So, let me preface this review by saying: I loved the pin
trading program at Gen Con. I love pin
trading and collecting in general, so adding it to Gen Con is like heaven to
me. So keep in mind any blistery parts
of this are said in the spirit of making a great thing even better. That said, my thoughts!
Pre-Convention Thoughts: When this was announced I was
ecstatic. Two of my favourite things at
one convention? Score! So of course I planned my plan of attack,
packed all my trading pins with me and hoofed it to Gen Con with the stars of
sparkly pins in my eyes. Needless to
say, I was hopeful this program would be a success.
For my thoughts about during the convention, I’m going to be
breaking this up into a few categories, since all of them had ups and downs
unique to them.
1) Dealer’s Hall:
This is probably the part I have the biggest issue with, but also some of the
easier to fix. When we were originally
told the locations of most of the pins, I had said then that it looked like
they were pretty evenly spaced throughout the exhibitor’s hall, and I’d argue
that still holds true – that isn’t anything that Pin Bazaar had any say in, but
was a fun note and made running around to get them a lot easier.
However, there were several issues with getting the pins
once you stepped foot in the hall. The
biggest is the uncertainty of how to get them – most of them just sold the pins
outright, but many had them only available with another purchase (with no
option to pay for them without that purchase) or only available via a
demo. I have no issue with this – in fact,
I feel having some of them available through different means can be a good
thing and help facilitate the need to trade with your fellow collectors.
The issue I ran into several times is that there was no
indication of which vendors sold, which one’s required a demo, and which ones
were With Purchase. This issue
compounded when vendors weren’t transparent about whether the pin was sold out,
so you could possibly stand in a long line to get told it wasn’t available
(whether it was completely sold out, or just until the “refresh” the next day –
this happened to me at least once.) For
the original issue though – simply having it listed on the website along with
the Company name/booth number what you will need to do for the pin would be a
big help in strategizing. Luckily, I had
planned on spending all of Day 1 on acquiring the pins, so the surprise demos
weren’t a big deal – but I imagine others weren’t so lucky.
Along the same lines, being transparent about how many of
each pin there are. Knowing now that
Boss Monster only had 200 pins, I likely would have prioritized it first rather
than the others that either didn’t sell out until Friday or Saturday, or in
some cases didn’t sell out at all. I’ve
seen some comments along the line of them under ordering – which is likely true
on their end, but having too few for everyone to buy isn’t necessarily a bad
thing when you consider limited edition pins are utilized in other pin circles
to facilitate trading. The issue comes
in when the masses aren’t told when a pin will be of low quantity so they can
do what they need to (attempt) to get it.
Both of these issues can be dealt with via the website or
the app that was mentioned as a possible WIP.
If the vendors aren’t willing to be transparent about how they plan to
participate, I would consider that a massive red flag regarding their ability
to be a cooperative participant.
On the note of the vendors – I will not list any names, but
I have experienced and heard there were issues.
In particular, my issues came down to lack of communication (see above
about standing in line, for example). I
also demoed a game and found out I had demoed the wrong game to acquire the
pin, as they weren’t clear on whether it was doing one of their demos period,
or a particular one. Another vendor was inconsistent
with how to acquire a pin – I was able to purchase a With Purchase pin directly
without that purchase, but then others were made to make the purchase to get
the pin. While I appreciated not having
to buy other things I didn’t want to get it, it made me unhappy to see that
they changed the game later on – this isn’t fair to attendees, and confusing
for everyone. This bit I am unsure how
to fix – perhaps just reminding the participating vendors to be mindful in the future
would suffice?
Outside of that, my experience in the vendor hall wasn’t too
bad. The vendors I dealt with were
mostly pleasant, the oddball attendee that noticed my pins were interesting to
talk to and ohhh and ahh over pins with, and I would definitely do it again.
2) Pin Trading: The trading was overall not too bad. The main issue I saw people running into was
when it came to trading with staff. It
was hard to tell at times whether staff were trading their personal collection,
or in an official capacity. While I am
hard pressed to say staff should not be trading for their personal collections
while on the clock, I WOULD recommend
finding a way that it is easier to tell the difference- perhaps staff could have a special staff
lanyard that has the pins they will trade officially as 1-for-1 with no veto
power (as long as it’s a Pin Bazaar pin, of course), so it’s obvious which pins
are for official trading and which ones are for themselves (in which case they,
obviously, can be picky, do 2-for-1s, etc.).
The pin trading meetups were good, but I feel they may have
suffered from being at LOS. Even I had a
few moments were I contemplated not going due to having to leave the main
convention center in the middle of the day, when a bulk of the shopping,
events, etc I wanted to go to were being held.
This is another one that isn’t necessarily easy to fix – I would perhaps
move it to a time later in the day, or even hold multiple in different
locations, different times, etc. I would
also have different unique pins for each day and/or meetup – that way it would incentivize
coming to them every day.
That said, it looked like the trading between attendees was
going well, and I thoroughly enjoyed being able to pin trade and talk Pin with
my fellow gamers, though my horrible shyness certainly made it awkward at
times, ha!
3) Pin quality and pricing: This one was very touch and go. My understanding is that the MSRP was
recommended to be $10 for each pin, but the actual retail costs seemed to range
from $5 to $15 – not a bad range of prices for pins generally, especially
getting into ones not being mass produced (IE Disney, Universal, Sea World,
etc). However – the quality/detail of
the pins versus the prices did not necessarily always match up. There were pins that had quality issues
(pockmarked enamel, bad art design) that went for $10 or $15 while beautifully
designed, good quality ones were being sold for $5 – I would recommend perhaps
giving each vendor a recommended MSRP based off the level of complexity of the
pin, as many of these vendors likely have not previously dealt with pin design
and selling.
As far as quality goes- there were many pins that made me
question how they made it past quality control.
Some of the pins were overly detailed for how small they were (so the
details blurred together and/or caused the enamel to dip as it hardened due to
the area size) Some would have
benefited greatly from being a different enamel type (hard versus soft). Some just had actual quality issues (dips,
bubbles, scratches, etc.).
Overwhelmingly the pins were fine, but I ended up not picking up a few
for this reason – but these are things that will likely improve as the program
ages and the vendors start knowing what to look for and how to design for pins
rather than buttons or prints.
Overall, I liked many of the designs, though I felt with
some they went a little too on the safe side.
I hope over time the designs will become more creative and utilize the
medium a lot better as people learn it.
That should mainly be it.
As I said originally, I am overjoyed with this program and hope to be
able to do it again next Gen Con or at other conventions – and hopefully some
of my critiques/concerns being voiced can help move it along into being an even
bigger and better experience.
TL;DR: Improve communication between vendor/attendees, more acquisition
information at the onset, more obvious differentiation between personal and
official staff trading, better times/locations of pin meetups, and better
QC/pin designs.
No comments:
Post a Comment