SDCC Week: Fandom Would be Nothing Without Cons

SDCC Week: Fandom Would be Nothing Without Cons

Where two or more of you are gathered together... that’s a convention.

Limited Run Games returns to San Diego Comic-Con next week, which is a pretty big deal! It’s our chance to connect with you, and that means a lot.

From the outside, SDCC and other events like it might appear to be nothing more than a succession of big announcements and marketing beats from major entertainment publishers, but that’s not really true. Sure, SDCC generates a few dozen interesting press releases and news beats, but those numbers pale in comparison to the tens of thousands of people who gather at the show to just hang out, shop for cool things, and experience the joy of fandom in person at a scale you don’t see on a day-to-day basis.

But the business stuff really amounts to a corollary to the real heart of a convention: the gathering of fans. The news drops and exclusive chase variants wouldn’t happen if so many people didn’t come together to revel in their fandom in the first place—a tradition stretching back nearly a century and a half. The earliest event that resembled a modern science fiction convention supposedly happened in London as far back as 1891, when The Royal Albert Hall hosted a fan event based on an early sci-fi novel.

As science fiction and comic books took form in American and European culture in the early 20th century, like-minded fans frequently gathered together to hang out with people who shared a common passion for all that weird stuff. By all accounts, these meet-ups looked an awful lot like modern cons, with people wearing costumes, selling merchandise, hosting presentations and performances, and generally just having a great time together. The modern convention really took form in the 1960s and ’70s, though, as niche fandoms gained a massive boost from the advent of television. Sci-fi and fantasy fans in the mid-20th century found themselves in an unprecedented cultural niche: the shows, comics, and films they loved reached a mass market audience, but the number of people who wholeheartedly embraced those works were still pretty small. So they reached out and connected with one another to enthuse about the nerdy stuff that their straight-laced peers didn’t care about.

Without conventions, we’d never have made it to The Next Generation.

It was the cancellation of Star Trek in the late ’60s that really got the con circuit ball rolling. Around the same time that Trek found itself reduced to rerun-only status, Stanley Kubrick made science fiction cool with his elegant big-screen adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2001. Oh, also, actual humans landed on the moon for the first time, computers began to creep into daily life, rock musicians scored massive hits about outer space, and the world’s first commercial video game (which was about starship combat) arrived.

Pop culture had wholly embraced science fiction and its glorious visions of the future... except CBS, who killed the world’s most beloved sci-fi program right as mainstream audiences got really excited about outer space. Rather than seethe about it, Star Trek fans began organizing their own get-togethers and events, where they conducted costume contests, exchanged zines and fanfic, and obsessed over details and continuity elements that the show’s writers and producers had never really even considered. Those writers and producers quickly became a part of the convention circuit: within a few years, luminaries like show creator Gene Roddenberry and script writer D.C. Fontana began taking part in these events, which tipped the meet-ups over the precipice from “fan meetup” to “professional industry event.” Trek conventions helped maintain the series’ fandom throughout the 1970s, which in turn motivated CBS and Paramount to explore possible ways to bring back the show and ultimately resulted in 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, an ambitious mess of a movie that nevertheless established Trek as a permanent fixture of pop culture.

Star Trek may be the poster child for the importance of conventions, but it’s hardly unique. Over in the U.K., the BBC organized a small 10th anniversary exhibition of Doctor Who memorabilia at the Longleat Estate in 1973. A weekend setup designed for a few thousand attendees found itself bursting at the seams when more than 40,000 Doctor Who fanatics descended on the place in order to get a first-hand glimpse of Cybermen and Daleks. Both official and fan conventions dedicated to the show sprang up throughout the ’70s and into the ’80s—not only in the U.K., but in other locations like Australia, the U.S., and Europe as the BBC licensed its broadcasts internationally and created new fans abroad. After that show was also canceled, in 1989, annual gatherings like Panopticon kept the torch(wood) burning by drawing fans together and giving them the chance to meet the former stars of the show, as well as beloved faces from related properties like Blake’s 7.

The first Doctor Who exhibition in 1973 annihilated attendance records.

Source: x.com/Dalek6388

That thin line between professional and fan event extends into video games, too. Consider PAX, which began as a local meet-up for fans of the Penny Arcade comic called “NecrowombiCon.” It became popular enough that it grew into Penny Arcade Expo, attracted the interest of major companies like Nintendo, spun out into several nationwide events, and outgrew multiple convention centers along the way. PAX is a franchise at this point, but when you actually set foot inside of PAX, you quickly realize that the vendor hall with its endless rows of shops and stalls is simply secondary to the opportunity for friends and fans to hang out together for a few days and have a great time. The same goes for anime events, many of which grew out of meetings where a few devoted importers would host screenings of unofficially subtitled video tapes.

Fans and people are the engine that powers the convention scene. Not every con grows to the size of Portland Retro Gaming Expo or Otacon, but that’s not really even the point. Conventions are a chance to meet up, socialize, and share your love for your favorite works and creators—something that remains as valuable in the present day of social media and forums as it was before home computers even existed. In a way, conventions are to social media what physical media is to digital distribution: the same thing, but more real.

So, with that being said, be sure to come visit your favorite purveyors of physical games (that’s us) at SDCC! Booth 536! We’ll see you there... and if not there, well, we plan to show up at other events throughout the year, too. Stay tuned.