Con-vinced

BGG.con

Well, now I know what a con is. Why do we go to them? Why do we have them?

Let's start with Derk, Aldie, and company. Why did they do this? It can't have been to enhance their reputation, which already hit its peak after being publicly dissed by Reiner Knizia. It can't have made money for them; just consider the amount of time they must have taken off of work to do this. And they really didn't get much time to play.

Answer: it had to be a labor of love. They could do it - so they did it. I imagine that if things hadn't gone as smoothly as they did then we might not be seeing BGG.con 2. But they did, so unless they lost money on this, we will.

How about the local Dallas people? Couldn't they have sat in their houses and played games? They have a large group anyway. OK, they ended up getting door prizes and so forth, probably worth about $40 or $60 anyway. How about the people flying in from God-knows where who spent a lot more on flight and hotel?

Answer: We wanted to meet people who we have come to know only by email and postings. More than that, we wanted to have conversations with people about games for four days and have noone think that we are weird. For some people, it may also have been to keep up with the latest and greatest in gaming. But it was also a perfect vacation: an opportunity to play for days in a row, which most of us wouldn't get to do otherwise, and to learn many games that we would never have access to without buying first. For me, of course, I also had a business agenda - to introduce my game to as many new people as possible.

What about the vendors? Publicity and goodwill to the people who matter most - the hardcore gamers, who will in turn spread word of the games to many other people.

Is it worth it? Yes. It is fun, and if the people are nice and the con is organized, the time is pure enjoyment.

But this was only my first con. What about the others cons? Are they worth it? What about people (unlike me) who are wallflowers? Do they get into a con? If there are worthwhile cons and not-worthwhile cons, how do you know which is which?

Yehuda