CES is pretty far off, I grant. But DEFCON isn’t that far off. Other than the fact that it’s not 24 hours they feel pretty similar. Tonnes of foot traffic, people entering and exiting all the time. Heavy emphasis on panels. I won’t pretend to know more than I do about con backends (which is basically 0, I attend not run) but from an attendee perspective it feels like with some light nudging DEFCON could be moulded to look more MAG-y
Try again. DEFCON has heavy panel/workshop attendance on schedules, and the rest of the attendance scatters to bars/parties when they’re not attending events. It’s also attended primarily by people with money and industry connections and highly specialized interest. It’s more like the finance conferences I go to than a gaming con.
Gaming cons don’t emphasize panels. They’re barely an afterthought in terms of draw at an actual con, even at PAX.
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I guess you don’t realize all the space DEFCon has for non going to bars to get drunk while attending. Here’s a small writeup from the FAQ
Some people play capture the flag 24x7, while many people never touch a computer at DEF CON. Some people see every speech they can, while others miss all speeches. Other activities include contests, movie marathons, scavenger hunts, sleep deprivation, lock picking, warez trading, drunken parties, spot the fed contest, the official music events.
While they don’t have a tabletop area they do have a generic hackerspace where a friend of mine spends the majority of his time at the con (when not attending zoz’s panels). Whether you want to acknowledge it or not there’s a lot to do there independent of panels, and many attendees take advantage of that.
I’m not sure how that impacts it “draw wise” but I do think it’s safe to say it’s nothing like finance con where people get the con part out of the way so they can go drink.
MAFFest has concerts running basically all day for three days straight. Bigger cons (Otakon, for instance) can barely get one concert done well on a single day. MAGFest gets all its concerts done flawlessly (Nearly no lines, easy to get to front row on most concerts with at most an hour of time investment as compared to Otakon’s required 5-7 hour time investment).
Logistically it is hard to do.
The Convention I help run Zenkaikon, is definitely constrained by the number of closeby Hotels. One of the reasons we haven’t hit our cap yet is the difficulty of hotels in the Lancaster area.
Sounds just like Trade Tech Paris. 
My body is ready. It seems pretty well spread out. My feet may actually be able to last so I can go to the DJ battle. Also might stay up for the Chiprave to see Toriena.
For those who wanted hype
Enjoy.
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I usually make my own for the drive down, but I’ll see if I just wanna use this.
A small reminder, my collection of games is not coming to the MAGFest general library this year, so if there is anything specific you want to play and I have it let me know ahead of time. Also MAGFest has their entire collection online here.
As you can see this is going to be a VERY dry year for board games so bring out the good ones please.
The F-Zero Arcade machine is going to be at MAGFest. If you have a GameCube memory card for F-Zero GX, bring it to unlock the arcade biz.
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So about 2 hours or so ago, I got an email from MAGFest letting me know that there was discount parking because I was an “early bird registrant.” However, when I went to the reserved parking page, it looks like parking for Friday and Saturday are already sold out. WTF?
Even though the email said that parking isn’t through Parking Panda anymore, I went to their site and was able to get parking through them from Friday through Sunday right by the Gaylord.
If anyone else is having trouble finding parking for MAGFest, I recommend using Parking Panda.
I just can’t believe that MAGFest parking is already sold out within 2 hours of the email though…
Umm…Were you here for the hotel debacle where it sold out immediately? Or the badges? 2 hours is an eternity.
Only way to really do it if you even managed to get a hotel is travel in plane/train/bus and catch a Lyft/Uber/whatever to your hotel.
Is that parking that sold out the only parking there? It sounded like it was just the reserved spots and that there are other spots that are not reserved which can be taken on arrival.
No, there’s more parking, but this is the official “MAGFest affiliated” parking. I was able to reserve a spot for Friday through Sunday through Parking Panda, which has a lot right next to the Gaylord. It would have been nice if on the parking website they mentioned that parking through Parking Panda was still an option, especially after Friday and Saturday parking has already sold out.
Parking comes with my hotel, that’s sorta my plan.
The panel emails have been sent, the Kracken has been released.
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