Hello again everyone,
Apologies for the lateness of this Development Diary. I had intended for this to be released last Friday but unfortunately some non-LRP related activities caught up with me.
Still It’s December. Crisp dead leaves fall gently to the ground. There is an eerie silence. A cold chill runs through the air. Something stirs. Something more concept than creature. What does it herald?
Well it heralds the second part of our LRP Financing series of course. Following on from last Thursday’s post regarding how we go about financing a LRP event, tonight we will be discussing how we take those proposed costs and start turning them into a ticketing system. I am going to consider each of ticket types in turn and set out our intentions for these and why we have selected the method of distribution that we have chosen. Some are going to be a lot more complex than others so, with the light dwindling, lets look at this monster of a topic…
Accessibility Tickets
I have been LRPing for a little over seventeen years now. Back when I started LRPing, I was still in secondary school and at that time it was cheaper for me to attend a LRP event for a weekend than it was to buy a box of Warhammer from the local Games Workshop (and I think, in some cases, that may still be true – but I digress). To help evidence this being the case, I thought it fun to include the pamphlet that was given to me for my first ever weekend long, non-festival LRP event that I ever attended back in March 2010. As you will see – you will struggle to get catering for an event at £30 nowadays, let alone a full weekend of roleplay and combat…
It’s exactly that issue which is why Accessibility Tickets are so important to me and the rest of the team. A lot of us had the luxury of starting LRP when site and event costs were cheaper. That luxury is long since gone and as such, the cost of entry into this hobby has never been higher. Despite this, one thing hasn’t changed – and that is that LRP is fundamentally a community driven hobby. It requires other people to flourish, whether that is one person or a thousand. As expenses rise however, it becomes harder for established LRPers to continue playing and for new individuals to join the scene. Accessibility Tickets go a little way to fixing that issue.
That however is not to say that they only serve this purpose. The fact remains that every individual in our hobby brings their own unique voice and story to the tale we are all trying to collaboratively tell. Despite this, it is not hard to notice that our hobby is devoid of voices from certain groups – notably people of colour and disabled people. Our Accessibility Ticket policy makes it clear that individuals from those groups are welcome to apply for these tickets – to let them know that they are welcome and that we will take steps to minimise the barriers to entry into our hobby.
It is also for these reasons that we also never ask why someone wants an Accessibility Ticket. We do not expect individuals to justify themselves. As soon as we do that we’re not being accessible – we’re being judgmental. In simple terms, it completely undermines the point of this ticket in the first place…
That being said, Accessibility Tickets are not a quick fix for all of these issues. They are merely one tool in making our community a more accepting place and we understand there is more that we can do as a Game Team to make that happen. That means looking at more accessible sites going forward, what we can do to reduce overall costs for those who might not normally be able to attend and how we can better facilitate new voices feeling welcome in the hobby. It is not a simple task and one which we know as a Game Team we cannot fix alone – but we are determined to try, as best we can.
Standard Tickets or “Why Lotteries?”
There is very little to be said about Standard Tickets other than to say that we always intend for these to represent at least 50% of the overall ticket pool for our events. These are the tickets that ultimately go furthest towards helping our event run so we don’t expect them to disappear anytime soon. No, instead I am going to discuss that most dreaded of topics and that is… the lottery system.
The lottery system certainly wasn’t around when I initially started LRPing but certainly has come to prominence in the last decade or so as the internet has led to more and more people learning about the hobby and different types of LRP events have started to appear that cater to smaller audiences than festival LRPs. With that interest, you may be wondering – Chris, you’re a business, why not sell tickets on a first come, first served basis? You could sell out quickly and not have to worry too much about whether the event will run in the first place!
Well, it all comes back down to accessibility. The fact is that a “fastest finger first” approach ultimately rewards people who are immediately available when bookings open, who have better internet connections or who can pay for a ticket promptly. It penalises, unnecessarily, those individuals who may be working different hours, may not have a working computer or simply cannot afford to pay for a ticket straight away. It is great if you’re running a business looking to make money, but we’re not. We want to run an enjoyable event and build a strong community for the Equinox Institute. In short – it doesn’t work for us.
Lotteries however are not without their issues. From a game organiser perspective, gosh, they take a lot of admin and I mean a lot. You have to send out raffle tickets, plan a draw (and if you want to be transparent, like us, consider how we can ensure that draw is as transparent and open as possible) and work out if there are any special circumstances which may change how the draw works – like group bookings.
Not only that but I honestly believe lotteries stifle excitement around an event. It is hard to get excited when you can’t be certain you will even get a spot. Anxiety flares and some people choose not to book. Alternatively some people book, uncertain as to whether they want to attend but not wanting to miss the opportunity to snag a ticket on the off-chance they might want to attend later on. Altogether, it is not an ideal experience for anyone….
Of course you could alleviate both these issues by hosting private LRPs and inviting only those you want to play with. That’s fine of course. I have even attended a few private LRPs. Yet I want to tell interesting stories with a diverse group of people. In order to facilitate that, i want my LRPs to be open for anyone to express an interest in booking should they so wish.
Despite all this, the LRP community has not really found a way around this. It’s a challenge that I don’t see disappearing anytime soon but is one we are looking at closely as we look to the future and any possible events we might run after Event 1.
Sponsor Tickets or “Why a Silent Bidding System?”
Sponsor Tickets are a very new concept in the LRP community – at least within the UK. My overall understanding is that they have been in use for some time in the Nordic LRP community, mostly as a way of incentivising others to give back to the community and support events. It’s for very much the same reason that we decided to include Sponsor Tickets for The Equinox Institute – something which I have never done with a LRP event or system to date.
For the longest time we considered how we wanted to sell Sponsor Tickets for our event. Originally we considered keeping Sponsor Tickets at a fixed price but making them subject to fastest finger first – a mechanism for those LRPers who wanted to bypass the lottery system to do so if they so wished. The issue is that this didn’t actually alleviate any issues with fastest finger first. If someone had the money but was not available to book when tickets opened – we risked them being unable to obtain a ticket for reasons which were beyond their control. If we made the Sponsor Tickets subject to a lottery system however, we risked removing any real incentive to go for this ticket option. After all, attendees would be essentially paying for the privilege of experiencing the same anxiety as for a Standard Ticket. This seemed counter intuitive.
So we sat down and considered our options and we arrived at the Silent Bidding System – a system which, I am not aware as having been done in the LRP community before (and if anyone has experience or knowledge as to otherwise – please let me know, I am very keen to learn more)!
Our reasoning for this was simple – attendees could choose to pay as little or as much as they liked for a Sponsor Ticket but that ultimately there would be a minimum bid price of £250. This was the amount we needed the tickets to be sold at to acheive Minimum Viable Service. Any further sums received from this we intended to use to increase the quality of the game for everyone involved. That meant that a Sponsor would not receive any in-game or out-of-game benefits with the single exception of getting to bypass the lottery system and gain a place at the event. If a Sponsor’s bid failed, they would immediately drop down into the Standard Ticket pool, ensuring they didn’t lose out because their bid was unsuccessful. This felt the fairest possible method of distribution in light of the challenges faced by a lottery or first come, first served system.
Now the introduction of the Silent Bidding System is not without issues. We have received some feedback for the approach we have taken and I wanted to set out some of these clearly along with our thinking as to how we have aimed to alleviate the issues posed:
- Lack of transparency surrounding level of bids – We originally considered the possibility of running an open and transparent bidding system. After all – we wanted transparency to be at the forefront of what we do, so why shouldn’t it apply to bidding? Except the more we discussed it, the quicker it became apparent that only not did we lack the framework and time as individuals to fully make this system work but that also it ran the risk of turning our limited Sponsor tickets into a bidding war with the possibility of individual’s sniping places at the last minute. While this would give us the benefit of likely acquiring more money, it didn’t feel right in the context of making sure our games felt fully accessible. It felt better to give individuals the opportunity to bid at a level which they were most comfortable at – rather than turning it into a week long on-going competition to secure a spot.
- Valuing profit over community – As we have set out above, there are several ticket options which value the quick influx of lots of cash over accessibility and making the game as widely available to others as possible. Fastest finger first would have likely resulted in the event selling out quickly while an open bidding system would likely drive up cash if this was not the case. We could have scrapped Accessibility Tickets and Sponsor Tickets entirely to create a flat structure but with more expensive tickets. We chose not to. We want our game to be open to as many people as possible from as wide a background as possible while acknowledging that we do, unfortunately, have to sell tickets to run.
Notwithstanding that, the intention of Sponsor Tickets is to give back to our community first and foremost. If every Sponsor paid an additional £5 on their ticket, it could buy a meal for our crew or assist with travel expenses for them to attend our event and make it better for everyone. £100 extra per ticket, allows us to purchase more elaborate props. If –one– person decided to pay £1000 for a ticket, we could buy everyone a standardised custom LRP safe-knife as members of the Equinox Institute. All of these things are aspirational but none of them see us take a profit. Instead they see us feed back into the game and make it better for everyone. - Putting potential attendees in a tough financial position – We understand Sponsor Tickets are ultimately a purchase which is not necessarily available to everyone and only help to alleviate anxiety and concerns for those individuals who can afford to bid at the minimum bid price. That being said, we also don’t control how much people choose to bid for a ticket and nor would we ever encourage someone to put themselves in financial difficulties to attend our LRP or indeed any LRP. We encourage everyone who has bidded to date, or who is considering bidding, to only do so within their means and if that is not possible – to consider a Standard or Accessibility Ticket.
We also understand however that the Feeling of Missing Out (“FOMO”) is common in the LRP community. I can confirm that we as a team are looking to the future and the means by which we can involve as many as people in The Equinox Institute LRP as possible, while staying true to our goal of being a smaller LRP system. We have ideas regarding this but ultimately are not in a position to discuss this at this time – rather we want to make sure our first event goes off with a blast before considering what the future might bring. - Creating a tiered system where Sponsors may use their power to influence others – A system which has different classes of tickets always risks one tier of customers using their influence over others. This is not restricted to Sponsor Tickets. We would be naive to think it doesn’t apply to Standard Tickets where Accessibility Tickets exist. Still in a world where a Sponsor can pay hundreds of pounds more than another individual to attend the same event, it is understandable why some may have concerns. It is for this reason that we have more stringent requirements for Sponsors than other classes of tickets.
For example, by purchasing a Sponsor Ticket, Sponsors have legally agreed to receive the same level of service and quality of game as expected of a Standard Ticket and are required to acknowledge they receive no additional benefits as a result of their purchase. Additionally, we never disclose who our Sponsors are so there is no official acknowledgement that some individuals have paid more than others.
That being said, we also acknowledge that we cannot stop individuals from sharing their purchase of a Sponsor Ticket with others. It’s for this reason that our Social Contract places behavioural expectations on our attendees. We expect everyone to be welcoming, create opportunities for others and to call out bad behaviour which goes against these principles. If someone fails to do so, we will ask them to leave the game. I personally don’t want anyone’s money who intends to go against our community goals – regardless of which level of ticket they have ultimately booked.
We are intrigued to see the outcome of the Sponsor Ticket system. Already from the Game Team side of the fence, we have seen some interesting data and approaches to booking which we intend to share openly with the wider community at a later date. We will of course, also be sharing information regarding any additional income we have made and will, upon the conclusion of the event, share how this was spent. Keep an eye out for future posts regarding this.
Conclusion
Phew! That was a long one! We hope this has proven insightful and useful for those of you wondering just how we go about the ticketing process here at The Equinox Institute LRP. If you’re more interested in booking a ticket then reading about the process however – I can confirm that our Expression of Interest Form, at time of writing, is still open and will close at 23:59 on Tuesday 3 December 2024. If you are still interested in attending our first event – make sure to get your ticket in before then!
Many thanks to all our community for their support. If you had any questions regarding this or The Equinox Institute LRP in general – please do not hesitate to contact us at: equinoxinstitute[at]gmail.com and we will try to come back to you as soon as possible!
Until then [REDACTED]
Chris Lamb
On behalf of The Equinox Institute Team