Gamercon Dublin...or How not to organise a convention

[MetalDooley]

This weekend was the first Gamercon in Dublin which billed itself as "Irelands biggest dedicated gamer convention". I had considered attending but ultimately decided to go see british grindcore legends Napalm Death play in another city instead and boy am I glad I did because by all accounts it was a shambles

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/families-left-fuming-as-hundreds-turned-away-from-overbooked-gamercon-dublin-35543590.html
http://entertainment.ie/gaming/GamerCon-Dublin-hit-with-huge-queues-and-delays-on-opening-day/391483.htm

Tickets were massively oversold with some accounts claiming there was around 25,000 tickets sold for the 2 days even though the max capacity of the venue is just over 9,000(and I think capacity for this event was only over 7,000) leading to ridiculous queues and hundreds if not thousands being turned away after queueing for hours in the lovely irish weather (i.e wet and windy)

For those who got in it wasn't much better as the venue was so full even moving between floors was difficult and getting to play anything took hours. My friend, who attended with his sons, sent me this earlier

It was bad. On many fronts. Basically just really really awful event management. Firstly, they oversold the thing as a 'family event'. So thousands of families showed up with small kids. Really small kids. For an eSports tournament with a few VR and PS4 pro booths. Most of us had realistic (simple) expectations but not even they were met. Then they oversold tickets. Way oversold. I estimate they blew it by about 3 or 4 thousand yesterday. At noon, there was about 2 thousand people on the street queuing around two buildings for a event centre that was already too full. Escalators and stairs blocked so people trapped on level. After coughing up extra for 'VIP'. And they were still promoting and selling tickets online. While telling people at the door to go away. Hilariously amateur excuses like 'we didn't think people would show up and stay so long'. Took us two hours in the blustery drizzle to get in. We nearly bailed. We should have, and got a refund. Because it was pretty much a shambles inside. The 2nd floor where the heats and playoffs were supposed to be happening had team scoreboard with all zeroes, seemingly frozen and no announcements or info or anything for 40 or 50 mins. Team clans were dropping and cancelling stances online after 3pm. Whatever about all the other crap they conned people with, the main stuff seemingly fell apart with scheduling collapsing before noon.
Just a pure embarrassing Irish fuckup/ripoff style thing where you see other countries get their act together for this kind of thing but not here, nope.
It was so fucked up its hard to know where it falls between cluelessness or a cynical ripoff.
The guy behind it all deleted his Twitter account in the evening and entire sections of the event site went offline and totally crashed at one point.
Apparently today it's nearly as bad with queues, and allegedly a lot of game discs and controllers/keyboards/mice got nicked in the free play areas and kids were deleting game installs off consoles because they left them open and not in kiosk mode.

So bullet dodged by me I guess.

Question time - Ever attended something that badly organised? or what is the worst gaming related event you've been to?

 

[Trunkage]

Why is it that as soon as "gaming" enters the equation, any semblence of competence when organizing events seems to go out the window? Is it the forced reliance on tech that comes with hosting an esports tournament? The fact that there is less money in a gaming convention than other things, so the event management that gets hired isn't necessarily the best out there due to budget? I don't get it.

My partner is an event manager. Most people don't think they do anything, mainly because it's like a party and how hard could that be. Companies have skipped her service for one event and cone straight back becuase they didn't realise how much work it would be.

I'm a teacher and people think I'm just a babysitter. Same thing

 

[Scarim Coral]

Wow, it sounds like the oppersite of Dashcon in that they got the event somewhat going on the inside but issue on the outside.

I can feel them pain well part of it since I did had to queue up in the rain a couple of years ago at MCM Expo Manchester. Different is that was during the Summer was it was a warm rain and the queue was moving.