Indy GenCon

[brad jones]

Just a shot in the dark - anyone from VBForums going to GenCon this wee?

(GenCon is the largest gaming conference with over 50,000 attendees happening in Indianapolis, Indiana this week).

[FunkyDexter]

Indiana seems a long way to go for my hit of Axis and Allies. I toddle along to local conventions around Bristol. They're small but friendly

[brad jones]

Indiana seems a long way to go for my hit of Axis and Allies. I toddle along to local conventions around Bristol. They're small but friendly

65,000 people this year is what is expected. People come from a long, long way just to play games.

[FunkyDexter]

I know, it's huge. A friend of mine used to run a popular RPG site and used to travel over to it to hand out awards to publishers. I always meant to go over with him one year but never got round to it and we're not really in touch now.

We've got the UK Games Expo up in Birmingham that attracted just shy of 40K last year. I wanted to go up to it but life got in the way. I really need to make it to a big convention some time.

[RobDog888]

How does this compare to LA's E3 Expo?

[FunkyDexter]

E3's exclusively video games I think. GenCon and UK Games Expo are more traditional games, e.g. board games, role playing games etc. although there's inevitably some spill over at either as the cultures overlap. I have no idea at all how the attendance numbers would compare.

We have an E3 in the UK too and I have been to that. It was a fun weekend. I went because I was hoping to break into games programming early in my career but I never ended up going that way. Turns out games development is nowhere near as fun as playing them and nowhere near as lucrative as Line of business stuff.

[brad jones]

Turns out games development is nowhere near as fun as playing them and nowhere near as lucrative as Line of business stuff.

Game development can be more lucrative if you write the correct game and it goes viral...... Game development is tougher (in my opinion) to break into a profitable gig than line of business.

Funky described the difference. GenCon tried to move into electronic gaming several years ago then shifted back to more traditional stuff. There are electronic gaming things you can do, but from a vendor perspective, products like XBox, PS, and Nintendo are really not at this event.

[FunkyDexter]

Game development can be more lucrative if you write the correct game and it goes viral

I was looking at it in the early millennium. Mobile gaming hadn't taken off yet, PC/console games were being written established software houses and there really wasn't much of an indy scene to speak of. The scope to come in as a one man band (or form a small team) and write a left-field hit was practically non-existent so all that was available to me were junior dev roles in software houses. And those roles were paying peanuts because so many people were competing for them. It was a pretty bleak landscape to try to break into.

I love that the indy scene has grown so much and I think that was fuelled a lot by the growth of mobile. You can come in from the outside now and I've got a few friends who've managed it.