GeneiJin

Typical ticket-counting for conventions doesn't actually count the number of attendees. It's how many days of access were sold in total. Since there was no 1-day pass, that 18,000 up there is misleading.

They pulled 9,000 attendees, tops. Considering that they also sold 3-day passes, the number's guaranteed to be even smaller. Let's not forget the vast majority of stories from this convention also mention that everyone saw the whole damn thing in one day.

PAX 07, the E4A marketing team showed up, trying to hawk tickets and talk up the event as something that was going to dwarf PAX in size. They said something along the lines of "Hey, next year you guys should go to LA instead, this thing is going to be way bigger." While I admire the sheer testicular fortitude that would take, walking right into "hostile territory" in order to pitch a direct competitor, this most recent showing from IDG is an embarrassment. The E4A staff knows it. The gamers know it. Last but DEFINITELY not least - the exhibitors know it.

This event was touted as a convention.

Wrong.

It was pretty much a live-action gaming magazine. The whole reason E3 died was because IDG forgot that the only people who really matter when it comes to video games are the gamers. Looking over last week's events, I don't think they really remembered.

Developers don't pull attendees. Gamers can read all about the games, they can see all the trailers, they can freaking visit the websites all they want. Hell, magazines send out demo discs if they want to give gamers a taste of what's to come. There was nothing at E4A that you couldn't find in any run-of-the-mill gaming magazine, only it was about 300 times the price. What was the point?

Words of advice to any IDG people reading:

- Scheduling parallel to PAX is tantamount to suicide. Your track record has now been established as "bad." Theirs is something like "this is the best convention to advertise at. The attendees rule, there's a ridiculous amount of traffic, and the staff are far and away the best we've ever seen."
- While having the #1 gamer in the world grace your trade show (it's not a con. don't use that word here.) might be construed as cool and all, honestly very few people cared. I mean, props to fatal1ty for being good at what he does, but FPS is only one genre, and those who follow competitive gaming are a very very small subset of gamers in general. Expecting him to pull gamers is... I'm tempted to say "indicative of the fact that you really don't understand your market."
- Learn about your audience! Gamers are well-informed. Those who are willing to pay for a convention pass already know about any big names you're going to pull. They've seen every screenshot. Read every developer's blog. Watched every trailer. It's safe to assume they know what games are coming out soon, how pumped they should be for it, so on and so on. Point is, you can't really sell gamers on anything - they are by far the most well-informed type of consumer out there. So stop trying. Entertain them. Make them want to be there. Make it FUN for crying out loud.
- Give a thumbs up to nintendo for hiring those amateur models. They were cute.