Friday, August 29, 2003

I arrived on Friday in the afternoon after taking the train.  I walked through the Peachtree Square (the local mall) that connects both the Marriott Marquis and the Hyatt Regency.  Dragon Con is not your average con -- it's not at an actual convention center. Instead, it's across two very large hotels.  This is the world's stupidest idea.  EVER.

What this means is that, instead of having it in an area with lots of wide-open space, everything is spread across the two hotels.  These two hotels are connected by the aforementioned Peachtree mall through a series of aboveground tunnels.  These tunnels require walking through at least one bank and a few other buildings, along with a few sets of stairs.  Some parts of the access have swinging doors -- one genius finally figured should be propped open. 

Seriously, this is a huge convention that seems comfortable NOT being at a convention center.  You'd think the constant (and I mean CONSTANT) attention of the fire marshals demanding people leave in an orderly fashion from every seminar would give the organizers a hint that they should move the damn thing.

Anyway, I got there before Amber, who was flying in.  I got my guest pass and spoke to people who were also guests that may well be famous people.  I didn't know either way.  But I did know that the line for tickets wormed around the hotel and outside the hotel.  I was glad I was a guest.

I also got my gaming tickets.  Then I decided since I was a guest, dammit, I was going to act like one and hang out in the Green Room.

It took me 15 minutes to get an elevator to the 17th floor.  15 minutes.  The elevator was crowded.  People were fighting to get into the elevator.  The elevator stopped at every floor on the way up and down.  After a certain point, people just get on the elevator regardless of whether it's going up or down just...to get...ON IT. 

And thus my first experience with why IT IS A BAD THING TO HAVE A HUGE CONVENTION IN A HOTEL. Ahem.

The green room had its own lanky bodyguard.  The food wasn't anything involving meat (important, as I have glucose issues).  There was also nobody famous that I recognized there.  I hung out there for about a half hour, sipping diet Pepsi to gather my wits and recover my sugar levels.  Then I went and picked up Amber.

Her train trip wasn't nearly as pleasant as mine, because it included a very heavy piece of luggage.  In that luggage was all our fan stuff -- gaming books, books to be signed, and other heavy stuff.  The luggage probably weighed more than her. She was not happy.

So I dragged that piece of luggage with wheels that don't work very well all the way back to the hotel where we were staying (The Marriott).  I ripped up my leg in the process, which made me look like some bizarre, luggage dragging blood-zombie.

At this point, we weren't too happy with how things were going at the con, but we were confident it would get better. And to think, I had registered for a 9 a.m. Living Greyhawk game. Oh well, there goes three dollars.

The first thing we did was to drop in on the Coming Attractions.  This is all the movie previews, long before the movies actually come out.  It's great fun -- my entire family comes to these events at I-Con on Long Island.  It's the same guy doing it too.  The problem is, it wasn't very well organized.  He lists movies that are coming up but doesn't explain what the trailers are, so you think you're going to see a trailer for something just announced...only to be let down.  There's also apparently no rhyme or reason to the order (it started out in date order but slowly got messier after that).  In short, who knows what the hell is going on, they're showing previews and we should all be grateful that they let us see them.

The second thing we did was try to find John Rhys-Davies (Gimli). Turns out he had health issues and didn't show up.  In fact, a lot of the famous guests -- and there's so many guests that the con booklet is only ABOUT guests -- didn't show up. Ray Bradbury, Erin Gray, a few others were no shows.  But hey all that mattered is that *I* showed up, right?  Heh.

So that was a bust.  We then went to the Farscape Cast Reunion, which was a rather bizarre experience.  After meeting Virginia Hey (Zan), we got the impression that everyone in the cast was as sweet as her.  Not by a long shot.  David Franklin (Bracca), Anthony Simcoe (D'Argo), Lani Tupu (Crais) and Jonathan Hardy (Rygel) are big, fat MEANIES.  Anthony is extremely hyperactive and really hysterical.  He's also nothing like D'Argo.  David isn't much like Bracca (he's much less serious).  Lani is rather similar to Crais in demeanor, although he smiles a lot more -- he seems like a really pleasant, thoughtful fellow.  Jonathan IS Rygel, or at least he pretends he is.  He's really very interesting but he...uh, to put it nicely, rambles.  He's incredibly knowledgeable; it's just that he doesn't get it out quite as succinctly.  He reminds me a bit of John Rhys-Davies, only John expresses himself in a rich baritone, while Jonathan makes so many tangential references (that few people get) that you lose track of what he was saying.  He also has a vicious wit that he used on just about everyone in the room.  Anyway, they explained how to bring Farscape back (throw money at the DVDs) and were very entertaining.  Definitely worth it. 

Amber went off to see "An Evening in Bree" and I got ready for participation in the panel, "Online Role-Playing Games: Designer's Forum."  I should state up front that Elonka Dunin, who organized the panel, is a goddess in her own right.  She is extremely well organized, pleasant, keeps track of the panel members (including me) and also happens to be a freaking genius.  She's a code cracker, speaks a bazillion languages, AND works on games!

I met Terri Perkins first, who is a wonderful person.  She was there with her son and was very kind to me.  She's working on Anarchy Online, a game I've come to respect and hope does really well with the latest incarnation. 

We chatted for a bit until the panel opened.  Then I sat next to Terri.  On my left was Peter Friedman another fine gent.  He kept pretending he was lower on the totem pole than me, which isn't true -- Peter's a CPA who specializes in the entertainment industry.  That's more important than a lot of people want to admit.  He and I had fun being the outcasts.

I introduced myself to the next person over (remaining nameless, for the moment) who said, "So who are you with?" When I said, "RetroMUD" the response I got was, "Oooookay."  That's a bad okay, the kind you might say if I said, "I'm from the planet Sh!tGAME."  Perhaps he was pissed that there we so many people on the panel (there were eight of us).  Perhaps he was having a bad day.  Anyway, it was exactly the reaction I expected.  Pretty funny, actually.

Ironically, the folks who WERE in a position to put me down -- Dave Rickey, Brian Green -- were not only quite pleasant, they totally backed me up.  Dave and Brian are very cool guys.  Dave is content designer for Dark Ages of Camelot and Brian and Dave are on the MUD-DEV list at http://www.kanga.nu, so it was great to meet them in person. 

Elonka conducted the panel in an orderly fashion, allowing each of us to answer questions in turn.  It was the only orderly panel I witnessed throughout the entire convention.

Here's what I remember of the points I made.

• Cultures are developed, not spontaneously created.  "Good" cultures, the kind that propagate and make people want to play the game and last a long time require maintenance.  They have to be cultivated.  The right people must come play the game, the wrong people must be told to leave.  This requires time, patience, effort, and staff.  It means being a bad guy a lot of the time, at least in the beginning.
• Any online venture should be treated like a business.  Take it seriously and other people will take it seriously, even volunteers.  Vision, quality control, these are all perfectly valid in the "non-money-making" world as they are in business.
• Games need people people.  That is, games need employees dedicated to dealing with their customers. That may be customer service reps, that may be community relations coordinators, that may be marketers.  But it better be somebody and not Joe Programmer.
• External issues that the customer experiences are YOUR problem.  Nobody cares whose fault the lag is.  Learn this.  Deal with it.  It's the customer perspective.
• Social groups trump everything you've got -- graphics, game play, everything.  Friends are what attract players, friends are what keep players, friends are what let people know about your game.  They are the hub people -- the folks who let you know about the other games out there.  I am a hub person, if you didn't know, as evidenced by this long summary.  If a pile of players comes to your game initially, you must ensure they stay.  If they get up and leave in a group, they were never interested in your game in the first place.

And of course, I spoke out of turn.

There's a seedy underside to all this.  I bribed people.  Anyone who asked me a question got a free RetroMUD doodad.  As it turns out, most of the people in the audience were MUDders, so they got a kick out of asking me questions.  I had quite a few folks talking to me afterwards.  It was all rather exciting. 

It was a really great opportunity to talk to people and see what the rest of the gaming world is like.  It also was great to see that I am not, in fact, insane when I make points on the MUD-DEV list.  I felt validated. :)