Convention Game

Basic Department Description

Creates an at-con game, or games, that attendees can play. Develops and implements the game throughout the year. Works heavily with theming.

Email: [email protected] (These are the forward facing "job" emails that get posted to the public and forward emails to your personal VF email. Your personal VF email is what you log in to and use to read and respond to emails.)

The Convention Game is a year-by-year at-convention game that invites attendees to play. Each year the game is different and ties into the theme of the con. The game needs to engage all range of people at the con, due to a wide range of technology access, but generally engages the subset of attendees that enjoy puzzle solving and convention themes.

This is best run by anyone with game development experience. (video game, board game, or camp games) Game design, iteration, teamwork, writing skills and scope are must have skills for this.

Yearly Responsibilities

The convention game is a yearly tradition to engage and entertain convention attendees. There is no specific to what the game is, but some guidelines on how to create or reuse popular convention games at VancouFur. Because of this, the Convention Game department is extremely variable and needs tight management year-round to ensure it delivers something by time the convention happens.

Important Points

• Engagement is hard to get at-con
• Group play is a priority
• Solo play cannot be ignored
• Not everyone reads twitter or the con book
• Not everyone has online access at-con
• Updates need an obvious and central locations
• Instructions must be clear and simple
• Make it fun

Your Department and Others

Theming and Story departments can tie directly into the Convention Game, and often have great overlap. But this is up to each year's game to determine how they can work together, depending on what is to delivered.

Make sure that other departments are brought into the planning phases of cross-department work, to ensure the other departments have time to plan for any additional work.

9 Months before con, what do you need to have done?

• High level design
• Central mission statement
• Rough milestone dates
• Approval on high-level design from the chair

6 Months before con, what do you need to have done?

• Detained design

• Core pillars locked in
• High-level design locked in
• Milestones defined

• Materials estimate, if required
• Budget estimate
• Volunteer estimates
• Cross-department designs and discussions
• Milestones, tasks and high-level scope
• Prototype of the game and/or software needed
• Approval on design and budget from the chair

3 Months before con, what do you need to have done?

• Completed design

• No new features or items

• Approved budget
• Task progress for building the game features / materials
• Scope trim and cut features as necessary
• Volunteers list and tasks
• Schedule of events at-con, as necessary
• Cross-department designs completed

2 Months before con, what do you need to have done?

• All materials ordered
• Designs locked in
• Final scope cuts
• Completion of some tasks for building features / materials

1 Month before con, what do you need to have done?

• Send in your BEO's to Hotel Lead

• Banquet Event/Equipment Order
• This is what the hotel needs to set up for your room if applicable.
• Tables, chairs, exact room layouts

• Contact logistics to coordinate moving materials to the convention space
• Coordinate final details with IT
• Completion of nearly all tasks for building features / materials

• Polish tasks only after this point

• Complete all pre-con cross-department items

• Conbook and printing items must be done

• Final schedule details for at-con events

After the Convention/Before the Firing Party

• Make sure all your volunteers (and yourself) got inputted into the system for their hours.
• Update your guide with any new/relevant information/changes.
• A staff feedback survey will be emailed out and sent into the staff chats. Please fill this out ASAP!
• Make any staffing suggestions to the next years' chair. (If you want to work again, staff who excelled and where, etc.)^[[[a]]]
• If VancouFur owes you money for department spending, PLEASE PLEASE send your reciepts to [email protected] & [email protected] and then fill out [[1]]

Break down of contacts

• Convention Game falls under the Events Branch and Executive
• Other cross-department contacts depends on the design of the game