Blizzard Raises BlizzCon Ticket Prices For Third Year Running

[John Funk]

I'm sorry, but Blizzard not making money from Blizzcon just sounds like an outright lie. Last year the tickets were, what, $150? And if I recall, they were sold out. They made money. This year they just hope to make even more, and they will. I'm pretty sure that even the $500 tickets will go in mere seconds...

Or Frank pearce was lying to justify Blizzard fleecing it's pretty gullible fans more? Baa! Baa!

Do you have any idea how much money it costs to hold a convention like that? No? Okay then.

-Renting the whole Anaheim Convention Center for at least a week (construction/breakdown time)
-All of the set pieces, displays, everything
-Hundreds and hundreds of computers for the tournaments
-Power requirements for same
-Hundreds of staff to keep the event running
-Guests/musical acts, etc

It's way more than the $3.5m you'd get by selling 20,000 tickets at $175.

That said, there are benefits for Blizzard that go way beyond simple fiscal stuff. It gets a convention to itself to promote its own games, it helps ensure fan loyalty, it makes its merchandising partners like Jinx happy to sell their stuff, and the Blizzard employees all get to go and have a blast so it's good for morale.

QuakeCon, one of the biggest LANParties in the world is hosted for free. They rely on some paid workers, but mostly volunteers to help setup the networks.

http://www.quakecon.org/

Now, QuakeCon is slightly different than a convention, it's more akin to a large tournament. Usually having around 8500+ attendees. Most of those attendees have their computers set up using QuakeCon hosted networks and power.

2004 Statistics:

-Over 200,001 ft2 (19,000 m2) of BYOC, vendor, and convention floor space
-BYOC utilized over 1,200 power strips
-Network composed of over 80,000 feet (24 km) of Cat5/Cat5e cable
-Table switching infrastructure: 144 Linksys managed switches
-Core switching infrastructure: Cisco Systems 6509 switch with 7 × 48 port Gigabit ethernet blades, dual Supervisor 720 modules and dual 4000Watt power supplies
-Setup of all components of the BYOC (network plant, servers, tournament, NOC, etc.) was completed with a staff of over 500 unpaid volunteers over a 2-day period. The vendor areas were set up by contractors.

Oh and:

http://vimeo.com/14158455

Rely on volunteers. - Blizzard should probably consider this. Especially if the volunteers are given free attendance.

People bring their own machines. - Imagine if BlizzCon attendees all brought their computers. That's a huge power draw.

No gigantic set pieces. - False QuakeCon regularly has huge set pieces. Mostly Quake, or id Software related. They may not have as many as BlizzCon, but they are there.

No demonstration equipment, no giant signs and video system. - Large projectors to display tournament footage. Large projectors and screens for the various booths and announcements. It's also worthy to note that most of the equipment used at these conventions are either rented, or already owned by Blizzard. Exceptions being the computer systems, those are usually re-sold afterwards.

No hiring out the Anaheim Convention Center for a week+. - I concede this one, the Anaheim Convention Center is huge. I must know, do they rent the entire space?

Do you... not see the difference?

Actually, QuakeCon is also a convention. It may not be as big a convention than Blizzard's but they have rather large announcements.

QuakeCon still purchases computers for the high level tournaments, and the various game exhibits.

EDIT: Also I'm not saying that BlizzCon costs less than QuakeCon, that would probably be absurd. BlizzCon is much more elaborate than QCon. My main point here is, QuakeCon is (literally) infinitely less expensive to attend than BlizzCon. And QuakeCon is North America's biggest BYOC LANParty.

Oh, I'm sure that there are definitely things that blizzard could do to cut costs. I just don't think it wants to do them. With the volunteers/computers issues... well, Blizzard is notoriously secretive, and wants its reveals to be a surprise. Having volunteers just means that you have that much more risks for security leaks before the big day, and that much more training.

Also, do you really think they want to be in charge of installing the latest Diablo 3 build on everyone's machine and then uninstalling it after the show?

I don't mean to poohpooh what the QuakeCon guys do, I think it's great. I just think that QuakeCon and BlizzCon are two totally different beasts.

And to answer your question - if they don't rent out the entire thing, they rent out at least 3/4 of it. The bottom floor is for tickets, they rent out the entire main floor for the main show, and the top floor they usually have three of the rooms booked for the press room / press conference rooms / interview sessions.

I do remember one year that there was a tiny Christian conference group that had, like, two of the upstairs rooms on the same days as BlizzCon. That must have been awkward for them.

 

[Zer_]

**Snip**

Oh, I'm sure that there are definitely things that blizzard could do to cut costs. I just don't think it wants to do them. With the volunteers/computers issues... well, Blizzard is notoriously secretive, and wants its reveals to be a surprise. Having volunteers just means that you have that much more risks for security leaks before the big day, and that much more training.

Also, do you really think they want to be in charge of installing the latest Diablo 3 build on everyone's machine and then uninstalling it after the show?

I don't mean to poohpooh what the QuakeCon guys do, I think it's great. I just think that QuakeCon and BlizzCon are two totally different beasts.

And to answer your question - if they don't rent out the entire thing, they rent out at least 3/4 of it. The bottom floor is for tickets, they rent out the entire main floor for the main show, and the top floor they usually have three of the rooms booked for the press room / press conference rooms / interview sessions.

I do remember one year that there was a tiny Christian conference group that had, like, two of the upstairs rooms on the same days as BlizzCon. That must have been awkward for them.[/quote]

Actually, those who volunteer at QuakeCon are usually people with enough training so as not to need any kind of training. They work in small teams in charge of small areas.

As for dealing with sensitive stuff, they can always stick to non-volunteers for that. Even then, volunteers could sign an NDA just like anyone else, you know.

 

[Kross]

(also BTW I always wanted to point out that I love your avatar. I am psyched beyond belief for Diablo 3. and while I don't personally have the money to attend BlizzCon I am anxiously awaiting the news that this year will announce.)

The Diablo series and I have a long history together. I ran up many a phone bill and pretty much learned how to type in Diablo 1's Battle.net channels, and actually would have never ended up working for Themis and the Escapist if I wasn't in a gaming related IRC channel (Where @Landslide posted a link to Game Master positions available at Themis) I started frequenting due to the old diabloii.com UGO forum community. I also skipped many a class in college to play D2... way too many.

I was never enough of an RTS fan to get in to *Craft very heavily outside of the campaigns though. The micro/cheap unit tactics you need to win in multiplayer aren't fun to me at all, I like to tech up too much. I did play a lot of WoW, but that was more due to friends playing and later because I had lots of shiny loots like in Diablo from raiding. Had to make myself quit after the first expansion though, too much time needed to farm and raid.

Anyway, yeah I love me some Diablo, and plan on taking a couple weeks off to try and burn myself out on it when it releases.

 

[The Rockerfly]

Why would I pay £40 to see it?

there's a pretty significant difference between $40 and £40

Oops force of habit £24.48 then

 

[BabyRaptor]

Hey, Blizz....How about DROPPING the price so that those of us not rolling in cash could afford to go one year?

 

[John Funk]

I'm sorry, but Blizzard not making money from Blizzcon just sounds like an outright lie. Last year the tickets were, what, $150? And if I recall, they were sold out. They made money. This year they just hope to make even more, and they will. I'm pretty sure that even the $500 tickets will go in mere seconds...

Or Frank pearce was lying to justify Blizzard fleecing it's pretty gullible fans more? Baa! Baa!

Do you have any idea how much money it costs to hold a convention like that? No? Okay then.

-Renting the whole Anaheim Convention Center for at least a week (construction/breakdown time)
-All of the set pieces, displays, everything
-Hundreds and hundreds of computers for the tournaments
-Power requirements for same
-Hundreds of staff to keep the event running
-Guests/musical acts, etc

It's way more than the $3.5m you'd get by selling 20,000 tickets at $175.

That said, there are benefits for Blizzard that go way beyond simple fiscal stuff. It gets a convention to itself to promote its own games, it helps ensure fan loyalty, it makes its merchandising partners like Jinx happy to sell their stuff, and the Blizzard employees all get to go and have a blast so it's good for morale.

That is such a retarded argument... I can't even believe people are actually falling for it... next they're gonna say that TV commercials and billboards don't "make" as much money as they cost lol... Aside of making much more money in one month of WoW subscriptions than their entire convention "costs", you can't put a price on marketing (especially on something like the Blizzcon which is a "worldwide event" with news and new videos and publicity... I've never heard SONY, Microsoft, Nintendo etc. complain about having to get their costs back for the E3 or Games Convention or whatever... that's cause it is a commercial event and everyone wants to be the loudest and biggest to attract attention (with Cirque du Soleil type of stuff or throwing around big money for people like Tony Hawk, famous rappers or even some of the surviving Beatles to come to their "events"), it's not SUPPOSED to make money, but get people to notice their products and advertize to new target audiences etc., money comes from that.

Falling for it? There's nothing to fall for, it's a fact. Producing BlizzCon is insanely expensive, way more than ticket prices cover. (And while Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo/etc probably don't care about making their money back on E3, the E3 organizers probably do...)

Of course there are very good reasons for them to take a hit on BlizzCon. Like you said, the advertising can't be beat, it's a good way to ensure loyalty among fans, and like I said, the employees love it and have a blast.

Blizzard is hardly stupid, they know what they're doing. Blizzcon isn't a profit making venture.