Anyone gone to Gen Con?

[Bree Giffen]

Since I watch SL vids, Youtube served me up the opening speech by Patch for the Gen Con event. Has anyone visited it? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnnIpCA9L0E

 

 

[sceneris]

yeah i did visit it, it was fun and many different themes [not linden home] to see, theres also have a realistic looking convention building over there, due to time zone differences im only there for a few hours of their initial opening time

[Cinos Field]

I planned on going but they're doing it in a really weird way, where the sim is only open a few hours per day. They're not exactly playing to the strengths of a digital platform...

 

[animats]

12 hours ago, sceneris said:

yeah i did visit it, it was fun and many different themes [not linden home] to see, theres also have a realistic looking convention building over there, due to time zone differences im only there for a few hours of their initial opening time

They seem to be trying to duplicate the real-world experience as closely as they can. They even have a model of downtown Indianapolis, where the real-world convention is usually held. How's that working out?

[sceneris]

8 hours ago, animats said:

They seem to be trying to duplicate the real-world experience as closely as they can. They even have a model of downtown Indianapolis, where the real-world convention is usually held. How's that working out?

looks pretty realistic, i like how they tried to resemble the real world convention, too bad doesn't up for long

[animats]

It's too bad that the Game Developers Conference, which starts next week, isn't being held in Second Life.

[Lucia Nightfire]

4 hours ago, animats said:

It's too bad that the Game Developers Conference, which starts next week, isn't being held in Second Life.

Maybe as a general discussion outlet, but the second a guest or audience member asks, "Can you do this or that in SL yet?" or "Does SL support this or that industry standard game development feature yet?", 99 out of 100 times the answer will be an embarrassing "Nope." followed by random laughs and/or facepalms.

 

 

Edited August 2, 2020 by Lucia Nightfire

[Cinos Field]

I managed to slot myself in and... the whole setup is just weird. You have to register for limited-hour events to just walk around and play games. If you want to play any more involved games, it costs money. There's very little with any kind of mass participation or spontaneous drop-in stuff. And then, like I said before, the sim shuts down instead of letting people explore freely once scheduled events end.

I dunno, I strongly feel like they should've looked at how SL events usually work before trying it. Better luck next time. I do hope it doesn't discourage other conventions from trying to have events on SL.

Edited August 2, 2020 by Cinos Field

[Dolly Waifu]

The Gen Con build is open now until Tuesday at 5pm EST, for anyone who didn't get a chance to see it.

I volunteered for the con, and was there Thursday and Friday morning.

Edited August 3, 2020 by Reyetta Claven

[Remnant Ashbourne]

For those that want to check the build out and wander around:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VGCExperience Alpha/49/218/502

That'll take you to the main street. There's a Teleport HUD that lets you go to the different levels.

 

For a last minute event, I think they've done quite well. The scheduling and access was awkward for sure, but I think the whole thing will be a learning experience. I ran one of the games at the event, and played in a different one. It was really interesting to see people who were logging in to SL for the first or second time ever have a blast playing D&D and wanting to play more past the four hour game time. I was on the game designer panel where we had RL game designers come inworld and answer questions from the 40~ person audience (which is something you rarely see outside a shopping event or club in my experience). So I believe it shows a lot of promise as an event and that anything at all that can help bring new people in to SL and bring them past the usual stigmas is a good thing.

[Remnant Ashbourne]

Oh, a big thank you to all those that volunteered! Whenever a new person had a question about how to do something or go somewhere in the group chat, there was always five or six people jumping up to help them.

[animats]

Going there now is strange. They've created a great experience of visiting a convention center after an event is over. An empty convention center, with empty rooms, and a convention floor with empty booth areas, discarded pallets, and a forklift.

Looks like it's over.

Save the build, though. An empty convention center model is useful when someone else wants to hold a convention.

[Qie Niangao]

It might be an interesting question: what's the "right way" to hold a virtual convention?

There's some virtue in having attendees on site at the same time, not only for big presentations but for random milling-about networking. Or at least that's how RL conventions work. If we instead wanted to better leverage the advantages of a digital platform, specifically including timezone neutrality, we'd want the very best possible, most engaging asynchronous communication experiences. Whatever those might be. Who's feeling inventive?

[Remnant Ashbourne]

Having it open for everyone would be an ideal, but you'd run in to problems with a paid ticketed event like Gen Con. It'd be horrible if there was a full sim not allowing a person that paid for a ticket to a game to go to that game.

Next year if they do it again I'd like to see a hybrid of the two, sims with open access all the time and areas with restricted access to ensure that those that paid for tickets get the experience paid for. What I'd be really interested in seeing is how they implement bridging the floor area for the exhibitors from RL with SL, and if they'll have a section for SL exhibitors. Imagine walking through booths selling pdfs and 3d printer stl file downloads and then booths with SL products too.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Well look at that handsome fellow in the corner!

I only attended the opening, not the freebie board game session, because, like the old grandpa I am, I was too tired because: GMT +0200.

The opening venue was decent. HOWEVER, it was set on a quadruple sim crossing. The speakers were in one quadrant and the attendees were in the other three. Everyone was invited to click on the HUD giver behind the speakers. These HUDs would then rez and auto-attach by way of Experience. Which does not work across different sims.

There was a welcoming area and several exhibition areas. They were huge and divided over four levels and not state of the art and had a rather abandoned look. I'd say, next time, keep it small and cozy.