AdventureX 2012 - early planning thread

[AGA]

I've taken a quite peek around for London venues, as that would obviously be the most accessible place in the UK.  However, I'm wondering what you paid last time / think you could raise this time?  And how long would you want this to last?

[straydogstrut]

I'd definitely be up for this again I wasn't that keen on the venue so i'm not too sorry to see it go, although admittedly I had to rush off at the end so I missed the bar entirely! I'll try to make a proper few days of it this time. Location-wise, anywhere within easy reach of London by train really, which opens up a lot of options as you can get an hour away from London at really reasonable prices. I enjoyed the peace and quiet of the country though Liz didn't appreciate the long walk back to our B&B. I think something in town would open up more options for pub crawls, meals and stuff.

The presentations last time were excellent so more waxing lyrical on your games please. Not too fussed about who you get though i'd rather hear from my fellow AGSers than anyone else. You're all celebrities in my eyes 

EDIT: Oh and throw up a donate button will ya?

[Ali]

I agree that Didcot is not ideal, London would be best for me. I've suggested St Andrew's Crypt to m0ds before. It has no wifi or alcohol, which is probably why it was rejected, but it's relatively cheap and spooky and near Holborn Circus:



I agree that it would be good to broaden out from AGS and try to draw a less super-cool-but-sort-of-narrow crowd, which I think is your original goal.

I think you could also focus on making things more developer-y. Some kind of 48 hour adventure game-making challenge? If the event did take place at an interesting location, you could make 'Adventure X: The Adventure!' as a way of drawing together / promoting the videos and material generated during the 2 days.

I think it would also benefit from a stronger itinerary. As well as a few more presentations, I think the raffle could be replaced by an adventure game pub-quiz, or a treasure hunt!

It would be great to have a documentary team with a mandate to shoot a full behind-the-scenes video, in addition to shooting the talks. A second camera and some mics would help up the production values and make a great advert for next Adventure XIII!

I'll be there! This year I plan to drink more beer and pester Ali less.

I demand to be pestered more!

[m0ds]

The thing with other venues is basically my ability to bring computers to that kind of place, or any equipment really. Maybe nearer the time that will be more possible, because I'm not saying I don't know people willing to lend equipment and such. But I'm personally not in the position to rent a van and take a load of stuff to London, mind you - I WOULD do that. I'm just not in that position.

I like Ali's location a lot and I won't write it off completely even if there isn't any beer There are some good places, and trust me it's my plan to try and bring it somewhere more commercial, more easily reachable in the future. But it could've done with one or two more in Didcot I think, so that it had a name for itself. I'm a bit sad that Didcot won't even see a second hosting but I guess that's life. The venue was practically free. They gave me 10 bags of crisps on the last day because I'd spent so much on drinks. I probably could've bought that upstairs room for £50 - they were really on the edge, as is now apparent - they've sold and are being demolished. It's a shame. But you can see why that kind of hire fare is a bonus compared to a charged venue, plus costs of hiring out equipment, getting to it (as the organiser), paying for guests, etc.

The "game jam" thing has been on my mind, but every time I look into it, it gets more convoluted and I see problems with it from many angles. I'm looking into it, for sure, but I don't think that is what AdventureX should be. A-X is the promotional side of things. Look at my game! Etc. Or, look at me, I'm Ali Beckett! I released some screenshots 2012. Etc.

I appreciate the comments, who you think I should ask etc, and the lineup and venue. I am going to look into it through the next month. I'll need to follow up some previous suggestions and offers especially if it means getting equipment elsewhere. So put it this way, any venue, anywhere in the UK is perfectly acceptable with me - it's just a matter of getting the equipment there. This was achieved last time with my friend, so by the end of this year I'm either going to need to be driving again or have a very responsible friend who'll take me. There ARE amicable venues out there, definitely. And I am certainly game for Ali's S&M dungeon. I need to look into transportation.

As I may have mentioned somewhere I'm also waiting on the Nottingham videogame festival to get back to me cos I think a smaller edition is perfectly possible in October if they get in touch sooner rather than later.

Thanks for your thoughts & ideas!

[Ali]

I am certainly game for Ali's S&M dungeon.

A Sam and Max dungeon would be great! Wait...

[Stupot]

There's a bar called The Adventure Bar in London (actually there's four of them) and it seems you can hire them out for functions/parties/meetings etc.
I imagine they're pretty expensive but it can't hurt enquiring.  Maybe you can wrangle a deal. It would be awesome to have AdventureX in a bar called The Adventure Bar :-)
http://www.adventurebar.co.uk/

[AGA]

Having looked at a couple of places in and near central London, you're looking at around £200 a day for a small room (~20 people), or £300-£400 for a large space (200+).  If you could get 200 people paying a fiver each that would be easy of course, but I suppose it depends just how many tickets you could sell.

[Azure]

If we suggest venues purely on name;



https://plus.google.com/101387783850594460428/about?gl=uk&hl=en

or
http://monkeyisland.co.uk/live/meetings
Which has a fruit bowl!

[AGA]

The second one is in London, and has been talked about here before.  Unfortunately it's £50 per head per day, so just a little unaffordable.

[Azure]

I was joking, I think a youth centre or university might be a better shot?

[Ali]

Having looked at a couple of places in and near central London, you're looking at around £200 a day for a small room (~20 people), or £300-£400 for a large space (200+).  If you could get 200 people paying a fiver each that would be easy of course, but I suppose it depends just how many tickets you could sell.

With a student discount, I hired the crypt at £50 a day for 3 days. I imagine the cost of arranging catering would knock it up a lot though.

[AGA]

I actually work for a university in central London.  I suppose it's theoretically possible we could rent some space.  I'll see what sort of price they look for from external people.

[Dave Gilbert]

If it's relatively easy to get to from London, than I'd definitely consider going.

[AGA]

So I looked into using my work for this.  Unfortunately even with a staff discount (50% off!) it would be £400 per day.  It is a super awesome location though, with digital projectors (two screens!), mics, and loads of space, right next to Liverpool Street station (where a train goes direct to Stansted Airport, and with good links to the rest of the country and the other airports), but it's obviously fairly pricey.  It might be worth considering, if we can get enough people to come (Central London is lot more likely to draw people than Didcot, I'd assume).  Even if it does cost us say £800 overall for the venue for two full days, the venue does hold 150 comfortably, which would be £5.33 a ticket if we could fill it up...

[m0ds]

Sounds possible Berian. As a two day event, we'd only require about 55 people to pay a two-day ticket fee (of about £15) to cover those costs. Of course though there are guest fees on top of that, usually just travel expense but get a designer down from B'ham and it could still be in the region of £70-100 a guest (f****** trains). It could certainly be set up in a kickstart manner in such that it will only run if enough tickets are sold to cover the costs. But the guests and itinerary are certainly going to have to be bigger and better this time round to pull in those kind of crowds. Also some photos of the location wouldn't go a miss (importantly, the space we can accomodate for the show). Thanks for looking into it!

Also - closest bar? And, it does have windows and natural light, right?

PS. It could also run an extra day minus the venue, but to help cover venue costs - for example, a meal or par-tay on Friday evening.

PPS. London may also open up the oppurtunity to do some proper rental exhibitor space, but that's "um" and "ah" at the moment because I'm not sure it'd be wise to charge exhibitors for what is only the second event.

Also Ali what are the chances of you forming a small "crack" tech team, ie to perhaps bring a few lights and gels and such to spice the venue up? As you are a Londoner with creative buddies..?

[Ali]

Also Ali what are the chances of you forming a small "crack" tech team, ie to perhaps bring a few lights and gels and such to spice the venue up? As you are a Londoner with creative buddies..?

It might be possible, depending on the whens and wheres. I don't have any kit myself, but I might be able to borrow a little. I probably can't get you any crack, though.

[AGA]

The lecture theatre (which is the space we'd likely be using) has three walls of windows - shitloads of natural light, and holds 150 people.  There's also a space right outside where you can set up tables for buffets / drinks / general chillaxery.  I'll take some photos tomorrow.  The room can also be split into two 75 seater rooms if you wanted to split off to have different themed rooms or something similar.  Each room has a projector screen, with separate (or cloned) HDMI / VGA and audio inputs.  It's all very modern and high tech.  The building isn't usually open on a Sunday, so there may be some extra costs involved in them putting a security guard on then (not sure if it's usually 24 hour security).  I'll look at getting a more definite costing if it sounds interesting to people after you've seen photos.

As for bars, there's one a few doors down, and one every twenty feet for miles around.  It's central London, so drinks are fairly expensive, but the building has drinks functions all the time, so I'm sure we could put on our own booze if it came to that.  There are also loads of restaurants in the area if we wanted to do a meal on the Friday as you suggested.

[AGA]

So it turns out that 12:00 - 21:00 only counts as a half day, so would only cost £200.  So if we were willing to start at midday rather than 07:00 the venue would only cost us £400 overall for two days - not bad at all.  I've taken a few photos here which show the lecture theatre and breakout space outside.  Unfortunately the little Asian girls probably wouldn't be there at the time.

So what do we reckon, would this make a decent venue?  If you think so, I can look into getting a more accurate costing, and working out deposits and such.

[m0ds]

That doesn't look too bad. A tad clinical, but then the labour club wasn't much cozier. Can you see if they'd hire it from 10:00 to 19:00 instead of 12 to 21? Is it frequently hired at weekends by more than one group?

[AGA]

It is all very modern and stark, yeah.  At least there's a horrible carpet to liven things up a bit!  We could always put some banners and posters and such up to make it a bit more colourful.

As far as I know they don't often use it at weekends.  There certainly isn't any university teaching going on then.  If we did book it we'd have the whole area (if not the whole floor) to ourselves at very least.  I'll look into the times you suggested.