delta h con is a mess

Delta H Con is an anime convention held in Houston, Texas which claims to be a convention for “gaming enthusiasts” and “anime aficionados”. It has panels, tournaments, artist alley, dealers room, events and more. I made the mistake of tabling at this convention this year.

Even before it started, Delta H Con was a surprise (derogatory):

Delta H Con wants YOU to spotlight your Indie Game on our convention floor! Get the chance to interact with convention goers, exhibit your game, and so much more!

But when I tried applying for this free indie table, I found that the form did not work due to cross-site origin errors in Firefox and Chrome. I tried applying on different computers to no avail. Thankfully, the contact form worked and I sent them a message about this issue on April 10th. They never contacted me back.

It wasn’t until June 24th that I suddenly received an email out of the blue saying that I’ve been accepted as a vendor at Delta H Con. For some reason, my company name had been spelled as “Exo Drifter” instead of “exodrifter” as it was on my application. Strange. But stranger still was the following phrase on the email:

If you need power, it is a $100 charge from the hotel. You can purchase this as a straight pass thru on our website

Wild! Free tables for indie developers, but there’s no power. I didn’t recall seeing this stipulation when I applied, but it was indeed mentioned on the website when I applied — I had simply missed it. Remembering how buggy their site was, I didn’t feel comfortable paying it online and I decided to borrow battery power from my friends instead.

This was only one of many issues I encountered with Delta H Con.

weather

Hurricane Beryl passed through Houston just a few days before the convention and as a result many people in Houston were left without power. However, Delta H Con sent an email that Wednesday saying that the convention was still on, claiming that the hotel had been checking for storm damage since Monday and found none.

I came to find this claim dubious when I arrived at the convention, as an acquaintance had found themselves with a leaky ceiling above their table and my sister told me about another artist staying at the hotel who didn’t have a working AC. In fact, the room that the artists and dealers were in was so humid that some people got water damage on their prints as they warped from the moisture. This humidity was not an issue at previous events even when it rained.

In any case, I think these problems are on the hotel rather than the convention organizers. Some of this may have happened because the hotel was also in the process of getting a new roof, but I don’t know if that’s related for sure or not.

open questions

Many things were not made clear before the event started, so when I was finally there in person I found myself asking the staff to clarify things.

One of the things I didn’t know was what the hours were for the convention. It was pretty easy to find hours for the attendees, but I didn’t know when the floor would be open to exhibitors. I didn’t know when the room I was in would be open and when it would be locked up. I found a staff member who didn’t really seem sure about the hours at all, making educated guesses to the hours despite literally having the key to the room, saying that it should be open one hour before the event started at 9 AM and that it would be locked at 9 PM, two hours after the event ends at 7 PM. However, I found out in the convention magazine that there was an event being held in the room after 7 PM and that the room I was in specifically was stated as being open until midnight!

I also didn’t know if we were allowed to sell merchandise. Artists and dealers had their own rules and I knew that there was a convention-wide rule that food could not be sold. I knew that San Japan has a rule explicitly forbidding indie developers with free tables from selling and that 2D Con doesn’t have any free tables, but it explicitly granted permission to indie developers to sell. Given that the tables at Delta H Con were technically free, I wasn’t sure what kind of rule the convention would have.

I had brought copies of Gender Dysphoria to sell, and I showed one of these copies to staff when I asked them if I could sell it. They all said that they didn’t see why not, but when I mentioned what San Japan was doing they directed me to ask the head organizer of the event, Sarah. And where was Sarah, exactly, so I could ask her? Nobody seemed to know. I walked around asking staff at random until I found someone who did.

I shared the question I had with her, and I noticed that she was considering it when I remembered that I should probably share all of the relevant details. This was a mistake on my part because as soon as I mentioned San Japan’s rule of not allowing sales for free indie game developers, she immediately decided that Delta H Con should have the same rule.

I was so stunned and disappointed by the lack of care and consideration that I accepted this without argument. I went back to tell the other indie game developer that sales would not be allowed, as they had also optimistically produced physical copies of their game to sell.

offline games room

There are actually two gaming rooms at the event: the Electronic Games room and the Offline Games room. The Electronic Games room had arcade cabinets (including a rare F-Zero AX cab) and a bunch of consoles and computers set up for people to play. They also planned to hold gaming tournaments in that room. The Offline Games room, on the other hand was little more than a bunch of tables and a checkout counter where you could borrow tabletop games.

As it turns out, the indie game tables were all placed in the offline games room. Of the six tables that were supposed to appear, only three showed on Friday — me, another indie video game developer named Ivan working on BioGun, and an indie tabletop designer named Caroline Brock who made Matchy Matchy and Feast of Olympians.

While some attendees would occasionally come to check out board games, periodically attendees would show up confused. I would learn that these people were showing up for events that had been cancelled. In fact, none of the scheduled events were held in the room that day, but that hadn’t been communicated to attendees. For the nine hours I spent on the floor, only three people decided to interact with my table — and they had originally arrived for a cancelled event.

Of course, attendees aren’t required to interact with me and I’m not owed their attention, but I am pretty confident this low traffic was due to the room that we were in. Other than the cancelled events, the room was only for borrowing tabletop games which was a low draw for attendees. Besides, if anyone was interested in video games they would probably just go to the Electronic Games room instead where you could play a bunch of games on different consoles, play on one of the PCs, play arcade games, or participate in tournaments.

closing

It’s pretty clear to me that the indie game tables are an afterthought by the convention organizers. Even though attendance at conventions tends to be low on Friday, there wasn’t enough thought and consideration put into supporting the indies that do show up. You can’t sell, you’re put in a room with extremely low foot traffic, and no note is made that you’re even at the convention outside of a small section in the convention magazine. You’re set up to fail. It feels a little like you’re doing the convention a favor by making an empty room appear less empty. I will not return to Delta H Con and if you’re a video game developer I don’t think it’s worth the time.