Bulk formatting pass

Author: chrisglein

_drafts/2024-08-19-How-To-GenCon.md

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ tags: board-games
 I first attended GenCon 9 years ago in 2013. I came to it as a PAX West regular (attending every single year since 2009), and to me GenCon was strange in comparison. Here I hope to share some of what I’ve learned about how to make the most of the show. 
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-Some context first. GenCon in Indianapolis is the biggest convention for board games in the US, with around 70,000 attendees in 2023. PAX West in Seattle is bigger with 120,000 attendees in 2023, but the board games are a small side gig while the event is predominantly video games. PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia has a similar focus on tabletop RPGs and board games as GenCon, but smaller with “only” 30,000 attendees in 2023. All this to say, at GenCon you can absolutely feast on board games for four days straight and never get close to seeing everything it has to offer. 
+Some context first. GenCon in Indianapolis is the biggest convention for board games in the US, with around 70,000 attendees in 2023. PAX West in Seattle is bigger with 120,000 attendees in 2023, but the board games are a small side gig while the event is predominantly video games. PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia has a similar focus on tabletop RPGs and board games as GenCon, but smaller with "only" 30,000 attendees in 2023. All this to say, at GenCon you can absolutely feast on board games for four days straight and never get close to seeing everything it has to offer. 
 
 Here are my tips for making the most of the experience, followed by explanations below as necessary. 
 
@@ -21,20 +21,20 @@ Before the show
 - Visit a grocery store before the con, get what you need for snacks, drinks, and packed lunches
 - Plan to pack in your own water, because the convention hall water is awful
 - Book a few evenings at the BGG Hot Games room
-- Avoid booking anything with paper tickets (and don’t bother getting paper “generic” tickets)
+- Avoid booking anything with paper tickets (and don’t bother getting paper "generic" tickets)
 
 While you’re there
 - Don’t wait in long lines
 - If there’s a demo with a slot open right now, take it (you never know!)
-- “Fly standby” for free but ticketed events
+- "Fly standby" for free but ticketed events
 - Have a system for tracking what you played (photo camera roll, app, etc. ) and what you want to return to later (notes with booth number)
 - Each evening spend a little time researching what you saw at the show to know if you should follow up
 - Buy a small and/or reasonably vetted game on your first day of the show
 - Take the time to visit the art district on the convention floor; gather cards and QR scans of the artists you vibe with
 
 The full weekend four day event passes for GenCon are reasonable, working out to around ~$35/day. For PAX West it's $65/day. PAX Unplugged pushes a more attractive weekend pass that works out to $30/day. The difference is that at PAX you can get by with buying your pass and not making another purchase, but at GenCon you cannot. It’s more like flying a budget airline, where your ticket is cheaper but you end paying for bags and seat choice and boarding and for any beverage or snack and the privilege of talking to an actual human. At the end maybe it’s still cheaper and maybe it’s not, but you certainly will have to get used to experiential micro transactions. 
 
-The most obvious manifestation of this is the game library. Every board game convention I’ve been to has had a library of games you can check out for a few hours. For all of those this experience has been free… except GenCon. There is a library at GenCon (in the Lucas Oil stadium), but you have to pay to use it. And it’s not cheap. The typical use of a library like this is for playing games with friends in the evening after the main exposition hall closes. At GenCon that’s going to cost you $14 per person, either by prebooking that time slot or assembling a bunch of paper “generic” tickets. You and 3 people want to play a game and wind down together? That’s going to add up to $42. You know what else costs around that? A brand new game from the show floor. 
+The most obvious manifestation of this is the game library. Every board game convention I’ve been to has had a library of games you can check out for a few hours. For all of those this experience has been free… except GenCon. There is a library at GenCon (in the Lucas Oil stadium), but you have to pay to use it. And it’s not cheap. The typical use of a library like this is for playing games with friends in the evening after the main exposition hall closes. At GenCon that’s going to cost you $14 per person, either by prebooking that time slot or assembling a bunch of paper "generic" tickets. You and 3 people want to play a game and wind down together? That’s going to add up to $42. You know what else costs around that? A brand new game from the show floor. 
 
 These economics, where it’s cheaper to just buy a new game rather than try it from the library, really distorts behavior. You really should try to pick up a game or two early in the show so you have something on hand for later. And everyone is shopping the show, so the vendors sell out. See a game that intrigues you in the first day? There’s a very real chance it won’t be there two days later. This creates a pressure to impulse buy. Which frankly in the world of overblown Kickstarter releases is not energy the board game community needs more of. Please, exercise caution, do your research.
 
@@ -44,12 +44,12 @@ The game library is not the only part of GenCon that asks you to schedule in adv
 
 Let’s talk about the real cost of paper tickets: the will call queue. Most people seem to get their passes for the show from will call (as opposed to having them shipped, which is the standard for PAX). The obvious downside of this is that tens of thousands need to all queue up in the same place on their first day of the show. I’ve waited two hours in that line, as it wraps through the building and into the summer heat outside. It’s a staggeringly awful way to start your GenCon experience. You can pay to have your passes shipped to you instead, which I highly recommend if you value your time (and you should, because flights and hotels for GenCon are very expensive). But if you ever want it add any paper tickets on the fly (for example after seeing a game at a booth and wanting to take a deeper look), you’re only option is to pick them up in that same accursed will call queue. My most recent trip to GenCon I was able to never wait in that line, which I did by paying to have my pass shipped, sticking with digital ticketed events, and flying standby for the rest. 
 
-A supposed solution for this are the “generic” tickets that have a fixed $2 cost and you can use for paid events (like the library or a paid demo). For many years I would follow people’s recommendations and get some of these “just in case”. I might as well have lit money on fire, because I never used them. Now I just avoid the system entirely, hoping that GenCon will over time modernize onto a more flexible digital ticketing system. 
+A supposed solution for this are the "generic" tickets that have a fixed $2 cost and you can use for paid events (like the library or a paid demo). For many years I would follow people’s recommendations and get some of these "just in case". I might as well have lit money on fire, because I never used them. Now I just avoid the system entirely, hoping that GenCon will over time modernize onto a more flexible digital ticketing system. 
 
 I do recommend buying games at the show, just show some restraint. Yes at GenCon you can get games months earlier than their general release. But most games that are good are going to hit retail and you can get them then (when you don’t have to stuff them in a suitcase and when there are more reviews available). Mostly. Small publisher games are different, as they may only hit Kickstarter but not a large retail distribution. So be willing to grab a game or two early in your show so that you have something to play after hours.l (or if you just want to treat yourself). 
 
 Use your evenings for research. Check up on the titles that intrigued you (I recommend taking photos as you walk around so that your camera roll can function as a todo list).on research. Look up the vibes on BGG or watch a video. Often you’ll find that the well produced product that was getting you excited isn’t a safe bet and maybe you should find a way to try before you buy. It’s easy to get excited, but trust me there are plenty of fish in the sea. 
 
-I’ve only been talking about board games here, but GenCon’s past is entangled with role playing games. This 2024 show was the 50th anniversary of D&D, which showed up as all the new hotness during the 7th ever GenCon (back when it happened at Lake Geneva and the name GenCon made more sense). I personally play role playing games with multiple groups of friends, but curiously I’ve never played any at GenCon. I have played RPGs at conventions like PAX (I have fond memory of “dungeon delves”, 1-2 hour D&D one shots). The main reason I don’t engage with this at GenCon is that I want to play RPGS with friends not strangers, and my RPG friends aren’t the same friends that will make the journey to GenCon. I know RPGs are there in a big way at GenCon, but I don’t have tips to share. 
+I’ve only been talking about board games here, but GenCon’s past is entangled with role playing games. This 2024 show was the 50th anniversary of D&D, which showed up as all the new hotness during the 7th ever GenCon (back when it happened at Lake Geneva and the name GenCon made more sense). I personally play role playing games with multiple groups of friends, but curiously I’ve never played any at GenCon. I have played RPGs at conventions like PAX (I have fond memory of "dungeon delves", 1-2 hour D&D one shots). The main reason I don’t engage with this at GenCon is that I want to play RPGS with friends not strangers, and my RPG friends aren’t the same friends that will make the journey to GenCon. I know RPGs are there in a big way at GenCon, but I don’t have tips to share. 
 
 Hopefully there’s some advice in here that helps you have a better time at this convention.

_posts/2012-02-02-bastion.md

@@ -10,7 +10,21 @@ blogger_orig_url: https://chrisglein.blogspot.com/2012/02/bastion.html
 ---
 <p class="playLine top"><span class='playIcon xbox360'></span>Played on Xbox360</p>
 
-<p>I feel compelled to write about <a href="http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Bastion/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258410b66">Bastion</a>. I mean, I could just say &quot;it's good, you should play it&quot;, which is totally accurate, or &quot;it's so good I played it twice&quot;, which is also definitely true, but I think the game deserves more than that. It deserves some gushing.</p>  
+I feel compelled to write about [Bastion](http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Bastion/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258410b66). I mean, I could just say "it's good, you should play it", which is totally accurate, or "it's so good I played it twice", which is also definitely true, but I think the game deserves more than that. It deserves some gushing.
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-<p>Bastion is a downloadable game for the Xbox (PC too, although I played it on the Xbox). I guess I'd describe it as an 2D action game with RPG elements, although that's about as descriptive as filing music under the &quot;rock&quot; genre. It's got an overhead perspective, you run around and take down the baddies while progressing through levels. That's how it plays... but that part is pretty irrelevant. I mean, it plays well, but that's not the point. The point is that Bastion is a thing of beauty.</p>  <p>When I say beauty the first thing that probably comes to mind is its visual presentation. Art direction, graphics, whatever. That's all strong, but that's not what I'm talking about. This game is a treat for the <em>ears</em>. It's an auditory delight. Turning down the volume on this game is a punishably criminal offense.</p>  <p>The first thing you'll notice is the narrator. You're dropped in the game with some quick description of your surroundings by some gravelly old timer. Nothing else happens, you just sit there, seeing what is presumably your avatar lying down. Eventually you try to press some buttons and the kid will stand up. As he does the narrator describes what just happened. You continue moving around and this narrator follows describing things <em>as you do them</em>.</p>  <p>It's a subtle but hugely important addition. It's like in Mass Effect how they let you select your dialog responses before the other person is finished speaking. It's about the <em>rhythm</em> of the experience. Having the narrator in Bastion respond to what you're doing makes it feel like you are living out a story. As if what you're doing is important, noteworthy. And most importantly, the language, vocabulary, cadence, and tone of the narrator firmly plants you in this world more so than any visual ever could.</p>  <p>The narrator from Bastion has been much applauded in the game's critical reception. But reducing Bastion to a game that is only interesting because of its narrator is selling it short.</p>  <p>The music. Oh my god <em>the music</em>. There are few games that have caused me to go track down the <a href="http://supergiantgames.com/?p=985">soundtrack</a>. This is definitely one of them. It feels simultaneously old yet modern, western but eastern. It feels like a future that is firmly grounded in the past. It's Firefly. It's steampunk. It's extraordinarily intentional and extraordinarily good. Again, more than any visual element, the music places you in a fully realized world.</p>  <p>Reading the notes from the composer, apparently he was aiming for “acoustic frontier trip-hop”. Yes! That! OMG yes <em>that</em>!</p>  <p>It's not my intention to sell the visual presentation or gameplay short. They're both very strong. The visuals are vibrant, interesting, and unique. The gameplay is simple but tight, and builds in a way that gives you plenty to master. It's a holistically enjoyable package. But it's the sweet sounds encircling my brain that make me love Bastion.&#160; It’s good. You should play it.</p>  
+Bastion is a downloadable game for the Xbox (PC too, although I played it on the Xbox). I guess I'd describe it as an 2D action game with RPG elements, although that's about as descriptive as filing music under the "rock" genre. It's got an overhead perspective, you run around and take down the baddies while progressing through levels. That's how it plays... but that part is pretty irrelevant. I mean, it plays well, but that's not the point. The point is that Bastion is a thing of beauty.
+
+When I say beauty the first thing that probably comes to mind is its visual presentation. Art direction, graphics, whatever. That's all strong, but that's not what I'm talking about. This game is a treat for the *ears*. It's an auditory delight. Turning down the volume on this game is a punishably criminal offense.
+
+The first thing you'll notice is the narrator. You're dropped in the game with some quick description of your surroundings by some gravelly old timer. Nothing else happens, you just sit there, seeing what is presumably your avatar lying down. Eventually you try to press some buttons and the kid will stand up. As he does the narrator describes what just happened. You continue moving around and this narrator follows describing things *as you do them*.
+
+It's a subtle but hugely important addition. It's like in Mass Effect how they let you select your dialog responses before the other person is finished speaking. It's about the *rhythm* of the experience. Having the narrator in Bastion respond to what you're doing makes it feel like you are living out a story. As if what you're doing is important, noteworthy. And most importantly, the language, vocabulary, cadence, and tone of the narrator firmly plants you in this world more so than any visual ever could.
+
+The narrator from Bastion has been much applauded in the game's critical reception. But reducing Bastion to a game that is only interesting because of its narrator is selling it short.
+
+The music. Oh my god *the music*. There are few games that have caused me to go track down the [soundtrack](http://supergiantgames.com/?p=985). This is definitely one of them. It feels simultaneously old yet modern, western but eastern. It feels like a future that is firmly grounded in the past. It's Firefly. It's steampunk. It's extraordinarily intentional and extraordinarily good. Again, more than any visual element, the music places you in a fully realized world.
+
+Reading the notes from the composer, apparently he was aiming for "acoustic frontier trip-hop". Yes! That! OMG yes *that*!
+
+It's not my intention to sell the visual presentation or gameplay short. They're both very strong. The visuals are vibrant, interesting, and unique. The gameplay is simple but tight, and builds in a way that gives you plenty to master. It's a holistically enjoyable package. But it's the sweet sounds encircling my brain that make me love Bastion. It's good. You should play it.