Games, Websites and First Impressions

Sorry to Origins for picking on them but they are the ones who prompted me to post. In general game conventions should be an enjoyable experience. Ok let me change that. Game conventions should ALWAYS be an enjoyable experience. I’ve been to maybe three in my long gaming history. the first one was by complete accident. I was driving around Toledo, OH and say a sign with an arrow pointing the way so I followed. Paid my ticket at the door and went in. I wandered around for a few hours and had a darned good time. Dealer rooms are creations spawned from some nether region of hell btw.

My second convention was in Huntsville and was not really memorable. This turns out to be a good thing if you average most conventions together.

The third one was GenCon in Lake Geneva, WI. It was the big one every DnD player wants to attend at least once. I went the year DnD 3.0 was released and it was huge. Overall in retrospect the experience was pretty good. Getting there was a long haul. 12 hours to get there on the road, but the company on the drive was fun. Now going through the registration process just to get in and get seats at games, etc pretty much ruined the whole experience. Why you would want to subject anyone to that torture I have no idea, but from what I understand it doesn’t get much better.

What brings me to write about this so many years later? I was browsing Paizo publishing’s blog about the events they will be having at Origins this year and went to the site and found apparently they want me to feel like an idiot. You see if you go to their site, no where on any of the pages I looked at does it tell you where the damned convention is. I think they have the thing in Columbus, OH but I can’t be sure.

So first impressions with Origins is bad bad bad. How would you expect theri registration process to play out. How about heading 500 miles to stand in line for tickets for events. No thanks.