. For clothes, we had a small clothing rack. For physicals, we had 3 small bookcases. These were all extremely helpful, but they are added costs and more things to carry to the convention.

here’s a better look at our 2 bookshelves. the purple ladder one was at the back of the booth highlighting some items and storing various artbooks & bundles and the smaller one was at the front left of the booth by the VirPro merch, basically in the walking aisle

The corkboard and various photo stands were must-haves, regardless of what you’re selling. A corkboard makes it easy to display anything on it, whether it’s keychains, stickers, mini-prints, announcements, posters, and more. Photo stands were also super helpful for propping our corkboard on but also showing off individual physical copies.

this was me trying to arrange the corkboard and acrylic stands. photo stands and art easels can in handy!

Along with the display stands, we also brought some decorative items like pink table clothes and flowers. These aren’t required, but help make your booth more noticeable.

A few miscellaneous items I plan on bringing to our next convention are a hand sanitizer dispenser, a small air purifier, and fliers. I always keep hand sanitizer on me, but it’s easier to use it when it’s in a convenient bottle and place. Several of us got sick after the convention (despite me wearing a mask), so I’m also bringing a small air purifier to keep some germs away from the table. I also want to bring small fliers for our upcoming games—while brochures are wonderful, I want something that’s easy (and cheap) to hand out to anyone who looks at our booth, not just the people we talk to.

tip 4 – be aware of merch thieves

We arranged our table in a way that we didn’t have to worry much about people stealing merch, though that is a problem at some conventions. As you might’ve noticed from the pictures, our smaller items like the keychains are at the far back of the booth, right beside where we sit. That allowed us to keep a better eye on it.

Rather than sitting behind our tables, we arranged our booth to be where people would walk inside it. This allowed us a way to talk to people easier. We also made sure to hide our card readers, phones, and more when any of us left the table, though this was easy because we almost always had 2-3 people at the booth at any time.

my advice

If I were an indie dev looking to booth at a convention and had the time and spare change, I would if it were close enough to drive to and the booth cost under $500. Unless you’re an established developer or have a popular artist working on your project, it’s hard to justify that cost.

tip 5 – don’t forget to budget for…

booth costs

extra badges (most booths come with 2 free badges)

hotel

travel

food

merchandise manufacturing

any shipping fees (your luggage, merch, etc.)

display items, extra things for your booth

While you may find a booth for $250, you also have to remember the travel fees, cost of food, all of the extra items you’ll need aside from merchandise, and more. A $250 booth for a 3-day convention could easily end up costing you $2,000+, and that’s if you don’t pay yourself or coworkers for their time at the booth!

If you’ve never been to a convention before then definitely go to one as an attendee before becoming a vendor. Get a feel for the place and have some fun, even if it means you won’t be able to booth there for months or a year.

tip 6 – be sure to bring…

Some kind of handout for people with your game & logo on it (fliers, business cards, brochures, etc.)

Small stationary merch for your game (4×6 prints, stickers, etc.)

Corkboard to display things on and something to prop it up

A way to take card payments and cash for change

Hand sanitizer

Pen/pencil and sticky notes

Clamps

Tape

this is the inside of our old brochure! it details our different games and highlights some upcoming titles

I’d also try putting your demo on CDs to hand out to people who seem really interested if you can. CDs are pretty cheap to get now, and even if you just get a 50 pack that can run you around $12, which ends up being $0.25/CD. Not a bad cost for getting a potential fan, if you hand them out only to people who are really interested or package them with other merch and sell them.

Your main effort if you’re not an established developer, however, will be awareness. Talk to the people who stop by your booth. Tell them hi and explain to them what you make. I had several people clearly not understand what visual novels were, but I had many more who became interested once I mentioned we made these games. “Wait, you actually made them?!”

tip 7 – talk to people!!!

People at conventions think art is cool. They think indie games are cool. Be honest with them and show them your hard work. Yeah, this means you have to put on your extrovert cap for the weekend. Just don’t treat it like you’re a car salesman—you’re a game dev first and foremost and enjoy this line of work so much you want to share it with strangers at conventions. Let that shine through in your words.

All in all, conventions are stressful, tiring, and a lot of fun when they’re run well. If any of this sounds interesting to you and you find a convention close enough to you or one that will be relatively cheap to attend, I recommend trying it out.

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OffKai Expo was so, so much fun and I’m so happy I was able to attend. It was a well run convention, our booth did amazing, I got to meet actual fans IRL, and I was able to finally see a lot of my online friends in person. I was scared leading up to it but I’m so glad I pushed myself to go. Having an in-person panel there where the room was almost full absolutely blew me away—I kept asking “do they know what room they’re in? Did they get lost?” If you came to our panel or booth, thank you!!

— Arimia

read more of my articles on tumblr here!

[d-criss-news]

Darren Criss reveals how he went from a convention-going fan to a celebrity (who still goes to conventions)

[UHQ] Darren Criss at the C2E2 Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo at McCormick Place on April 27, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by ReedPop)

So many convention attendees dream of being on the other side of the panel, of crossing the barrier between fan lining up and who fans line up for. Recently, Glee star Darren Criss came to Chicago's C2E2 '24 with a message for those dreamers - that the barrier was crossable, and that he was living proof.

Speaking with Popverse seniorv ideo producer Veronica Valencia, Criss began by (lovingly) calling out other celebrities. "I'll have you know," Criss said, "A lot of people who come up here to do these things - especially actors, who I love - usually the first time they ever go to a convention is when they're on this side."

"I want you all to know," he said to massive applause, "that I grew up going to conventions."

"You name it," Criss continued, "Star Wars conventions, comic conventions - if it was in the Bay Area, I went to it at some point. So I very much appreciate and see and know the excitement of of a room like this. And it's my genuine pleasure to be here as a result."

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Eric Levitz at Vox:

When Vice President Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz as her running mate, many pundits lamented her decision. In their view, the Democratic nominee should have chosen a vice presidential candidate who could mitigate her liabilities, and balance out her party’s ticket — such as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

After all, Harris had been a liberal senator from one of America’s most left-wing states and then had run an exceedingly progressive primary campaign in 2020. To win over swing-state undecideds, she needed to demonstrate her independence from her party’s most radical elements. And selecting the popular governor of a purple state — who had defied the Democratic activist base on education policy and Israel’s war in Gaza— would do just that. Walz, in this account, was just another liberal darling: As Minnesota governor, he had enacted a litany of progressive policies, including restoring the voting rights of ex-felons and creating a refuge program for trans people denied gender-affirming care in other states. Picking Walz might thrill the subset of Americans who would vote for Harris even if she burned an American flag on live TV and lit a blunt with its flames. But it would do nothing to reassure those who heard two words they did not like in the phrase, “California liberal.”

But there is more than one way to balance a ticket. Or so Harris’s team believes, if the third night of the Democratic National Convention is any guide. On Wednesday night, Democrats used Walz’s nomination to associate their party with rural American culture and small-c conservative moral sentiments, while remaining true to a broadly progressive agenda. Walz may not be especially distinct from Harris ideologically. But he is quite different demographically and symbolically. Harris is the half-Jamaican, half-Indian daughter of immigrant college professors who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. Walz was born into a family whose roots in the United States went back to the 1800s, and raised in a Nebraska town of 400, where ethnic diversity largely consisted of several different flavors of Midwestern white (Walz himself is of German, Irish, Swedish, and Luxembourgish descent). Harris is an effortlessly cool veteran of red carpets. Walz is a dad joke that has attained corporal form.

In her person and biography, Harris represents the America that has benefited unequivocally from the transformations of the past half-century — the cosmopolitan, multicultural nation that has greeted the advance of racial and gender equality with relief, and the knowledge economy that’s taken to globalization with relish. Walz, by contrast, was shaped by the America that feels more at home in the world of yesterday, at least as it is nostalgically misremembered — a world where moral intuitions felt more stable, rural economies seemed more healthy, and the American elite looked more familiar; the America that put Donald Trump in the Oval Office, in other words. Or at least, the Harris campaign has chosen to associate Walz with all of that America’s iconography, attempting to make it feel as included in the Democratic coalition as possible — without actually ceding much ground to conservative policy preferences. The introduction to Walz’s speech Wednesday night looked like it could have been scripted by a chatbot asked to generate the antithesis of a “San Francisco liberal.” A video montage celebrated Walz’s diligent work on his family farm growing up, his service in the US military, skills as a marksman, and — above all — success as a football coach. Democrats leaned especially hard on that last, most American item on Walz’s resume. Just before the party’s vice presidential nominee took the mic, a group of his former players decked out in their gridiron garments marched on stage to a fight song (not to be confused with “Fight Song”).

[...] There is some basis for believing that Democrats might be able to win over a small but significant fraction of Republican-leaning independents by wrapping center-left policies in conservative packaging. Some political scientists have found that when moderate and conservative voters are presented with a progressive, Democratic economic policy idea — that is justified on the grounds that it will help uphold “the values and traditions that were handed down to us: hard work, loyalty to our country and the freedom to forge your own path” — some do respond favorably (as do liberal voters, who take no offense at such abstract, traditionalist pieties). Whether Walz tying himself to rural American symbology — or Harris tying herself to “Coach Walz” — will be enough to blunt Trump’s attacks on the Democratic nominee’s supposed “communism” remains to be seen. But the Democratic ticket is at least trying to make right-leaning Midwesterners feel like they belong (even if they do not think like Democrats do).

Tim Walz’s DNC speech last night reflects a broader trend of Democrats reclaiming freedom and patriotism while also selling its liberal agenda. #DNC2024 #HarrisWalz2024

See Also:

HuffPost: With Kamala Harris, It’s Cool For Liberals To Be Patriotic Again