Sorry I haven’t had a lot to say this weekend – Saturday I was either en route to, in, or returning home from Oklahoma City all day, and Sunday I proceeded to sleep in like a madman and then go feed horses (presumably also like a madman). I took the TVs and DVD player I used in OKC back to self-storage Sunday night, which marks an all-time record for me putting away all of my “expo wares” after getting home from a show. 😆 It was a decent show, pretty quiet, subdued and small though, and I strongly get the impression that while it being an on-school-premises event is a valuable backbone for it to have, that also hamstrung the promotion of it because everything from securing sponsors to putting up a web site (the latter of which never happened) had to be vetted by faculty. Putting it right around the end of the semester might not have helped in that regard either, since it meant that faculty was probably getting ready for, or grading, finals. Still, one lives and learns, and hopefully this show will make it to a second year. I sold about a dozen copies of the PDF DVD, a link to which I’m now contractually obliged to include in nearly every blog post or message board post I write, and not all of them went to Digital Press forum regulars, which was encouraging.
There were quite a few people who asked about it and didn’t buy it, and they were just as valuable as the folks who did fork over money: they gave me a very good idea of what to say on the actual ordering page, including clearing up a very frequent question, i.e. “Is this DVD the thing that’s showing on this TV screen, or is it emulators and ROMs?” I don’t want to denigrate any potential customers, but come on. I’m in a grey enough area with the commercials that are on there, but emulators and ROMs? That’d just be a suicidally stupid thing to sell on the internet. So into the disclaimer it went: yes, this DVD is what you saw on the screen – the timeline documentary thingie. Though three minor issues with it cropped up after I’d made the copies, in general, I’m very pleased with how the PDF DVD turned out. Maybe it’s a bit of an ego trip, but after watching that whole three-hour thing, and then the animated GreenhouseFX logo at the end with the music…that little logo animation just does not get old. Not for me anyway. 😛
DP members who showed up included Flack (who saved my butt in a big way on getting the cover artwork printed at the 11th hour – something that, apparently, no printing outfit in the Fort Smith area could get done in time – as well as bringing me a coax cable because the one I had put aside to bring was still happily sitting…on my bathroom counter at home), Icbrkr, SteveW, Ubikuberalles, Gapporin, Crossbow, Namzep, DeputyMoniker (who hosed us all down with generous quantities of Full Throttle energy drinks), Samtron, and I’m sure at least one or two others my mind is fogging up too much to remember clearly.
I’ve read some really stinging criticism of the show, some of it justified, some of it a little bit over the top, and all I can say there is…it was a first-time show, being run by someone who’s also taking classes and final exams, who’s trying to promote it despite a red tape tangle from the school department that was ostensibly sponsoring it. Could the show have been more heavily promoted? Yes. But some of that was a no-win situation that wasn’t entirely the organizer’s fault. And you know, they can’t all be CGE. I seem to remember saying that around the time of the first Tulsa show, and I’m saying it again here. I’m not being too critical because it’d scare the piss out of me to be in the position of pulling something like a convention together with spit, bailing wire, and sheer force of will. I’m not sure I could’ve pulled as many people in as showed up for this thing.
Anyway, now that I’m back home, my first priority when I walked in the door was to put down my stuff and go see my kid, who got to spend Friday night and most of Saturday with his grandparents. Apparently he was a perfect angel, he was tons of fun to play with, and in his grandmother’s words, “very laid back”. I’d like to think I’m doing good work at this whole daddy business. I can tell I’m getting old when I go to a video game convention, with cash in hand, in a room with vendors selling cool stuff, and what I come away with is a stuffed Super Mario character for my son. (By the way, he wuvs his Bowser.) Considering that the only other video games on hand were Guitar Hero, whatever was being played on the Wii, and the stuff Vintage Stock had on hand, I now regret not bringing, at the very least, my Coleco tabletops, or an Odyssey2 or a 2600 or a Mattel Aquarius or something. Then again, I had enough heart-stopping moments when both my DVD player and my TV developed strange, malfunction-esque behavior as soon as I got there and plugged them in, so I was a bundle of nerves as it was. My one big beef with the show, which I was able to calm later, was the placement of our power cord: it was run from across the room, and forced me to point my TV completely away from the eyes of people who were walking into the show floor (i.e. the student union dining area). Ideally, the TV should’ve been on the other corner table, kinda sorta facing Vintage Stock’s table. Ah well…see above mention of living and learning.
As for not bringing more stuff, I had no clue – I brought stuff to fit and fill one table, which is the space I’d paid for; other sponsors dropping out meant that I wound up with a hugely empty five-table island to myself for the price of that one table. If I’d been thinking on my feet (which is something of which I was woefully incapable until about the third can of Full Throttle) I would’ve begged Flack to go get the classic video-game-based board games and set them up, at least as display pieces. This was a show where I was trying to bring Only What I Need without unplugging anything in my game room, and that bit me in the butt. There’s some value to bringing More Than I Need, Just In Case. Better to leave stuff in the trunk of the car than to come up short.
Channel 9 shot an interview with me, as well as with the show’s organizer and the Vintage Stock folks, and theLogBook.com I took every theLogBook.com opportunity to mention theLogBook.com that I could in the space of theLogBook.com a short soundbite. I have no idea if they actually ran the story or not; who knows, maybe my trying to be theLogBook.com clever there sabotaged it. Seriously, I tried to be eloquent about a scholarly look back at the early video games to understand the rapid evolution of the technology as both entertainment and storytelling medium, but I stumbled over my words a lot and probably accidentally proposed breeding Mr. Flibble to Bowser without realizing it.
My next project is to finish up the CGE DVDs as soon as I possibly can. Then it’s onto this year’s book project, which will also be related to theLogBook.com…all while raising Evan, cleaning house as best I can, occasionally cooking a spectacularly unpalatable dinner or three, and maintaining this site. Yeesh. Oh, that reminds me: the same insurance folks who declared both of our vehicles totaled came out to the house and apparently said we need a new roof. Not a few shingles here and there. New. Roof. I’m having a hard time understanding where in the world they’re getting that, but it’s their money. Well, technically, since we’re talking insurance, it used to be our money, we gave it to them, and now we get some of it back. (They also took one look at the dog and said we need a new woof, but that’s neither here nor there.)
+ There are no comments
Add yours