Month: September 2012

The GaymerCon Team is proud to announce that Team GaymerCon is partnering with Extra Life 2012  to raise money for local children’s hospitals! If you don’t know about Extra Life..check it out. It’s cool stuff and it’s for a really great cause – helping sick kids get an extra life!

 

From the Extra Life website: For the last four years, thousands of gamers have joined together annually to play for 24 hours for Extra Life — a gaming marathon in support of Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals®. Gamers rally friends and family members to sponsor their play. The funds they raise go to help save and improve the lives of kids at the CMN Hospital in their community. Since 2008, our incredible players have raised more than 2 million dollars, and this year, on October 20th, 2012 we believe they will outdo themselves yet again.

And we at GaymerCon hate to disappoint! That’s why we’re planning to have a big gaming bash in San Francisco for 24 hours straight, livestreaming it on the webs and raising money for a good cause. Once we have the livestreaming link, we’ll update this post and send it out on our socials.

 

Here’s the deets:

WHEN:  WHENEVER. You can game whenever you want for 24 hours. The Team GaymerCon party’s going to be October 20, 2012, starting at 8am going into 8 am on August 21st.

WHERE:  ANYWHERE. Literally. If you want to game while planking (is that still a thing?), more power to you. We’ll announce where we plan to hold our bash as soon as we can.

GAME/PLATFORM:  ANYTHING. Any games on any platforms. Because #EverybodyGames

HOW IT WORKS:  Like most marathon fundraisers, you ask your friends and family to sponsor your efforts.  They can make a per-hour, monthly, or one-time pledge.  Every bit helps. Then you do your part to game like you’ve never gamed before.

WHO IT BENEFITS:  Participants select the children’s hospital they want to play for during registration.  In the US and Canada there are more than 170 CMN Hospitals to choose from.  Players may also choose to play for hospitals in the UK and Australia, though gamers from anywhere are free, and encouraged, to join in.

So come join or donate to Team GaymerCon, and we look forward to seeing you on October 20th!

Stage Selected!

This has been a long time coming, and we thank you for your patience. Choosing a venue was not an easy decision– what with all the great hotels in San Francisco. We have worked hard and ruined many pairs of shoes walking all over the great city and we feel very strongly that we’ve made the decision that is most in the interest of our fans.

 

The Hotel Kabuki

At the peak of San Francisco’s Japantown, this will be our main hotel and will host most of our GaymerCon events. With spacious rooms, beautiful furnishings and even a Japanese garden with koi pond, the Kabuki offers a really special con experience.

 

The Hotel Tomo

Just across a courtyard from the Kabuki we find Hotel Tomo. For those of you who like things nice but want their con experience to be a bit more “fun”, you’ll probably fall in love with this hotel just as we did. With its J-Pop style decor, bright colors, and fun attitude we expect the Tomo to be a big hit with gaymers.

 

The two hotels are open now for reservations!

 

Click Here to reserve at the Hotel Kabuki

Click Here to reserve at the Hotel Tomo

 

We chose Japantown as a location because the atmosphere was so much more welcoming and festive than other places in the city. We want a place where people can have a really fun experience and where people can be comfortable expressing themselves. The Kabuki will be our central spot for all our events but we are in the process of speaking with several other Japantown locations about hosting fun stuff during GaymerCon and we’ll be sure to keep you posted as we hear back!

Our convention sure is blooming into something great!

 

Create Your Own Video Wearing Purple for a chance to win a signed XBox 360s, Boomphones, and more! 

Growing up isn’t easy. Young people today have to deal with many challenges and obstacles on their way to adulthood. Bullying shouldn’t have to be one of them. Harassment for the sake of someone’s gender identity or sexuality is something many of us have lived through and that young people today still experience. It is something that costs the lives of young people to suicide or violence even in these times when things are getting better.  Young people can learn from the example of adults and their peers and sometimes all it takes is showing a little support.

That’s why in participation with GLAAD, GaymerCon’s site and staff will “go purple” on October 19th. We will be joining the millions of Americans across the country wearing purple on Spirit Day to raise awareness and show our support for LGBT youth.

Click here to take the pledge and go purple with us on October 19th!

But not only that! Being queers and geeks, this matter hits us pretty close to heart as many of us grew up knowing or even being victims of bullying. Because of this, GaymerCon is going to be holding a contest to see who can make the best video raising awareness and showing your colors for Spirit Day. Tell us about being a LGBTQ or allied youth in high school or college and how you’ve experienced or dealt with bullying, or maybe how things have gotten better since becoming an adult. Two first prizes! One for GaymerCon staff vote and one for the video with the most upvotes on YouTube – each gets a 250GB Xbox 360 signed by the Xbox Live staff, as well as a Coin Entered pass to GaymerCon. We also have Boomphones (Headphones that are also boomboxes – say WHAT!) and passes to GaymerCon for lucky winners! Submissions end 10/12, so get to it!

 

Click here to watch the video for the GaymerCon “Go Purple for Spirit Day”  video and rules!

We are very pleased and excited to announce that GaymerCon has its first official publisher support. Electronic Arts, who are not only a huge force in video games, but also one of the most progressive companies in the games and tech industry, will have a significant presence at GaymerCon.

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Full press release after the break!

… Read more

Hey Gaymers,

As you may be aware, events have transpired in the last 48 hours that directly and indirectly affect GaymerCon and our community that we would like to address.

Here are the facts, as we are aware: Over the weekend the Reddit sub-group r/Gaymers received a cease-and-desist letter from Chris Vizzini of Gaymer.org over the trademark of the term “gaymer.” We received no such letter, and there was a brief question whether we were involved in any way with the cease-and-desist because of an article and tweet by Gaymer.org in favor of us. We assure you we were not involved, a fact later confirmed by Mr. Vizzini, who has also removed his article about us.

We personally have never had an interaction with the site. Our only engagement was back in early 2012 when we had registered GaymerCon with the state. We saw that Gaymer.org had registered the trademark for use but we took note of the phrasing of Mr. Vizzini’s quote about this issue from 2007:

“…My intention with registering the TM was to protect my self from misdirected traffic. .com, .org, .bunghole, whatever. And to protect yourself from that, you’d have to register each domain seperately. And at 1200 bux a pop, that was not feasable, so I had to register gaymer the word.

 

Im not trying to swipe anything from anyone. Just protect something I’ve put countless hours and thousands of dollars into developing. So I appreciate your uninformed petition against the trademark. What is wrong with people?

 

If someone wants to make panty hose and call it Gaymer, i dont give a shit. I just dont want ppl swiping what I have an interest in, and thats this site and all the members.”
Based on this statement, and specific instances of the term “gaymer,” which we can personally recall dating back far before any knowledge of Gaymer.org came to our attention, we believed that we could use the name GaymerCon to accuratly reflect the community that we were trying to build.

While we understand Mr. Vizzini’s desire to protect his trademark and not lose it to generic usage, we feel strongly that “gaymer” is a generic term. Even if it had not been used before 2001 (it had), we feel that it’s so commonly used by the gay geek community, (including not just Reddit and Gaymer.org, but also GayGamer.net, Facebook Groups, and even reality shows) that it is unfair to have that term coined and locked down to ONE community.

LGBTQ or ally, we are all trying to bring the cause that r/Gaymers has helped champion to the larger public and show the gay geeks of the world that there IS a safe space for them and that there IS a community for them. We respect, love, and cherish the r/Gaymers community, as well as all the gaymer and gay geek communities across the world.

We understand the legal challenges potentially at issue, but we feel that “gaymer” is a widely used, generic term and that what affects our brothers, sisters, and allies at Reddit affects us as well. We are in full support of our communities, and wish to lend our support however we can.

Moving forward, if r/Gaymers is forced to change its name, such a result could set in motion a mass rippling effect with various legal implications  affecting all commnuities of gaymers everywhere.  Although Mr. Vizzini’s trademark does not cover public conventions like ours, we understand the issues r/Gaymers and Toronto Gaymers are now facing, and support the need to keep the term gaymers synonymous with gay geeks and available for use by all.
We’re confident that this matter can be resolved in a way that benefits the entire community. The original intention of this trademark was to protect the community, and its imperative that we all reach a common ground and not splinter ourselves with infighting.

We love gaymers.

We are gaymers.

We support and stand by our fellow communities.

Thank you for reading this and your continued support of GaymerCon and our cause.

– The GaymerCon Team

 

Last night, at 8:53 PM PST, the GaymerCon Kickstarter Boss Battle came to an end. After 30 days of non stop fighting – including a dangerous mini boss who cast curse on us – we managed to rally the forces and slay the Kickstarter Boss. We gained a ton of XP (and by XP we mean new friends...1,531 of them!), but we also found a ton of Gil! In fact, 91,389 pieces! :O

 

We are thrilled, honored, amazed, and humbled by the response. We got covered by Forbes, Huffington Post, BBC, Game Politics, and IGN, and got support from amazing groups like Penny Arcade, Mega64, Xbox LIVE, the voices of GLaDOS and the Sniper, and Zach Weiner.

We crushed nearly all of our stretch goals, unlocking a GaymerConcert, Gaymer Brunch (for $100+ pledgers), and the Gaymer Celebrity Boss of Honor! In the coming month, as we book our venue, we are closing deals with some bands and one -really- big celebrity that, once that happens, we are very excited to announce.

The one goal that we didn’t hit was $100K for GaymerConnect – but we still are going to go for it! Honestly, that number was a bit of an arbitrary goal – we wanted to do something like GaymerConnect anyways, but the extra funds that we raised can go into getting design, front-end, and back-end developer help. If you’re an engineer or developer and would like to help out, please drop Andrew (our Tech Director) an email at [email protected]. We’re excited to make this a reality – but please keep in mind that making what we want to do is a lot of work and time, so it may be a short while before it’s up to full speed, but we’ll keep you in the loop on our progress!

 

 

Wow. We have over 1,200 attendees for GaymerCon and its 11 months out. The next things that you’ll hear from us in the next month or so are:

– What Venue we have locked down

– What hotels we are working with

– Launching GaymerCon 2.0 with Panel Picker, Forums and more!

– When we’re going to open up badges again for sale (depending on the size of the venue)

– Our Celebrity Boss of Honor as well as Minibosses of Honor to join Zach Weiner, Mike Fass (Zangief – Street Fighter: The Later Years), and Jon Brence 

– Our Musicial Guests to help accompany EZKL and Aethernaut

 

 

We are thrilled to have the opportunity to make GaymerCon not just a reality, but something truly special. We look forward to hearing your thoughts, ideas, cosplay ideas, panel suggestions, and seeing your purty faces in SF next year. Stay tuned to this blog, gaymercon.org, and our FB and Twitter for more updates!

 

You are amazing. We’re showing the world that #everyonegames. GAYMERS UNITE!!!!!!!!