Dear Peter Adkison,
Hi, I’m Martin Ralya. And I don’t really think you hate us — although I am starting to wonder.
I’ve been to GenCon seven times (1997, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005) and I’m registered for 2006. I’ve gone with between two and five other people every time — usually three, my gaming group from Michigan.
On top of my badge and events, I usually spend about $100 at the GenCon store and between $300 and $700 in the exhibit hall.
Back in my early twenties, I wasn’t living a very happy life; GenCon was quite literally the highlight of my year. Since then, it’s been nudged out of the top spot (it’s a highlight, not the highlight), but it’s something I look forward to for months.
I buy my plane ticket and get time off from work months in advance. My group makes it a priority to be online and registering for events the moment registration opens; ditto with getting our hotel room. We take notes every year, trying to see how we can smooth out the process next year.
I’m not quiet about my excitement, either. Since I started writing Treasure Tables, I’ve posted several times about GenCon — and I’ll be posting several more times before the con, too.
And my group has a ball when we’re there. Being at GenCon is a fantastic experience, and one that’s consistently improved over time. That really can’t be understated.
In other words, I love GenCon.
The problem is that GenCon no longer appears to love me.
And as far as I can tell, it should love me. I’ve never given GenCon any reason not to love me, and as I’ve outlined above, there are lots of checkmarks in the pro column. Heck, I’ve even taken my lumps and not walked out on this marriage.
There was the year where, despite being among the first to register for housing, we wound up sleeping in a dorm room in the ghetto, over a mile from the convention center. (I slept in a closet.) And the year where my registration info mysteriously disappeared, and I had to buy my badge again. (Every year since, I’ve brought all of my receipts to the con with me.)
And then there was GenCon 2003, year one in Indianapolis.
That was when it started to take two of us several hours to register for events, on top of the several hours we spent building our list of events. We were naive, and didn’t think we’d need to pick alternates. The server was unbelievably slow and buggy, but we pushed through it. To the best of my knowledge, between 25,000 and 30,000 people went to GenCon in 2003.
In 2004, we learned our lesson: We packed our lists with alternates, and cleared our schedules so we could be in front of our computers the moment registration opened. Again, the servers pretty much sucked. To the best of my knowledge, between 25,000 and 30,000 people went to GenCon in 2004.
2005 was more or less the same, but this time we got most of what we wanted to register for — a combination of miltary precision, good planning and flexibility. Go us! Still, the servers sucked. To the best of my knowledge, between 25,000 and 30,000 people went to GenCon in 2005.
Registering for events for GenCon 2006 is still fresh in my mind, because I just finished doing it. I bet you can guess how it went: It sucked.
We got almost nothing that we wanted, which isn’t your fault — I guess we picked popular events. I can shrug that off. But in the process of getting almost nothing that we wanted, we wound up fighting with the shitty server. Again. For the third year in a row.
And I have to tell you, this puts a two-part damper on my excitement about GenCon. The first part is strictly short-term — I’m an easygoing guy, and the frustration of the registration process will wear off in an hour or two.
The second part, though, is long-term and cumulative: Every year, I get less and less enthusiastic about registering for GenCon.
But it’s a catch 22 — my group has learned that if we don’t register, we have to stand in line at the con, and we wind up playing in events that no one in their right mind would fly across the country for. So we have to register ahead of time, and in order to register ahead of time, we pretty much have to do it the moment that registration opens.
Let’s back up a few paragraphs, to where I kept repeating how many people go to GenCon every year. In 2003, the con moved to Indy — a fantastic venue, by the way, and so much better than Milwaukee. Growing pains were to be expected. (And boy were there growing pains — to which, admirably, you responded with an open letter.)
No problem, I thought. Now they know what to expect, and they’ll sort out their server problems next year.
But registration was still about as fun as pulling teeth in 2004.
And in 2005.
And in 2006.
I’m sure setting up a site that can handle the influx of traffic you must get in the first few hours is a massive undertaking, not to mention building the event database and getting all your ducks in a row.
But after three straight years of the same problems, why aren’t they fixed?
Because I have to imagine that the money is there, it’s just not being spent on the registration system. And if it’s not there, raise badge prices by $5 — that $125,000-$150,000 would pay for a lot of improvements.
It’s not just the servers, either — it’s the clunkiness of the process itself. If it’s going to take three minutes for a page to load (about average for me today), why can’t I sort by non-full events? Or view more than 10 events on a page?
After today, for the first time ever, I’m considering skipping GenCon in 2007. I don’t want to do that — like I said, I love GenCon — but the bullshit:fun ratio doesn’t seem to be getting any better.
Why is that, and what are you going to do about improving it next year?
Thanks for listening. I hope to hear from you, either on Treasure Tables or via email or snail mail. If I do, I will post your response in the same place that I first posted this letter.
Sincerely,
Martin Ralya
This is a TT first — I’m not usually much of a ranter, and my posts here are overwhelmingly positive. Provocative title aside, I aimed for a balance between passion and reasoning in this letter. I hope I struck that balance!
I’d love to hear your take on this letter in the comments, as always. And if you agree with my sentiments, help give this letter legs — link to it on your blog, tell your friends. Thank you!
Update: Peter has responded to this letter.
“Peter, you should require that whoever designs and runs these systems (hotel and event registration) have a firm understanding that they are, in many cases, the first impression that people get of GenCon.”
This impression is also important to those of us who haven’t gone to GenCon. It is something that I personally have always wanted to do, but never had the time or money to do so. Listening to complaints, especially consistent year-to-year complainst, really turns off someone who’s never been there. I’d like to see it, but I definitely don’t want to put up with a bunch of crap to make it work. Life is crazy enough without my hobbies adding to it.
I live close enough to Indianapolis that I could comfortably drive to GenCon, yet I choose not to do so because my continuing perception that this con does not have its act together. I almost registered for the 2004 GenCon Indy, but the registration website was so frustrating that I took a pass.
This is the first year in many that I’m *not* going to GenCon, though this has nothing to do with the registration system — my friends and I decided that there would be more that we wanted to do at Origins, instead.
So, I haven’t been following the whole GenCon registration thing this year. What, I think, has driven me the battiest about it is how, every year, the GenCon folks promise, “no, really, this time it’ll work better!”
(Not that Origins doesn’t have its own problems. They still haven’t even announced a date for when event registration will go live, and the con is now only 8 weeks away.)
tdr: I agree wholeheartedly with points 1 and 2 from your comment — the “no doublebooking” thing was very frustrating this year.
lebkin: Right on — this kind of ongoing problem with registration makes a terrible first impression, and as you said, that first impression can be made over and over on folks who hear it every year.
Jeff: In a lot of ways, GenCon does have its act together — registration just isn’t one of those ways. 😉 They pull together thousands of other tiny details very well, and generally put on a kickass con.
Mike: I’ve never been to Origins, so I can’t compare the two. Do you have links to any promises that the GenCon reg system would improve, or are you talking in general terms? (Because if you do have links, I’d love to see them!)
Maybe Peter is still hurting from the deal he made with “The Devil” and lost WoTC?
and we “feel” his anger?
According to my wife pulling teeth is fun. So I’m afraid you have to come up with another similie
I’ve been to GenCon and Origins every year since 1999. And loved going every year.
There are a few events (True Dungeon) that I keep hearing about that bring the registration system to it’s knees. Last year they sold out all tickets in two hours. This year they tried to stagger the ticket avalibility times and still there were long page load times and issues with stupid overlapping schedule error messages. If I am correct in that assertation then perhaps those event(s) should be scheduled on a different server at a different time. In the case of True Dungeon I would prefer it to be ahead of time as the time slot that I get for that event dictates what much of the rest of my GenCon schedule will look like.
As for ticket scheduling. It would be nice if it would get give me tickets in the first avalible slot of the overlapping events. This way you could put in 10 enties for TD (each are 12 mins apart and the event runs 2 hours) and it would look through all the slots I listed and give me tickets from the first slot that had open spots.
Thanx for listening to my rant,
Kizan
Martin,
Unfortuantely, I don’t have any specific links. What I recall is a post on the GenCon forums from a GenCon LLC IT guy, in the lead-up to event registration last year, saying, “we’re ready for it this year, we’ve got the capacity, we’ve tested it, trust me, it’ll be different.”
And, as you probably recall, the system gakked within minutes of going live, and they weren’t able to bring it back until the next morning.
As plan B should you throw in the towel, perhaps pick another, smaller con that is well-run to throw your support behind?
Look, the biggest problem with the GC registration is the fact that their head IT guy is not only incompetent, but he’s an arrogant asshole.
Their supposed “fix” this year was shot full of holes on the GC forums almost from the minute after the mail went out. Did he listen, and see the logical flaw in the plan? Oh, fuck no.
They got more BW this year, but it just shifted the bottleneck to the shitty fucking DB app they run the registration system with. Until they iron that shit out, and go with more robust software, you can forget about it ever getting better.
In the meantime, they really need to stagger registration, give True Dungeon a whole day unto itself. Give the RPGA a whole day unto itself, and make them on weekends so people don’t have to schedule an afternoon off. Then work through the rest of events by day.
All of this, and other ideas, have been floated on the GC forum for a long time. That asshole CJ is too fucking arrogant to see the merit in any of them. Adkison needs to shitcan his useless fucking ass and hire an IT guy with a clue.
Three hours, and I think 2 of nine events were my first choices. My bad for preferring unusual games with small tables, but dang – all but two of the Serenity games were sold out by 3:12, when I finally got an actual screen instead of a timeout.
Origins registration system was actually worse last year. No idea what it will be like this year. At least this year they made a spreadsheet version available, which they refused to do last year.
Now, if I could only get all of the RPG games to run on the same schedule… If I want to play any RPGA games, I can’t play any Indie games that day, because one is on a 5 hour slot schedule and the other on a 4 hour slot schedule.
*sigh*
I’ve been going to Gencon since 1985 (and got stuck in the dorms too) and will probably keep going till I die.
Apropos of nothing, I’m from Michigan. I have a theory about the quantity and quality of gaming in our fine state. It’s the weather – 9 months of winter and 3 of bad sledding. No wonder we game – ain’t much else to do but drink and shine deer…
I got a PM on the GenCon boards from Peter yesterday, and he said that he’s working on a response. I’ll post it here as soon as I receive it. 🙂
I agree with “John” – I suggest save your money and support local conventions or other regional conventions. There is no impetus to change anything if 25-30K show up. “Business as usual becasue we’re making butt loads of cash.” Yeah, I know I’m cynical but no doubt them dropping from 25K to 10K will open some eyes. I think it takes something like this to have people say “hmmm, what are we doing wrong.”
I have to say that I haven’t had any problems registering the last two years: not for the con, the hotel, or the events. Granted, the first year in Indy was a total mess (especially for those who didn’t prereg), but I give Atkinson props for making the registration process a little easier each year. Last year in particular was really smooth. The website navigation this year could definitely be more intuitive, but that’s my only complaint. Sorry you’ve had a rough time of it.