As it stands, there are 20,000-ish(?) people who want to go to PAX solely based on the definition of what a PAX is, as seen for the past several years. The attendees have no reason to believe the formula will drastically change, and the PAX organizers would honestly prefer to sell tickets to people who love everything about PAX rather than those who are only attending to see 1 or 2 specific things, so why announce such things early?
Well, Otakon can make similar excuses due to the fact that they will sell preregs regardless of when the schedule is released. For every fan who doesn't attend Otakon if we're not there, ten kids will take their place.
Just because you can get away with something doesn't mean you should if you could do better. We don't give Otakon a free pass when they do this, and neither will we give it to PAX.
Of course, this policy does shape who attends. Personally, I'd bet the people who don't attend without knowing the tourney schedule would be more annoying than the people who do. But that's just me. ;^)
Just because you can get away with something doesn't mean you should if you could do better. We don't give Otakon a free pass when they do this, and neither will we give it to PAX.
Of course, this policy does shape who attends. Personally, I'd bet the people who don't attend without knowing the tourney schedule would be more annoying than the people who do. But that's just me. ;^)
Aha, I'm not really familiar with Otakon (or other anime cons) as I'm just a casual enjoyer of anime, but it sounds like I was misinterpreting your beef with that con. I thought you were taking aim at their inability to provide staff members with a copy of the schedule, but now I'm thinking your gripe was that the schedule should have been available to everyone by that point. On another note, does Otakon sell out? Just trying to draw some parallels in my mind.
I can't speak for PAX to say that their intent is to shape the crowd, but I can definitely agree that it has that effect. Holding back info from paying customers is a dick move, but a big part of why I love PAX so much is the vibe. I don't want to sound like a PAX appologist, but if this policy somehow maintains that vibe, then the ends justify the means in my eyes.
Just because you can get away with something doesn't mean you should if you could do better. We don't give Otakon a free pass when they do this, and neither will we give it to PAX.
Of course, this policy does shape who attends. Personally, I'd bet the people who don't attend without knowing the tourney schedule would be more annoying than the people who do. But that's just me. ;^)
Aha, I'm not really familiar with Otakon (or other anime cons) as I'm just a casual enjoyer of anime, but it sounds like I was misinterpreting your beef with that con. I thought you were taking aim at their inability to provide staff members with a copy of the schedule, but now I'm thinking your gripe was that the schedule should have been available toeveryoneby that point. On another note, does Otakon sell out? Just trying to draw some parallels in my mind.
I can't speak for PAX to say that their intent is to shape the crowd, but I can definitely agree that it has that effect. Holding back info from paying customers is a dick move, but a big part of why I love PAX so much is the vibe. I don't want to sound like a PAX appologist, but if this policy somehow maintains that vibe, then the ends justify the means in my eyes.
This episodewill tell you about each and every beef they have with Otakon and more.
Aha, I'm not really familiar with Otakon (or other anime cons) as I'm just a casual enjoyer of anime, but it sounds like I was misinterpreting your beef with that con. I thought you were taking aim at their inability to provide staff members with a copy of the schedule, but now I'm thinking your gripe was that the schedule should have been available toeveryoneby that point.
In this case, it was more the former. Neither panelists nor panels staff had any idea of the schedule, not even their own con schedule. Separate from that, but for the same reason, no schedule was publicly available either. The former prevents us from attending, while the latter is merely an annoyance. Otakon gets 20k or so pre-registrations regardless of whether or not the schedule is up.
if this policy somehow maintains that vibe, then the ends justify the means in my eyes.
This is the fundamental problem with most fan-run anime conventions, really. They use numbers to count success, but don't try to shape the quality or character of the people who attend. I'm not saying they should do it explicitly or heavily: cons like these are and should be both open and inclusive. But they should use psychology and design to foster behavior more conducive to long term success for both the conventions themselves and the fandoms they are for.
Anime conventions are becoming more and more not anime-based, and not even geek-based, but essentially age-based. Aside from the hardcore minorities, they're essentially "I'm 14, and my culture is from the Internet!" conventions. (The massive growth of cons like this is indicative of a sea-change in the generation of culture in our youth: cons feel like coming home to a lot of these kids). That's fine and good, but it doesn't mean the convention can't foster better behavior. It doesn't mean the convention can't trick the Bleach-only Internet kids into seeing the Daicon animation. Kids will want to emulate the staff if they perceive the staff as being cool, but the current vibe settles somewhere along the line of "staff are the people yelling at me and taking away my sword."
PAX, by nature, encourages a more laid-back vibe among the attendees. It encourages people to play games they wouldn't otherwise consider, and to socialize pleasantly. Anime cons, at best, encourage young kids to push boundaries and act out on the things they can't get away with at home. It's not age that's the problem: anime-con-aged kids at PAX are just as chill, and PAX-aged-people at anime cons are often just as obnoxious and troublesome. The con, and the staff (by example) shape how the attendees will act. Why, for example, does hardly anyone attend a Japanese anime industry guest panel at Otakon, yet they fill the room at the same panel at a non-anime con (ConnectiCon)? The con culture doesn't foster an interest at Otakon, plain and simple.
It's a feedback loop. Anime cons attract younger, louder crowds. Panel programming caters more to this. Older fans have less to do, and start to drop off. Repeat, diminishing the number of long-term attendees each cycle, and you see why we're where we are today.
Otakon, for example, does a great job of getting younger fans and would-be fans in the door. Their numbers are amazing testament to that. Where they fail is that I don't believe those people are by and large multi-decade Otakon attendees. I'm guessing that the bulk of the older attendees are locals at this point, and you all know that the entire FRC dropped Otakon long before Scott and I did this year.
The con, and the staff (by example)shapehow the attendees will act.
TL;DR: Treat people like adults and they'll generally act accordingly. It's not 100%, but if you raise the bar of attendee behavior, you'll only get those attendees who can clear that bar.
TL;DR: Treat people like adults and they'll generally act accordingly. It's not 100%, but if you raise the bar of attendee behavior, you'll only get those attendees who can clear that bar.
Staff don't just need to treat the attendees like adults, they need to act like adults themselves. A significant portion of the Otakon staff is comprised of those same screaming teenage kids.
A significant portion of the Otakon staff is comprised of those same screaming teenage kids.
Except that you have to be 18 to be on the staff. They're not teenagers.
There was an odd dichotomy in the attendees of the staff meeting for which I was present, though. I worry that it will eventually be the primary factor in the downfall of Otakon. There was a smallish core of much older people who were professional and had their collective act together. They basically ran everything. The majority of the rest were very young and very immature. There was almost zero middle ground. I worry that there isn't a new generation rising up to replace the old guard when it eventually comes time to do so, and I worry that this is a direct result of the failure to foster the kind of community that would generate such a generation.
I've avoided mentioning it much on the show, but I was terribly unimpressed with the Otakon general staff meeting at Com Con. Being there shattered much of the optimism I'd previously held for the future of the con. I was extremely out of place, and felt like a businessman somehow stuck in a high school dance. I felt scarily older than most of the people there, but they couldn't have been more than a decade younger than me. There was zero overlap of interests, and almost no common ground. Little was accomplished (at least at the general meeting and our panel department meeting), and the trip was mostly a waste.
Seeing how that all went down (and talking to many staff once they'd had some drinks while simultaneously remaining entirely sober myself), I see exactly where Otakon comes from. My opinion is that Jim Vowles and a handful of other people are 80% responsible for the con continuing to function. The staff are very insular, and they don't consider what other cons are doing (unless it's drama con garbage like the Anime Expo fiasco). They're grossly misinformed about many other conventions and their practices. Intra-staff drama is rife. There are hardly any girls there.
Not to sound harsh, but acting like adults is not within the scope of possibility for many of them.
Eighteen is still a teenager. And it has more to do with maturity than anything else.
I could go off on a tangent about the differences between anime fandom at large and video game fandom at large - I wanted to touch on this in the metal panel, but I could only gloss over it because I didn't have quite enough time - but basically, you either need a barrier of entry or some sort of inherently competitive atmosphere that forces attendees to self-assess and adjust their behavior accordingly. Otakon never forces the attendees to assess their behavior, and 99% of anime doesn't do it either, so there is no impetus for anime con attendees to "grow up."
That's why even the staffers at Otakon are childish. They're just fans who exposed themselves to an environment that never once forced them to self-assess; as a result, they haven't grown up. Gaming cons, because of the focus on cooperative challenge and competition, force a degree of self-assessment that, combined with PAX's higher standard of personal conduct, results in a more mature crowd.
Um, yes, there is leveling up and character progression in Zelda. Heart containers? Blue and Red rings? Magic sword? Collecting new shiny stuff that makes you stronger == collecting experience points to make you stronger.
To play the devil's advocate, the way the character progression works for Zelda is not how it is in traditional "rpgs." The heart containers are optional and not required to advance the game. It is similar to the way getting more HP works for megaman or metroid, which are not considered "rpg" elements. Also, the shop system doesn't feel like an rpg shop where you buy potions or better equipment so I'm not sure what to think. Though, I dont think these things are required for something to be an RPG.
Unless I'm misremembering wildly, you strictly need the heart containers to get the better swords, something like 8 to get the white sword and I want to say 12 for the magic sword.
That's why even the staffers at Otakon are childish. They're just fans who exposed themselves to an environment that never once forced them to self-assess; as a result, they haven't grown up. Gaming cons, because of the focus on cooperative challenge and competition, force a degree of self-assessment that, combined with PAX's higher standard of personal conduct, results in a more mature crowd.
I'm not sure you want to make that argument if you knew how other gaming (specifically video gaming) cons other then PAX are run. The problem with Otakon is it's leadership. Take a small convention like Zenkaikon, we are actively sniping top people from other conventions and we are always evaluating are lower end volunteers to see if they could be given larger roles and looking at people who run panels or other events and co-opting them as well. Otakon is not doing this from what I can see. If I was Otakon all those years with a panel on how to run a club summit. I would have had a staff member there every freaking time actively watching the people in the audience and the presenters and attempting to get them more involved in the convention. (You have a panel that is full of people who are actually active and interested in organizing events!) From what I can tell Otakon is large enough to just passively accept help instead of actively pursue the help they need. They need instead to look around and find the people who do things well at other conventions and recruit them.
From what I can tell Otakon is large enough to just passively accept help instead of actively pursue the help they need. They need instead to look around and find the people who do things well at other conventions and recruit them.
The thing is they aren't large enough to passively accept help. They're constantly begging for volunteers because they don't have enough.
The problem is the culture of the staff. They aren't looking for people based on merit. Remember what Aaron Clark, current head of panels, said? I paraphrase "volunteering isn't supposed to be fun." They want more volunteers, they want more help, but they make it as hard as possible to actually help them. Even if you used to be chair of another convention, and wanted to help them, they would make you start as a gofer and work your way up over many years. It would be a very long time before they gave you any sort of actual responsibility. And without having any responsibility, you have no power to actually do anything.
They have a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense and procedural internal strife and drama that is normally reserved for government and fictional high school clubs. They need to just throw all that shit in the trash, put their noses to the grindstone, let more noses get close to the grindstone, and work their asses off to make the convention the best it can be, starting the day after Otakon, not months after. No crying about how they are underappreciated, or how hard the work is, boo fucking hoo. You don't hear Enforcers say that shit, and that's why they own.
The thing is they aren't large enough to passively accept help. They're constantly begging for volunteers because they don't have enough.
Here is an example of me using a statement that was too generalized :-p what I meant (and explained in the rest of the post) was that they use their low level volunteers to create a passive pool of potential staff instead actively perusing staff through other means as well as through self-promotion. Which is what you just talked about with making everyone a low level volunteer first and not allowing them to have "fun".
No crying about how they are underappreciated, or how hard the work is, boo fucking hoo. You don't hear Enforcers say that shit, and that's why they own.
I would say that we don't say those things not because we're more mature, or anything like that (though that's a factor), but because we are appreciated. The first thing Khoo said to everyone was basically "Thank you guys for making PAX East awesome", and the last thing he said, as I walked out the door shaking his hand, was "We didn't throw a great con. You guys made it a great con." Given what I've heard, I doubt anyone form Otakon would say something like that.
Think about it for a second, you come into a group of people who have been doing something for years and you say, One way to help solve our problem is to change the name of a volunteer from Gopher to "blank".... Most people are going to say "WTF" that's what you are bringing to the table :-p
Think about it for a second, you come into a group of people who have been doing something for years and you say, One way to help solve our problem is to change the name of a volunteer from Gopher to "blank".... Most people are going to say "WTF" that's what you are bringing to the table :-p
But, when we said that to Reed... Notice how they call their volunteers "Heroes" now at NYCC?
Think about it for a second, you come into a group of people who have been doing something for years and you say, One way to help solve our problem is to change the name of a volunteer from Gopher to "blank".... Most people are going to say "WTF" that's what you are bringing to the table :-p
If they look at it from the perspective of "what the fuck, that's what you're bringing to the table? That is so stupid," that is entirely missing the point. Changing the name from "gopher" to "hero" or whatever is merely a symptom of a change in philosophy - to value the people who are making your success possible. That's why it's so heinous that they laughed. They're consciously choosing to devalue the people who make this con happen on the ground level.
or whatever is merely a symptom of a change inphilosophy
Well obviously you need to sell it a bit more which I assume Rym did, or did he just get laughed out the door at the words "we should change the name of the gophers".
You know something I learned a long time ago, if you plan to change a large amount of people's minds in an organization you need to co-opt a few of them before hand, Rym's problem was he probably didn't have anyone on his side before he entered the room. Before most situations where you think you'll have to convince a few people of you're ideas it always pays to have a few in your pocket ahead of time (and even better if they can add something).
I think there's also, now that I think about it, this huge difference not just in appreciation for enforcers vs. gophers, but in what it means to be a volunteer. Otakon seems to basically look at gophers as people after a free badge, and treat them as such, such as evamonkey's little comment that "volunteering isn't supposed to be fun". Meanwhile, what's the first thing that any enforcer says when you mention wanting to be an enforcer? "It's so much fun, it's an awesome experience, it's really cool, it's probably more fun than just going to the con, etc. etc. etc.". Like, even if you have to lie, why would you imply that volunteering is supposed to suck?
I'm not sure you want to make that argument if you knew how other gaming (specifically video gaming) cons other then PAX are run.
I do want to make that argument. Otakon's problems go beyond the leadership; the entire con environment is one that allows for incredible immaturity, and it goes back to the nature of an anime con. Anime is a very broad subject, and you get geeks from all walks of life. Unless you conduct some sort of screening, you'll get crappy immature people and your con will be dramatacular.
I'm not saying that these problems can't be alleviated, or that gaming cons are immune to these issues; however, the very nature of an anime con tends to result in a broader range of maturity levels that includes the very immature, whereas gaming cons tend to attract a more mature crowd. Yes, competent leadership can alleviate a lot of these problems, and Otakon needs to work on its leadership, but its leadership is a product of the con itself, and that's the problem.
Otakon is a great example of the failure of popular rule.
Comments
Just because you can get away with something doesn't mean you should if you could do better. We don't give Otakon a free pass when they do this, and neither will we give it to PAX.
Of course, this policy does shape who attends. Personally, I'd bet the people who don't attend without knowing the tourney schedule would be more annoying than the people who do. But that's just me. ;^)
I can't speak for PAX to say that their intent is to shape the crowd, but I can definitely agree that it has that effect. Holding back info from paying customers is a dick move, but a big part of why I love PAX so much is the vibe. I don't want to sound like a PAX appologist, but if this policy somehow maintains that vibe, then the ends justify the means in my eyes.
Anime conventions are becoming more and more not anime-based, and not even geek-based, but essentially age-based. Aside from the hardcore minorities, they're essentially "I'm 14, and my culture is from the Internet!" conventions. (The massive growth of cons like this is indicative of a sea-change in the generation of culture in our youth: cons feel like coming home to a lot of these kids). That's fine and good, but it doesn't mean the convention can't foster better behavior. It doesn't mean the convention can't trick the Bleach-only Internet kids into seeing the Daicon animation. Kids will want to emulate the staff if they perceive the staff as being cool, but the current vibe settles somewhere along the line of "staff are the people yelling at me and taking away my sword."
PAX, by nature, encourages a more laid-back vibe among the attendees. It encourages people to play games they wouldn't otherwise consider, and to socialize pleasantly. Anime cons, at best, encourage young kids to push boundaries and act out on the things they can't get away with at home. It's not age that's the problem: anime-con-aged kids at PAX are just as chill, and PAX-aged-people at anime cons are often just as obnoxious and troublesome. The con, and the staff (by example) shape how the attendees will act. Why, for example, does hardly anyone attend a Japanese anime industry guest panel at Otakon, yet they fill the room at the same panel at a non-anime con (ConnectiCon)? The con culture doesn't foster an interest at Otakon, plain and simple.
It's a feedback loop. Anime cons attract younger, louder crowds. Panel programming caters more to this. Older fans have less to do, and start to drop off. Repeat, diminishing the number of long-term attendees each cycle, and you see why we're where we are today.
Otakon, for example, does a great job of getting younger fans and would-be fans in the door. Their numbers are amazing testament to that. Where they fail is that I don't believe those people are by and large multi-decade Otakon attendees. I'm guessing that the bulk of the older attendees are locals at this point, and you all know that the entire FRC dropped Otakon long before Scott and I did this year.
There was an odd dichotomy in the attendees of the staff meeting for which I was present, though. I worry that it will eventually be the primary factor in the downfall of Otakon. There was a smallish core of much older people who were professional and had their collective act together. They basically ran everything. The majority of the rest were very young and very immature. There was almost zero middle ground. I worry that there isn't a new generation rising up to replace the old guard when it eventually comes time to do so, and I worry that this is a direct result of the failure to foster the kind of community that would generate such a generation.
I've avoided mentioning it much on the show, but I was terribly unimpressed with the Otakon general staff meeting at Com Con. Being there shattered much of the optimism I'd previously held for the future of the con. I was extremely out of place, and felt like a businessman somehow stuck in a high school dance. I felt scarily older than most of the people there, but they couldn't have been more than a decade younger than me. There was zero overlap of interests, and almost no common ground. Little was accomplished (at least at the general meeting and our panel department meeting), and the trip was mostly a waste.
Seeing how that all went down (and talking to many staff once they'd had some drinks while simultaneously remaining entirely sober myself), I see exactly where Otakon comes from. My opinion is that Jim Vowles and a handful of other people are 80% responsible for the con continuing to function. The staff are very insular, and they don't consider what other cons are doing (unless it's drama con garbage like the Anime Expo fiasco). They're grossly misinformed about many other conventions and their practices. Intra-staff drama is rife. There are hardly any girls there.
Not to sound harsh, but acting like adults is not within the scope of possibility for many of them.
I could go off on a tangent about the differences between anime fandom at large and video game fandom at large - I wanted to touch on this in the metal panel, but I could only gloss over it because I didn't have quite enough time - but basically, you either need a barrier of entry or some sort of inherently competitive atmosphere that forces attendees to self-assess and adjust their behavior accordingly. Otakon never forces the attendees to assess their behavior, and 99% of anime doesn't do it either, so there is no impetus for anime con attendees to "grow up."
That's why even the staffers at Otakon are childish. They're just fans who exposed themselves to an environment that never once forced them to self-assess; as a result, they haven't grown up. Gaming cons, because of the focus on cooperative challenge and competition, force a degree of self-assessment that, combined with PAX's higher standard of personal conduct, results in a more mature crowd.
The problem is the culture of the staff. They aren't looking for people based on merit. Remember what Aaron Clark, current head of panels, said? I paraphrase "volunteering isn't supposed to be fun." They want more volunteers, they want more help, but they make it as hard as possible to actually help them. Even if you used to be chair of another convention, and wanted to help them, they would make you start as a gofer and work your way up over many years. It would be a very long time before they gave you any sort of actual responsibility. And without having any responsibility, you have no power to actually do anything.
They have a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense and procedural internal strife and drama that is normally reserved for government and fictional high school clubs. They need to just throw all that shit in the trash, put their noses to the grindstone, let more noses get close to the grindstone, and work their asses off to make the convention the best it can be, starting the day after Otakon, not months after. No crying about how they are underappreciated, or how hard the work is, boo fucking hoo. You don't hear Enforcers say that shit, and that's why they own.
[You will die sooner or later. Ha pronounced Wa.]
I'm not saying that these problems can't be alleviated, or that gaming cons are immune to these issues; however, the very nature of an anime con tends to result in a broader range of maturity levels that includes the very immature, whereas gaming cons tend to attract a more mature crowd. Yes, competent leadership can alleviate a lot of these problems, and Otakon needs to work on its leadership, but its leadership is a product of the con itself, and that's the problem.
Otakon is a great example of the failure of popular rule.
Remember this VGXPO exec tossed out of PAX