Be Kind, Always.

A few weeks ago, we exhibited at Emerald City Comicon. Typically when we attend conventions, we try to create some spectacle that captures people’s attention and sells games. Like the time we brought a marching band to PAX Australia.

At ECCC, we set up a “Pay What You Want” booth and encouraged people to give us any amount of money in exchange for our games. We put games on a table, set up some signs, stood off to the side, and waited to see what would happen.

We brought 2000 games. Before the convention began, we took bets on what would happen:

Tom thought we’d sell out in a few hours.

Alex thought we’d run out on the of the second day of the con.

Trin thought that we would not run out of games because we are no longer cool or relevant.

Jenn got a fever and didn’t know what was happening.

We were all wrong. 

The doors opened, and attendees swarmed the booth. Within five minutes attendees realized they could just take games and walk away. A small group grabbed armfuls of free games and left, but most people paid something. Within an hour, the booth looked like this:

We ran out of games in 51 minutes.and made $8042.48, or 18.7% of the games’ retail value. In other words, we lost $685.44 per minute.

Attendees put lots of other stuff in the payment box too.

Some things you put in our box:

Five Canadian Dollars ($3.72 USD)

Ten Euros ($10.66 USD)

Eighty Philippine Pesos ($1.59 USD)

One Chinese Yuan ($0.14 USD)

One Cubone Pokemon Card, XY Breakthrough (Avg price - $0.68 USD)

One Magic: The Gathering Eternal Masters booster pack wrapper (No Value)

One handwritten “Any Pizza Free” and “Twisted Flicks + KPC” Coupon from a Papa Murphy’s in Kirkland, WA (Estimated Value $25.00 USD)

One $1 Bill folded into a bowtie ($1.00 USD)

One “FeelTheBurn.org” $1 bill. ($1.00 USD)

Two halves of a $1 bill ($1.00 USD )

Once we sold out, we had to figure out what to do with our booth space. 

On Saturday, we gave our space to artists who weren’t able to get a table at the con. People showed up to exhibit cosplay horns, board games, recycled journals, and comic art.

On the last day of the con, we set up a station for mailing letters to representatives.

We provided pens, paper, postage, envelopes, writing tips, and the address of every US Senator. 

Over 200 letters were written by con attendees, including the most bad ass Imperator Furiosa cosplayer we’ve ever seen.

Sir Nicholas Winton is a humanitarian who organized a rescue operation that saved the lives of 669 Jewish Czechoslovakia children from Nazi death camps, and brought them to the safety of Great Britain between the years 1938-1939.

After the war, his efforts remained unknown. But in 1988, Winton’s wife Grete found the scrapbook from 1939 with the complete list of children’s names and photos. Sir Nicholas Winton is sitting in an audience of Jewish Czechoslovakian people who he saved 50 years before.

Aileen Wuornos testifying that the murder of her first victim, Richard Mallory, was in self defense. Wuornos claimed that he had “violently” raped her and he would have killed her if she had not taken action first. Mallory’s body was discovered in scrub wrapped tightly in a carpet with three bullet wounds, the two to the chest had pierced his lungs and killed him.