Golden Demon - Old Format vs New, From the round 1 results thread... Options

[insaniak]

For the sake of not derailing the results thread any further than it already is, I thought I'd kick this over into a seperate thread.

For those who came late... Some people think the new format is the best thing since sliced bread, some are not so impressed. I tend to fall into the latter camp, as I find the loss of Games Day and the associated bits and pieces that went along with it to be worth far more than the convenience of being able to just drop an entry into the local GW store.


From the other thread:

I think one of the problems with the old Games Day format was that there wasn't much to keep people entertained. If you were there for the Demons then you really had no interest in the multitude of gaming tables, or the speed painting when they had it. There was no use doing the shop because the prices were the same as retail, so basically you were constantly perusing the Demon entries until late in the day when the announcements were made, as long as you made it that far of course.
If you were there for the gaming then fine, but you probably had little interest in the painting stuff.
There were seminars, and Forgeworld in the last couple of years, but the length of the queue's was prohibitive to most.

I've noticed that other countries Games Days have modelling tables where you can be creative with a table full of sprues or painting tables where you can sit and paint at leisure or a variety of other activities, maybe we needed other stuff like this to keep the masses coming back?
I don't know, I'm guessing here, or maybe I'm way off course and it was basically cost prohibitive to GW to put the day on no matter what activities they supplied?

There's a few good points in there. But once again we come down to scrapping the event rather than fixing it.

Retail doesn't do well at regular prices? I can think of a real good solution to that...

Not interested in gaming? Bung in more painting events. The speed painting comps always seemed to be popular. There was also an idea floated around a while back for a GD category for miniatures painted on the day.

Running a tournie on the side seems to work well for other countries, and would give people a chance to play against different opponents for a change. Heck, even just putting in some gaming tables over to one side for people to bring and battle with whoever they stumble across on the day...


It just seems that there is a vast well of ideas that could have been utilised to make the day bigger and better, but for some reason scrapping it was the better option...

Insaniak, I don't want this to be an argument or a personal attack on you or anything, becuase believe me, I agree with a lot of the things you are saying.

But it's a bit sad to hear you say that the new format is ridiculously bland and uninspiring. I don't know if the numbers of entries are up, down or the same compared to any previous years, but I do not that there are still many people who have put a lot of time and effort into their painting for GD - including myself - and to hear you dismiss it as 'just not worth the time' is actually a bit hurtful.

If you're taking that as a personal snub, then you've taken my remarks entirely the wrong way.

Leigh already mentioned that the number of entries was down this year. It was up last year, but an awful lot of those (going by the forum discussions afterwards) were from people just grabbing stuff out of their cabinets when they saw how low the entries were in some categories... And even this year, with entries down, there also seems to be a large swing towards Youngbloods entries, which I suspect is from staff getting kids to paint instore and just enter whatever they have painted. I'm sure there are still a lot of superb entries in there, but the majority of people simply won't get to see them.

That's the real problem with the new format. Not that the quality of the entries goes down, but simply that the majority of people no longer get to see the majority of entries. All you see is what comes in at your local store, and whatever makes it into White Dwarf.

Yes, there are many problems with the new format, but we need to try to work with what we have, and make the best of it. It's up to the painters to try to make GD a good event here, and I think something that is needed is more of a positive attitude to all of this! We need to get some enthusiasm going, and people need to put some effort into creating an event! We can't have an event without lots of great entries, and more importantly great people.

While I can see where you're coming from here, I don't entirely agree.

Companies the size of GW don't run events for gamers to have a good time. They run them as a marketing tool. It's not up to us to make Golden Demon a better event, any more than its up to us to stand on street corners selling White Dwarf to unsuspecting pedestrians.

It's up to GW to put on an event that we are interested in participating in... because that's how they make their money.

Don't say that it's not worth trying - the more people that think that, the worse it will be.

Which is a good thing. The worse it gets, the shorter will be its lifespan, and then it can be replaced by something better.


That turned into a bit of an epic, and it seems the original thread is still rolling over with more posts telling me to start a new thread... so I'll leave it there for the moment and welcome any comments...

[numbat]

"Golden Demon is a location, not a national painting competition" to quote Steve Buddle. I think that is what this thread is effectively debating.

One thing I find unfortunate with the new format is that we miss out on more international painters coming over to enter our Golden Demons, though perhaps next year I can offer Jeremie Bonamant lodgings at my place so he can enter the first round, haha

Actually for me, it gives me a lot of incentive to save my money, and (hypothetically) rather than travelling to Sydney for Golden Demon, I can go on an overseas holiday while one of their Games Days is on.

Get the best of both worlds, enter Demons here cheaply, and go on a Golden Demon holiday overseas.