Video Games Room + Artists' Alley

[MorbiusMonster]

I was quite pleased with the facilities provided within both the Video Games Room and Artists' Alley; the Video Games room was spacious to allow storage of several volunteering consoles and games whilst the Artists' Alley, either as part of the hotel or just someone volunteering, supplied various teas. However, there is one thing that I don't understand...

Both Lancaster and York, despite, from what I could gather, being allocated to the convention's use, were only really used from 8pm onwards. I'm surprised that both rooms weren't open earlier or throughout the day. I can understand if it's a matter that only Pantharas and Rin for the Games Room and Alley respectively were the only ones to volunteer to run those rooms - both of which did a very good job by the way, keeping it a friendly environment - but would it be possible that, from next year, there could be a rotating volunteer process to keep them running for longer?

Also, one thing that I noticed about the video games room is the lack of gaming events. I know there was a Halo Tournament and Super Smash Bros, but I'm surprised that these were the only events taking place. Does the convention only run these events based on requests from the convention goers or do they have a set of events they want to do, but these were the most popular/feasible? If you want, I could easily bring in Just Dance again next year or we could hold racing tournaments?

-MM

[Nidonocu]

Part of it comes down to what games are available, for example the fact that Mario Kart 8 came out right -after- the convention was highly frustrating!

Likewise only a select number of FPS games these days still do good System Link play so Halo 4 was all we had on offer in terms of shooters. I myself would be keen for a Pokémon event next year which we didn't have time to organise this year!

It also comes down to what games are still being played, our Rock Band set for example saw little use this year.

As for scheduling, those rooms were used for other events during the day (such as the species battles in York and Kerbal Space Program in Lancaster), likewise we only have so many staff and keeping a room open all day requires a lot of them. Obviously if we're able to find more trusted volunteers to look after all the donated equipment and monitor the rooms, longer opening times might be possible in future.

[Skipai]

Well, I'm happy to help on that if need be, see how it goes nearer to the time for the next convention.  Can't see how hard it would be to help the games room remain open.