This year is shaping up to be the year of the crowdfunded game industry event. A new Kickstarter campaign has sprung up to revive a once-upon-a-time video games and PC gaming expo.
The event, GamesCon — not to be confused with the enormous annual German games-fest Gamescom — once took place from 1998-1999 in Toronto, Canada. March Chandler, the organizer of GamesCon, argues in an introductory email and on the Kickstarter page, that one of the main reasons for this fundraising drive is that North America’s third largest city should not be deprived of a major gaming event. Also, the area is described as a major indie game development hub.
As explained on the Kickstarter page, the history of GamesCon is a brief but apparently luminous one: GamesCon’s first Official event was held in Vancouver during the spring of 1998. Its second event took place in the summer of 1998 with GT Interactive and Epic Games sponsoring the Official Unreal Release Party at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, called Unrealease.
Next, our organizers decided to forge something larger and more accessible to all gamers (rather than limiting the event exclusively to LAN Party attendees). GamesCon ’99 at The Inn on The Park was planned and the GamesCon Advisory Board was created to increase awareness and also to bring in some unique content and speakers. The Advisory Board consisted of the following gaming luminaries, Scott Miller (3DRealms), Dave Perry (Shiny Entertainment), John Romero (Ion Storm), Chris Charla (Next Generation Magazine), Peter Molyneux (Lionhead Studios), Brian Bruning (3Dfx), Jason Rubenstein (Intel), Ed Fries (Microsoft Game Studios) and Chris Taylor (Gas Powered Games). These advisors helped GamesCon greatly in providing guidance and advice on creating an event truly targeted to gamers of all types and passions resulting in more than 2500 attendees. Over five times the attendance of the previous year!
Currently, the Kickstarter campaign for Gamescom has over a month to go and has accrued almost $1,500 toward a $50,000 mark. The budget, if the mark is met, would principally be used to reserve the space and create awareness in the Toronto gaming community.
The GamesCon campaign attempts to join the ranks of at least two other successful game conference/expo campaigns via crowdfunding, namely the Midwest Game Developers Summit and GaymerX2 events.
