Farewell Gen Con Oz 2010

I talked to the inimitable Ben Francisco over the weekend and was immediately reminded of the fact that this doesn’t happen often enough. There is something dreadfully wretched about having people I enjoy talking too spread across the globe, accessible only via chat programs that require one of us to be awake at an ungodly hour. Not that it would change if he were local, because I am inherently lazy and am horrible at catching up with people, but there it is. Fortunately the gist of the conversation was largely worldcon is coming, yay, which means there will be a whole bunch of people I enjoy talking too in the same place at the same time. Including Ben. Which will be awesome.

About ten minutes after this conversation I read the press release informing the world that Gen Con Australia is cancelled in 2010. Needless to say, this cast a pallor over the rest of the weekend. I tried to write posts about this a few times, but there’s a complex knot of baggage tagged to GCOz in my head due to the fact that I worked for them leading into their first show in 2008 (and then broke my vow of never again to run the seminar program last year). During the months prior to a show it’s name was often a by-word for greif and frustration, but the Conventions themselves…man, they were good fun to be at.  Lots of people worth talking too, lots of guests being gracious with their time and experience, and presumably a lot of games going on (I wouldn’t know; I don’t think I ever got the chance to game at Gen Con Oz).

Through a variety of circumstances* I wasn’t involved in organising anything related to Gen Con Oz this year, although I’d planned on volunteering to work the show once I knew for sure I’d be around during the Convention weekend. I was looking forward to catching up with people, particular the core group of volunteers and the regular guests. I was looking forward to maybe playing a game or two, especially if the Indie Games on Demand guys were around this year**, and I’m disappointed I want get the chance to do so.

I suspect I’ll be even more disappointed if there’s no Gen Con Oz in 2011.

*Largely known as “I have a novella getting released in September and house-guests coming prior to Worldcon”.
** Should the show never run again, I can safely say never partaking of the Indie Games on Demand experience will be my biggest dissapointment. These guys were a joy to organise in amid the trials of setting up the 2008 schedule, and I was really happy to see them back in 2009. Plus I dig Indie Games – half the joy of hitting gaming Cons is to experience new systems.