The Old School Otaku Lounge

We were having a discussion elsewhere that got derailed into talking about problems at anime cons, and rather than keep derailing I figured I'd just start a post here for talking about problems at anime cons and solutions to those problems. There's a good cross section of experience on this board so hopefully we can generate some ideas.

The original discussion was here: http://forum.animepast.net/viewtopic.ph ... 8&start=50 and we were talking about the Homestuck/MLP fans at anime cons, and that kind of sequed into asking how much time and space should an anime convention give to non-anime programming?

It's easy to be a purist about such things and say 'this is an anime con, Japanese anime only'. Had we been doing that back in 1995 maybe things would be different now. But when anime cons started they were kind of forced into non-anime guests and non-anime programming, merely because the resources were not there to get anime industry guests, and the talent pool for Japanese anime panels was not as large as it is now. So the early A-Kons had guests like Bob Camp from 'Ren & Stimpy' and most cons would invite local comic book talent or whoever was big in the local SF fan scene, just to fill out the guest list. Anyway, the cons were started by people who didn't start out as anime fans and the culture's going to reflect that.

AWA, when it started, had a big pushback against the Vampire LARP, the Klingons, the Magic The Gathering that was infecting fan conventions at the time; our slogan actually was "No vampires, no Magic, no Klingons." But we had (and still have) our share of non-anime programming. My personal yardstick has been that a topic needs to be about Japanese animation, or about Japan, or about animation. If you can work it into any one of those areas, you're OK. Like all arbitrary rules it hinders as much as it helps, but it's a useful tool.

These days anime has gone through a rise and a fall, and now it's part of the larger fan scene, one more thing fans are into along with Dr. Who and Star Trek and gaming and superheroes and non-Japanese cartoons. The conventions that started out as anime cons have changed and mutated over time in response to pressures from every direction- wishes of the fans, interests of the panellists, opinions of the directors, the whims of public taste. Most of them have turned into really interesting and unique popular culture gatherings, and a more rigidly defined direction might not have resulted in as interesting a show.

So yeah, Homestuck/MLP fandom is a problem in that they're both currently popular fads, they attract annoying behavior on the part of their fans, and like any popular fad there's a surplus of people wanting to put on panels, cosplay as the characters, and generally wallow in their fandom to the exclusion of everything else. Give it a few seasons and they will have moved on to something else. The challenge to anime conventions is how to balance the enthusiasm (and the ticket sales) of these fans with the direction they want their show to go in.

I'm frankly surprised that the long, slow-motion implosion of the American Anime Industry hasn't significantly impacted on anime cons.

Maybe it's because the core root of the anime con is the 'media con' of the late '70s-early '80s. And the media con was a reaction to the rarefied air of the SF convention which was reluctant to adapt to the growing influence the nascent home video technology was having on those who would rather watch than read, or, no, that's not fair. Say, rather, those that felt exploring the fantastic via a visual medium was just as worthy a pursuit as print. We'll just gloss over the war of 'text vs. pictures i.e. comic books' for now.

What is amazing to me is that, as far as I know, none of the 'major' cons has had an epic crash-and burn because of the Anime Implosion. From my 'neighborhood' take Anime Central. I haven't been in a few years but it's always seemed a decent sized con with strong numbers. This has created a need for lots of space and a good sized infrastructure, as well as a large support cadre. Just based on what I know from my days of running a con having all that presupposes a minimum number of assured sales, I think ACen is running based on getting at least 10,000 people thru the gates. Now imagine a year when they get only 1,000 people pre-regging. What would they do? Cancel the con because there was NO WAY they were going to take in enough to cover costs, or take a gamble that over 9,000 fans were going to walk in and at least, hopefully, let them break even and end the con's run on a positive note?

The adaption and evolution (de-evolution?) of the anime con into the media con with a 'big eye' tip will surely extend the life of the event, but then the danger, if one wishes to call it danger, is that all a con will be is a 'rave for 14 year olds' and, well, that's not of much interest to me.

davemerrill wrote:The challenge to anime conventions is how to balance the enthusiasm (and the ticket sales) of these fans with the direction they want their show to go in.

(Emphasis mine) THIS is the core problem with "anime" conventions today. To put it simply, cons started as a means for nerds with a shared passion to congregate and share their interest. Somewhere along the way, a large majority (not all, granted) of cons moved to a "bottom line" business model. As a short aside, I'm sure a couple of people on here were involved in cons at this time, and unless your peers were lying, when I got started in con "planning" (late 90s, early 2000s) it was stated that cons should be done as a labor of "love" and any new con should EXPECT to lose money in the first few years. Cons now are started as "fund raisers" or "'living the dream' businesses".

I see WAY too many Con Orgs now talking about ROI and what puts "butts in the seats". Cons should not be some ego-stroke of a couple of guys running a con for 100 people (you're basically a glorified club then), but if you're running the "what brings in the people", then you're INTENTIONALLY "riding the fads", and as anime wanes in popularity, so too does your focus. Cons NEED to recalibrate, one way or the other. EITHER they need to refocus (not "to the exclusion of all else", but MUCH more than currently) on what their mission is "promotion of anime" OR they need to be realistic and stop selling themselves as something they are not. The biggest problem right now is that 5-10 years ago, "anime" was where the "money" was for fan cons, and at the moment "anime con" is short-hand for "fan gathering", which is a serious problem for fans of anime and why you get a lot of people asking for/suggesting programming related to webcomics, Western live-action TV/movie properties and other unrelated interests.

I think you can tell exactly when conventions move to a "bottom line" model, and that's when they move out of hotels and into convention centers. No more free meeting space in exchange for making your room blocks, instead it's cash on the barrelhead. Or a down payment and installments, but you know what I'm talking about. Money.

The transition is tough and many shows don't make it, they have one or two years at a big convention center and then they're back to smaller venues. Sugoicon did this, they're back to a smaller venue, a more sustainable model. The old Atlanta Fantasy Fair did it and it pretty much sucked them dry; they were gone in 2 years after retreating from the convention center.

It's almost a Catch-22: anime's a big thing so it attracts a lot of fans, you move to a big facility because you have lots of attendees, anime isn't a big thing any more but you're committed to the big facility, so you have to get people to come to your anime con except you have to throw in a lot of attractions that aren't anime, so you're not really an anime con any more, but... and then your brain explodes.

davemerrill wrote:I think you can tell exactly when conventions move to a "bottom line" model, and that's when they move out of hotels and into convention centers. No more free meeting space in exchange for making your room blocks, instead it's cash on the barrelhead. Or a down payment and installments, but you know what I'm talking about. Money.

I CANNOT disagree with this more. Any convention that was there for the "peak" years should have been one of two things:
1. An AMAZING litany of guests and programming that took lots of resources but also HAD to satisfy anyone who calls themselves an anime fan (I can count the number of these cons on one hand)
2. Building up a warchest with which they SHOULD have been able to ride out at least 1 "lean" year (after which they should downsize facility, and yes, I know these are often booked multiple years in advance, I can discuss why that is not relevant to this point later if you wish)

If it's a con that does not fit one of those two, then frankly it DESERVES to fail because you're not using your resources for the fans AND you're not protecting yourself effectively. I can accept a convention of 2000-3000 telling me they do not have Japanese guests (even though they can afford it) because they need to protect the con. But if you do that for several years you're either well protected, OR you're not really trying. In the last 5 years, if "non-anime" fans are the difference in you hitting numbers or not, then you should NOT be in a convention center. Any ANIME con that is still pushing non-anime programming for "bottom-line, afford the facility" reasons should have reached the end of their "boom years" agreement and downsized or else should "refocus". (Seriously, it's been at least 5 years since the American anime "peak", anyone who signed an agreement (outside of maybe Otakon or Expo who are NOT the cons we're talking about) of more than 5 years based solely on a ~4 year surge ('04-08) quite frankly deserves to fail.

And that doesn't even BEGIN to speak to the FACT that a good number of the "bottom line" people (many of whom are still in hotels) are "for profit". If you ignore cons that ARE branded as "comic" or "general media" cons, for every ONE con you can show me that NEEDS to make their appeals to MLP or Homestuck or YouTube personalities or whatever, I can show you (at least) TWO that are doing it solely to line someone's pocket, and that is now extending further to everyone ELSE trying to get their cut of the pie.

Heero, I'm not sure where you're coming from on this. While I'm not 'inside' the current con culture I can't think of ANY con that's 'lining someone's pockets with money'.

Every con pays lipservice to 'doing it for the fans' but in the end the reality is it MUST do whatever to survive. Any event has to pay the bills.

Now, the bald-faced commercial cons, your Creation Cons (including their Star Wars things), New York Comic Con, those are something else entirely.

But what is "doing for the fans" exactly? What you want from a con may not be what I want from a con. The guests you want to see are likely not the guests I want to see. You can't demand something like "have better dealers", that's impossible.

In the 30-plus years I've been going to cons the ONE thing I've learned, and learned quickly, is that a convention is what YOU, the attendee, makes of it.

As to the warchest idea, that's really noble and would make sense, but I can't think of ANY con so successful they can bank 20k to 100k in addition to paying all the bills. What next, ALL con staff should be PAID? The nightmare of having to fill out all the tax forms, meeting EEOC rules, UNIONIZING? Man, you want cons to become soulless machines, just start doing that crap.

And banking thousands of Dollars and having it just sit around, that's a huge temptation to what might be seen as 'weak impulse control' people that are so much the common makeup of we fans. *Brrrrr*

Heero, I don't know why you're disagreeing with me strongly, as we seem to be on the same page. I completely agree that conventions which don't use their resources effectively, or sign agreements based on unrealistic expectations, deserve to fail. In fact I think I brought up two examples of conventions that overstepped their boundaries and failed in different ways.

(Sorry if this seems "ranty", it's a topic I'm passionate about since this is actually the whole reason I started a convention in the first place, and that was 10 years ago (BEFORE the big boom))

SteveH wrote:Heero, I'm not sure where you're coming from on this. While I'm not 'inside' the current con culture I can't think of ANY con that's 'lining someone's pockets with money'.

I can assure you that I can name at least 3 conventions (without thinking hard) off the top of my head that do this. I'm sure I can probably reach double digits if I put effort into it.

Now, the bald-faced commercial cons, your Creation Cons (including their Star Wars things), New York Comic Con, those are something else entirely.

This is where anime cons are going. Right now, most of the American voice actors have their hands out, some are even starting to charge for autographs independent of whatever they arrange with the con (or the con agrees to "allow" it). That's disappointing, but they're professionals, whatever. I can (again, without ANY effort) name at least 3 PANELISTS (ie. no real professional credits to their name) who are actively soliciting conventions for a payday. And it goes on and on.

As to the warchest idea, that's really noble and would make sense, but I can't think of ANY con so successful they can bank 20k to 100k in addition to paying all the bills.

Are you kidding? In the boom years (before we got sick of dealing with the non-anime fans) we COULD always have banked at LEAST $10,000 (and that's AFTER flying someone out first class from Japan). If you're in a hotel you can make the economics work once you get over 3000 members. If you can't then you don't know what you're doing or you are (in my opinion) frankly wasting money on SOMETHING. (I'll note that at our "peak" we were charging $35/person membership and $200/table for dealers and we are NOT in a city that has a "glut" of facilities capable of hosting an event the size we had) I can do a full budget breakdown, but to simplify it, if you can't run a convention in a hotel (convention center IS another ballgame) on six figures (even very low six figures) then you're frankly doing it wrong. (Exceptions to cities like NY or LA, but again, I'm not talking about cons in those cities)

But what is "doing for the fans" exactly? What you want from a con may not be what I want from a con. The guests you want to see are likely not the guests I want to see. You can't demand something like "have better dealers", that's impossible.

For the record, here's MY distinction:
con FOR anime fans
* Bringing in anime industry professionals (I don't care a whit about voice actors, US or Japanese, but I can respect that other people do so I understand brining them out, I'm not saying a con needs to cater to MY tastes in ANIME guests to be doing it "right")
* Having discussions or instructional panels about anime and/or the industry (again, bring pros to do this if fans don't step up to the plate, Steve Bennett, Neil Nadelman and others loved doing this in the heyday)
* Promote anime (the medium) and the anime industry (have premiers, break news, etc.)

today's cons
* Supplant anime industry pros with webcomic/youTube personalities and video game personalities because "they sell tickets" (not even trying to pretend that "they have 'anime' credits too")
* Fill the programming with "cosplay chess" or "meet X character" panels because "they fill a room" (of teens and college aged adolescents)
* Get rid of viewing rooms because "no one watches anything anymore"
* Make no effort to anime industry pros because "the ROI isn't there"
* Bring in "cosplay" or "steampunk" or (insert other nerd interest) guests because "that's what our attendees want"

If you take "Anime" out of the name and/or tagline of MOST "anime conventions" right now, how many of them would you think are supposed to be about anime?

I have no problem paying voice talent a per-diem or scale; they are taking time out of their lives (and their day jobs) to come to whatever city for the convention, they deserve some renumeration for their time and their trouble.

Over the years I have seen fans and panellists try to push the envelope in terms of perks, reimbursements, and outright cash. I guess there are enough suckers out there to make it worth trying.

In terms of the non-anime content, the cosplay chess, etc; if I had my magic wand working again, I'd wave it and get rid of the non-anime stuff. But it's 2013; the conventions I'm involved with (AWA and AN) both have years of events I'd take a pass on, and events I think are awesome, and ripping a subset of popular events out of either of these shows would be painful. The events I dislike don't have any effect on me or my enjoyment whatsoever. I don't go to the costume contest, I stay away from the dollfies, I don't play video games at conventions, I could care less about yaoi or RPG games or dances or a whole raft of things that other people think is totally awesome. Whatever; it's a big convention and it has room for everybody. Waving my magic wand and eliminating those events would only serve to take enjoyment and fun away from people, and there's enough not-fun in the world already, I think.

Certainly if I wanted an anime convention free of those elements I would start one of my own, and there ain't no way that's going to happen, not in 2013. That ship has sailed, that train has left the station, and that dog won't hunt.

Right now the definition of the term "anime convention" has been stretched beyond its original intent, and I don't know if it's ever going to get back to a strict interpretation. I've had people tell me to my face that it's our job to bring the audience "new and exciting trends in Asian dance music" or that we HAVE to have a model kit contest, or skits, skits are a must-have apparently, or HALO tournaments. It's fascinating to find out what pops up in the minds of others when they think "anime convention". Project A-Kon has one definition (in fact I don't think they even describe themselves as an 'anime convention') and Otakon has another and Animazement has yet a third. And yet they all seem to do well, bills get paid, people attend and have fun, that's the important part, I think.