Reaper at Origins 2019?

[Disciple of Sakura]

For the last three years, I've gotten to attend Origins in Ohio, and have really loved doing the Reaper Speedpaint (and even won last year). I was hoping to go and participate in the Speedpaint again this year, but I was going through the Origins 2019 event schedule and didn't see a single entry from Reaper. Is Reaper not going to be at Origins this year, or at least not hosting any events?

[DocPiske]

They've stated they will not be there but are still sponsoring the paint and take area. I don't recall what if anything was said about speed paint.

[Disciple of Sakura]

34 minutes ago, DocPiske said:

They've stated they will not be there but are still sponsoring the paint and take area. I don't recall what if anything was said about speed paint.

Did they say why they weren't going to be there this year?

[ttuckerman]

No they did not.

 

[Disciple of Sakura]

Man, that sucks. Half the reason I wanted to go to Origins was to compete in the speed painting contest again, see if I could pull off another win. At least I managed it once before they cut their participation.

 

There are those of us who can't go to Reapercon. It's starting to feel like too many companies (like Paizo some years back) are just doing their own conventions and ignoring those of us who can't attend them.

Edited May 17, 2019 by Disciple of Sakura

[Beowulfthehunter]

33 minutes ago, Disciple of Sakura said:

Man, that sucks. Half the reason I wanted to go to Origins was to compete in the speed painting contest again, see if I could pull off another win. At least I managed it once before they cut their participation.

 

There are those of us who can't go to Reapercon. It's starting to feel like too many companies (like Paizo some years back) are just doing their own conventions and ignoring those of us who can't attend them.

If that is the case I can't blame them. Having to lug all your crap from one side of the country to the other and having to deal with the restriction of the convention organizers for a small profit when you can stay home and make all your rules.

[Doug Sundseth]

29 minutes ago, Disciple of Sakura said:

It's starting to feel like too many companies (like Paizo some years back) are just doing their own conventions and ignoring those of us who can't attend them.

 

Conventions, especially big conventions, are expensive. For a company like Paizo to show up at a convention, it's likely going to cost well north of $10,000. You have airplane tickets, food, hotels, product shipping (both ways), lost work on other projects, .... And that's without considering the cost of exhibition space, which can be thousands of dollars by itself.

 

You get some customer exposure, which does have a value, but the typical customer at a convention is likely to be aware of big companies already, which reduces the advertising value. The biggest reason to show up may well be that if you don't, people can start to wonder how well you're doing as a company. That starts to be less of an issue as other big companies don't show up, though.

 

Big cons have always been a serious question for companies. You get to sell product at full retail, which is a big income source for a big company, but you have to pay so much just to attend that the value proposition is a close one.

[Disciple of Sakura]

There's also the whole "interacting directly with the clientele and making a good impression" thing that I would think would be a benefit at a convention, but I guess I'm in the minority. Might as well not even bother with conventions at all if the companies you like basically don't feel like you're worth it.

[Doug Sundseth]

7 minutes ago, Disciple of Sakura said:

There's also the whole "interacting directly with the clientele and making a good impression" thing that I would think would be a benefit at a convention, but I guess I'm in the minority.

 

That does have a value. The "making a good impression" thing falls into the "advertising" category (broadly). IME, most of the people at a big convention are already gaming fans and likely to know at least the large players in the industry, the value you get is mostly for maintaining the brand rather than expanding your customer base. This is useful, but might not be useful enough to warrant spending the required money.

 

There's also the question of how many and which conventions to attend. It would be possible to send people to large conventions at least a dozen times a year. With prep and recovery, that would be about half a year for every person that goes. There are companies (not usually publishers) whose business model is attending conventions and selling to the captive audience, but publishers need to write, edit, art direct, lay out, print, package, ship, rinse, and repeat. How much time do they (should they) spend doing outreach, advertising, and retail sales rather than attending to their core business?

 

7 minutes ago, Disciple of Sakura said:

Might as well not even bother with conventions at all if the companies you like basically don't feel like you're worth it.

 

Your call of course.

 

FWIW, I go to conventions when I think they'll be fun to go to and the presence or absence of a specific company has a limited effect on that. It's nice to be able to talk to people or to fondle a company's complete product line rather than the subset that my LGS carries, but "nice" is about as far as it goes for me. If visiting company booths or talking to company people is the primary attraction of conventions, your balancing of costs and benefits will be different from mine and you'll make your choices accordingly.

[ManvsMini]

Given that they just finished their KS fulfillment, it might just be that they decided to skip Origins so that they can let the crew recover. I am sure that, when they looked at Origins date (in a month roughly) and their projected date of finishing fulfillment (which probably included a couple weeks of wiggle-room), they realized it would be cruel to the con-crew to send them off in a week/2 week notice. Just a matter of prioritizing, and to me it seems they prioritized staff mental/physical health.

 

That said, to the folks at Reaper: if you ever need a hand at a future Origins, hit me up, would love to help out.

 

Even without Reaper, Origins is still fun. Ironwind Metals is usually there (though I personally haven't attended in a few years) so if you like some vintage Ral Partha casts, worth checking them out.

[Thoramel]

I asked on Reaper Live a while back because they stated they weren't going to be there, but the initial event sheet had them listed. They said something to the effect of they were still sponsoring the show, or the paint n take, can't quite remember. 

 

Unfortunately, Origins released details on the paint n take on Facebook this week and it looks to be wizkids models and Vallejo paints exclusively. Although they do have some sort of contest going on for models painted in the paint n take area. That's kind of a drag because there were always a lot of smaller miniature companies in the paint n take area that may not get that exposure now.

 

I was a bit disappointed in the Origins lineup too this year. I always enjoy the speed paint competition even though I never made it past the second round. And I save my quarters up all year for the Reaper gumball machine. I also read somewhere D&D was unlikely to have the presence they've had the last couple of years and that CMON may not be there at all. 

 

I mean, I'm not going to quit going because of this... Origins is literally a 5 minute bike ride from my house and we go every year. But if folks are pulling out like this I may only go for a couple of days in the future instead of the full show. 

[AutumnHare]

47 minutes ago, Thoramel said:

I asked on Reaper Live a while back because they stated they weren't going to be there, but the initial event sheet had them listed. They said something to the effect of they were still sponsoring the show, or the paint n take, can't quite remember. 

 

Unfortunately, Origins released details on the paint n take on Facebook this week and it looks to be wizkids models and Vallejo paints exclusively. Although they do have some sort of contest going on for models painted in the paint n take area. That's kind of a drag because there were always a lot of smaller miniature companies in the paint n take area that may not get that exposure now.

 

I was a bit disappointed in the Origins lineup too this year. I always enjoy the speed paint competition even though I never made it past the second round. And I save my quarters up all year for the Reaper gumball machine. I also read somewhere D&D was unlikely to have the presence they've had the last couple of years and that CMON may not be there at all. 

 

I mean, I'm not going to quit going because of this... Origins is literally a 5 minute bike ride from my house and we go every year. But if folks are pulling out like this I may only go for a couple of days in the future instead of the full show. 

 

<promo on>

If you need something to do at Origins, come by Paizo gaming and play some Pathfinder, Starfinder, or demo the Pathfinder 2.0 rules. The launch of Starfinder season 2 is Saturday night with an interactive special, and the “finale” for Pathfinder 1.0 is Friday night.

 

We are convienwntly located across the hall from the Starbucks in the Franklin room.  

<promo off>

[Disciple of Sakura]

2 hours ago, Thoramel said:

Unfortunately, Origins released details on the paint n take on Facebook this week and it looks to be wizkids models and Vallejo paints exclusively. Although they do have some sort of contest going on for models painted in the paint n take area. That's kind of a drag because there were always a lot of smaller miniature companies in the paint n take area that may not get that exposure now.

Ooof. Reaper's ceding the miniatures front to Wizkids? That's not great.

[Disciple of Sakura]

Weird question, but why was this moved from Reaper General, which claims to be about "all things Reaper" to "Off Topic Rampancy"? It's explicitly about Reaper not being at Origins. Doesn't that have to do with "all things Reaper?"

[DocPiske]

Origins this year was... different. Not bad, but no Reaper Mini, no Cool Mini or Not, no Games Workshop or Forge World, no Wyrd Games, no Crocodile Games. Did all these miniature companies coincidentally decide not to come this year? Or is Origins somehow discouraging mini companies? Iron Wind Metals was there and of course WizKids along with Gale Force 9 and a few other smaller companies, but it seemed weird.

 

I still had fun and spent too much money, but it was... different.