Conventions

Earlier today, Anime Expo announced the release of an iPhone/iPad app for this year’s convention and some of the people I follow on Twitter took contention with the fact that it’s not a free app – rather, it’s priced at $1.99. Not expensive but still fodder for observers in the wake of learning tickets for Main Events – the concerts and Masquerade – will start $15 for 4-day attendees ($15 if obtained online, $20 on-site) and cost $30 for 1-day/2-day attendees, which Zac Bertschy complained about on a recent ANNCast with the fear that it might cause other cons to charge for similar events, something I don’t wish to become a trend.

I already decided months ago that I wouldn’t attend this year’s AX because 1) it’s a long drive and 2) I’m going to Otakon later in July so that’ll be my big “industry” con of the summer. However, I still want to briefly write about these two pricing matters. First, I can understand charging for concerts because they are an extra event (people often pay more for concerts, right?) but the Masquerade, despite being a well-attendance event, is not something I would be inclined to do as an organizer because of the amateur, fan-based nature of the event.

Those who don’t want to pay but still want to attend the events do have a last-resort free option:

If a particular Main Event has not sold out, a limited number of tickets may be available for free after the start of the event at the discretion of the Main Events ticketing staff. It is recommended that interested attendees purchase a Reserved Seating ticket either online or at the Main Events Ticketing Booth.

Anime Expo is a large event – last year’s attendance was 44,000 – and so there are significant costs in putting on such the entire ordeal. Part of that cost is paid through the registration fees from attendees. (I think other sources include exhibitor and artist alley space costs as well as sponsorships.) This year’s pre-registration price for a 4-day pass is currently $75 and I suppose some attendees may have expectations that concert or masquerade entry fees would be included in that.

Now onto the iPhone app, an easier subject. The features of the application [iTunes page] include a sortable schedule, an searchable exhibitor index & map, a map of nearby businesses, convention announcements, the ability to save items to your favorites, and some upcoming items such as a crossword puzzle, blog articles, and photo gallery. I assume there are some development costs involved in putting the app together so $1.99 sounds reasonable for what you get. If you don’t want to pay for the convenience of having all that on an Apple mobile device, that’s fine – there will still be daily PDF schedules you can download or the listings in the printed guide you’ll get in the registration bag.

I would prefer there be a platform-neutral mobile schedule for convention updates, like Fanime had this year. (I wouldn’t be able to use the AX app because I have an Android phone.) It was nice to quickly know about changes to panel times and get a quick glance at which events were happening concurrently, something that I could check in the printed Pocket Guide except for the events that has scheduling changes over the weekend.

To sum up: both the priced ticket events and the iPhone app are optional things that many fans may not need to deal in order to attend and enjoy the convention. The ticket costs are a bother for those who do want to attend those events and I’m sure a fair number of people are willing to pay for the concerts and not very many, if any, will pay for the masquerade. No one is forcing anyone to purchase and use the iPhone app so the pricing should be less of a concern, particularly for resourceful attendees who do some planning ahead.