New York Comic Con 2020 has finally announced what we all knew was coming -there is no safe way to conduct an event of that size under current conditions, and will not happen.
The company behind NYCC has considerable resources, so the event will âgo virtualâ as the âNYCC Metaverseâ. This comes shortly after a poorly-written Newsweek article about how NYCC had yet to cancel that claimed the event was already sold-out. In truth, badges never went on sale -it would have been an exercise in futility.
GDoC Expo Online tickets now on sale.
GDOC is an A+ event. Better panels than PAX. Not exaggerating.
League of Conventions is happening next week on Twitch. Itâs a big collab between CTCon, Kogaracon, Mag, and Anime Next, new and archival panels, live events, and more guests than we can fit in a room even without social distancing.
GDoC Expo full schedule is up. Itâs this weekend!
So GDoC today was as awesome as expected.
- Every single talk was A+ tier. Some were better than others, or more directed at specific interests, but there were 0 duds. Several home runs.
- The production quality of the videos of GDoC were better than any online convention I have seen. Itâs kind of embarrassing for things like Crunchyroll Expo or PAX Online that GDoC blows them out of the water in this regard.
- There was only one panel âroomâ with non-stop content. You click on âauto-followâ and it just plays everything in order and on schedule. It worked basically perfectly. The only issue is that the videos were all unlisted YouTube videos that were playing according to a timer. If you fast-forwarded or rewound it was very hard to get back in sync with the other attendees in the chat until the next video started.
- All the videos had effectively perfect closed captions. As expected from a conference that has had live humans captioning the panels in real-time when it was taking place in IRL. Pretty sure they had them caption all the videos.
- All panelists are paid. Exhibitors do not have to pay. Attendees pay only if they can afford it. Sponsors pay for most of it. All staff for the convention are paid.
- The content of most of the panels is not fan-convention level content like we provide. This is GDC-level professional conference level content. Yet, even if you pay to attend, the price is a tiny fraction of PAX DEVâs price, which is itself a fraction of GDCâs price. The greatest bargain in professional conferences anywhere. Even if an attendee is not a POC, most of the content is valuable to anyone in the games industry.
- Not just video games. They covered the tabletop, the music, and even the Nordic LARP was brought up. No non-e Sports, though that I saw.
- They had a host for the conference who not only introduced every single talk, but also provided an outtro for each one. I now believe that every convention needs such a person in every panel room. The problem is, how can you find enough good people? Rym or I might be able to do a decent job, but we canât even hold a candle to the host they had. This is the guy - https://twitter.com/kwabenaampofo
- Tomorrow it looks like there arenât talks about topics, but instead every event on the schedule is a talk with an actual developer about a specific game they are making or have made. Basically, demo day. I look at the list, and I am here for almost all of these games.
MAGWest Schedule is live
2020: We finally go to Essen.
Seems like this thread is only for listing which conventions cancel and switch to online only. No longer! Itâs not also about stupid conventions that insist on happening.
On one hand, they are probably contractually obligated to run and canât afford to bail.
On the other hand⌠just let your con go bankrupt. You can start a new one with the same core staff in 2022.
I hardly blame the convention, it shouldnât really be their choice. All this shit should have been shut down by the federal government (nope 
!!!) state, county, or city. Thereâs no real plan now, and weâre so dysfunctional even a vaccine isnât going to work well.
My optimistic guess is 2023 for it being safe to go to a convention, but thereâll probably be a whole bunch more like LA Comic Con before then.
This should be probably in the American collapse thread, butâŚ
https://medium.com/indica/a-vaccine-isnt-going-to-save-america-ed09c7ad0fcf
I only blame them insofar as they have the power to just cancel and let themselves go bankrupt. So what, some 503(c) disappears? A new con with a similar name appears a couple years later with magically mostly the same staff and the same attendees. Whatâs so hard about that? You put the work in to make a con in the first place, you can do it again.
And if theyâre a for-profit con⌠They should have had a contingency plan for a bail year. Or else they honestly should take the financial hit. Cons arenât special. If restaurants and bars and every other kind of business is failing, why should they risk peopleâs lives to try and avoid that fate?
Also, what about their staff? The staff should just quit. Thatâll end the con regardless.
Do the contracts with the venue, service providers, etc. typically have clauses preventing the CEO from publicly saying, âweâre contractually obligated to hold the event. But donât come! Itâs dangerous.â?
I guess when the inevitable lawsuit comes, youâre going out of business anyway, so might as well save yourself the trouble.
Anything like that could be considered not attempting to hold the event to the best of your ability, which is usually in the force majour clause.
It becomes a game of chicken. They are going forward hoping that the city of Los Angeles will tell them that they canât hold a convention of that size and force them to shut down, negating all of their contractual obligations.
Just received an email with a survey link from Reedpop asking about how important various hygiene protocols would be in affecting my desire to attend a large convention in 2021. I made sure to make it very clear that all of the right things (masks, sanitizing, barriers, physical distancing, on-site testing) were good. But ultimately that none of these âright thingsâ would make me willing to attend a convention until a significant portion of society has received a novel coronavirus vaccine.