Sunday, July 25, 2004

Con Malaise

This weekend FlatCon is being held in nearby Bloomington, IL.  For two years now I've known of the existence of this game convention less than an hour's drive away.  For two years I've said to myself and others "When July rolls around I'm going to FlatCon."  For two years now I've just not bothered to go.  Similarly, next month will be the second Gen Con held in Indianapolis, a location nearer and easier to get to than the previous Wisconsin venue.  I just hop onto the highway and go straight to Indy.  No big whup.  And I've driven in Indianapolis, it's not a hard city to get around in.

So why am I always passing up the opportunity to go both this nice little local con and the Big Game?  Money is certainly part of the issue.  Even a local con costs money for admission.  Add in gas to get there and meals and you've expended some substantial play money to go.  Gen Con is hideously expensive compared to the local cons I've been to.  Still, if I really wanted to go, I could scrape together the funds, despite the fact that things are pretty tight in my household at the moment.  The fact that I would also have to spend time away from my family also factors into the equation.  I didn't get married and start a family to spend all my time attending cons while my wife and daughter stayed at home.  Of course I don't really spend that much of my free time away from them.  And two or three cons a year as opposed to the one con I go to isn't that much of a d ifference.

But both of these hurdles aren't the main issue here.  But I can't quite put my finger on the reason I don't try to get to these cons.  Am I getting curmudgeonly and don't want to go to a con where things will be different?  Certainly more than a decade of participation in Winter War has got to have some sort of an effect on me.  Maybe I just like being one of the big fishies in the small pond of my local con.  Knowing all the staff and many of the regular attendees gives Winter War a homey feeling that I'm not going to find anywhere else.

1 comment:

  1. Hey,

    I think your being a curmudgeon...:) Actually, maybe your just know what you like and you're not sure if you want to spend mondo dinero (GenCon) on something that could suck...

    Or it could be that you're already satisified with the gaming/gamers your currently involved in locally...so what would be the point of a bigger con...

    I think as I grow older, I've become more selective(picky) about gaming (who with and what we're playing, especially). You may find many types of games being run at a larger con that you can't find locally and while some are good, some really suck...especially at GenCon.

    GenCon to me is worth it, now, moreso than it was in the few years prior. GenCon used to be in my backyard, a 15-30 minute drive to downtown Milwaukee and bam I'm there. It was sort of losing it's appeal the last few years in Milwaukee as the convention center was being revamped and WOTC took over the con...I still went, but didn't look forward to it like I used to.

    Now that me and my buds all have wives (and one has two young children), we rarely get together to do any sort of gaming let alone RPGing. So, I look as my trip to GenCon as mix of Social/Road Trip with my buds as much as a chance to do some gaming with them. Maybe if you can talk your friends (or at least your buddy Pat) to go, you could do the same. Although, if you see your buds enough, then maybe you can do the same thing at home...

    You do need to go to the GenCon auction, though...:)

    Rich

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