PAX finished up its “12 Days of PAX Unplugged” earlier this week. The event had 12 days of scheduled livestreams but no virtual alternative for exhibitors. PAX Unplugged was just one marketing opportunity indie designers lost this year. But even when exhibitors have been included in virtual conventions, the results are nothing like traditional convention booths.
What draws someone to a booth on a convention floor? At a big physical convention, exhibitors have lots of tools at their disposal: They can decorate their booth with the game’s art assets to stand out. They can use their game components—which are often colorful and attractive—to display to conventiongoers. And they can talk to people passing by the booth to draw them in.
At a virtual convention like PAX Online and Spiel Digital, exhibitors have none of these advantages. Instead, they have typically been set up with a “virtual booth,” which either is or resembles a dedicated Discord channel. Exhibitors in these channels are available to answer questions and set up demos, but they must depend on the convention organizers to advertise and point visitors in the right direction.
“Unlike when you’re sitting in a convention and you’re seeing people walk by, I don’t know how you draw people into your Discord channel. I basically didn’t want to sit in Discord all day, so I would just wait and leave pinned messages saying like, ‘If you have any questions, we’ll be monitoring this like let us know … if you’re here, hop in the voice channel.’ But it’s a lot of sit around and wait,” said Mike Gnade, designer of games including Set a Watch and Lawyer Up. “I mean, I guess, unlike at a real convention, you’re sort of on your computer, you can have that on or have your earpiece in and waiting for someone to talk to you, and just work on your computer. Yeah, but you feel stuck, or I do at least.”
The worst offender of this setup was Spiel Digital, according to Gnade.
“We got stood up, basically, by the fact that we were getting—no one was showing up, and that there was just no chatter in our discord channels or like perceived traffic at all, was pretty, uh—I’m very angry. I’m very angry we paid for it. And certainly, something’s off,” he said.
But not all conventions are created equal, and Gnade found that Virtual Gaming Con and AwSHUX were much better experiences. Virtual Gaming Con used a ticketed system attendees could spend on digital events. The tickets didn’t cost anything—it was a way to gauge which events would work well.
Gnade said all virtual conventions should use a similar ticketing system.
“That was super useful for us. Because when we had all these things scheduled, if no one showed up for it—cause we happen to pick like a bad time—we would just cancel the event because no one bought any tickets to it. And then other events that were selling out or had a lot of tickets, we would make us a second session or whatever—get more people to demo the game,” Gnade explained.
Gnade also exhibited at AwSHUX, which did not use a ticket system, instead relying on exhibitors to use Google Calendar to schedule events on their website. This recreated the faceless channels that frustrated Gnade at Spiel, but he said a video at the beginning of the event helped drive people to his events.
AwSHUX previewed Gnade’s recent release Lawyer Up in the first 30 minutes, which helped draw attention to his game and channel.
“I would say I noticed substantial sales and traffic—after the video went live—to our late pledge manager as a result of that video. So I would say that video made up for some of the other technical problems that they had launching it,” he said.
Other developers simply cancelled their convention plans rather than attempt a virtual booth.
“Before Covid hit, we were hoping to attend PAXU in person to demo and sell Squire for Hire and Mystic Runes. I usually do a few local comic-cons and other events, but COVID has postponed or cancelled all of them!” Jon Merchant, the designer of the microgame Squire for Hire, wrote in an email. “No virtual events yet! We had signed up for a couple that were ultimately cancelled as well.”
COVID vaccines are speeding toward approval, so virtual conventions may not be as necessary next year. But these types of events can work well—if they are set up correctly.
You can find more information about 12 Days of PAX Unplugged on its website.
