Random Ideas

Except no schedule of events. No program guide. Just a space that exists. And also, each individual installation is going to be large. Mall stores have a lot of square footage.

That being said, the empty department stores, especially the cosmetics/jewelry dept, will make a great place for lots of people to have smaller artist-alley type setups.

So you invented a boring convention.

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I attended MaulCon, a one-day rpg convention at a mall that I assume wasn’t doing especially well. We gamed in a former clothing store right next to the food court. It was fine? Ample parking and convenient food.

What if this but a LARP for the whole mall?

Without watching the video, I can’t imagine what might be especially appealing about any mall, even a non-dead mall, for such an event. Am I missing something obvious?

The square footage is the first big appeal. A typical mall in such a nowhere place like this will have over a million square feet of space. The BCEC where PAX East is held has a little over 2 million. Yet, the price per square foot is going to be dramatically less.

The layout is quite ideal. The people providing fun each have a large unique space to work with in an abandoned store. The attendees have a very easy time with very large hallways connecting everything.

The unique nature of each empty store provides a lot of creative opportunity. Depending on the empty store and how many fixtures are left, there’s a lot for the imagination to work with. Maybe you could get lucky at some malls with an empty Disney Store or something else really fun. You definitely screen some great stuff in those empty movie theaters while you still can.

There amenities are already in place for electricity, parking, water, seating, Internet food, etc. All these things that are usually a pain to setup at an actual convention are just there and waiting.

Even if the food court is all out of business, that just provides space for really awesome food vendors to setup shop. Imagine high quality pizza coming out of the ovens of a former Sbarro’s in a town that’s never had anything better than Domino’s.

Really, it’s only going to be as good as the people who work on it are at getting creative with it. Just bringing the mall back to life, or as a better version of itself, isn’t good enough. It has to be a creative and exciting re-purposing of the space. The event needs to make sure the attendee enjoys themselves and spends money, but also needs to challenge them with ideas about capitalism and the culture that both created and destroyed the mall in the first place.

Malls would actually make better convention centers than convention centers do for nerd cons.

Specifically, you have invented Burning Man but before tech valley chodes made it impossible to attend.

Around here, Rotterdam Square Mall was turned partially into an aquarium:

…actually a place with bowling, an arcade, and an aquarium sounds like a good time. Why the fuck have I never bothered going in here?

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Yes. It seems you are correct.

Maybe it’s luxury burning man. No having to struggle in the desert. Staying within the realm of our society rather than trying to escape from it. It will have flushing toilets, and government money. No sleeping over. No need to bring protection from the elements with you. Just yourself.

Maybe we can make some exceptions for a little bit of rulebreaking. Skateboarding in the mall A-OK! This weekend only! Just don’t try to grind down the escalators, you’ll die.

Also, side bonus, malls are typically very accessible. Large wide and flat. The few that have multiple floors always have several elevators, assuming they are functioning. Even convention centers are often lacking in this area.

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The first thing that screams out to me is “lol good luck paying for the liability insurance policy” but I also play a sport where we periodically trample each other with clubs, so clearly someone is dumb enough to insure just about anything.

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I did say maybe.

The liability insurance is heavily reduced if you exclude people under 18 and exclude any non-venue food preparation.

But even then, mall fire codes will hit you hard. Mall total capacity is one thing, but individual spaces within malls have shockingly low limits.

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That’s fine. Huge hallways to line up in. Also, the fire code will probably be adjusted based on how things are setup.Can always use some extra stores for lines if something is too popular.

Hopefully you provide enough options that nobody will bother to wait so long for any one thing. If people are coming just for one exciting thing that happens to be a part of the whole, then that thing should just go exist on its own, or the other things need to step up their game.

The biggest issue you would face is that there aren’t generally hotels near malls. Everyone will be driving to an event like this, and the event will be in the suburbs.

Also the food courts are nearly completely abandoned in most cases. You’d need to contract pop-up restaurants to use that space, probably refurnish it, etc…

A secondary problem is that in these malls the escalators are often completely dead and would require refitting to be used again.

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I think the only people that need hotels are the people running it. A lot of those traveling people could house in whatever nearby hotel/motel is available if they don’t come in RVs to begin with. It would not be an event that attendees travel to, but an event to bring the locals out of their homes. Like, county fair, only indoors.

Yes, absolutely do this.

Let them be stairs. Just work with the mall in advance to make sure the elevators are working, if any. Maybe try to avoid malls with more than one story in the first place.

I live near the mall that’s in that video, I had to go there for my cellphone plan, it’s so depressing, The guy must have gotten 2 customers all day long.

It’s not that far from Destiny USA (oh how I loathe that name) which actually has several hotels that popped up around it because people actually travel far distances and spend the night to visit it.

Syracuse is a bizarre place.

Isn’t this the place where the OG Mall Ninja allegedly worked?

Except the last one, that’s just how Burning Man already is if you’re rich enough.

Well hey. If I could drive up to Burning Man, have a look around for a few hours, and then go home, I would absolutely do that.