It’s been almost a week since I got back, but I totally forgot to post how it went, but damn I have a lot to say.
First, holy fuck I didn’t realize Genshin Impact was as popular as it is. By far the game/series that had the most amount of cosplayers was Genshin Impact, and the most popular cosplay by far for Genshin was Raiden Shogun. For a gacha game, especially one made in China, I didn’t think it would have the fanbase that it does, but it does, and I bit the bullet and started playing it on Monday. The game’s pretty fun imo, but it’s honestly up to you how you wanna do it.
Anyways, I got there on Thursday, settled into the Airbnb I was staying in with friends, then I found parking. For any convention at the GWCC, unless it’s full, park in the Red Deck, it’ll save you so much time walking, as you can access all three buildings the GWCC has from the Red Deck by using the walkway on the 7th floor.
Thursday I mainly did Karaoke and took pictures with cosplayers, but that was pretty damn fun. The whole setup for the convention was cool, it was all 4 floors of building B, with the first floor being autographs, the vendor hall, and all the e-sports stuff, and the other 3 floors were for panels. Friday I just went around to a bunch of panels, there were a few woke panels, I just didn’t go to them, but I did go to karaoke and a “cosplaying on a budget” panel.
Saturday was the start of Smash, didn’t do well, but I’m taking a break from Smash anyways, waiting on a new controller, but after that, I didn’t really feel like doing much, so I took a ton of pictures, bought a few shirts and then went to karaoke, before I found out about a party going on at a nightclub that night, and holy fuck was it fun.
Got there, it opened at 10, but it started slow AF, and people didn’t really fill it up until 11:30, but once people started going at it, I had tons of fun. I have no clue if they were employees at the nightclub, but they had a Raven, a Catwoman, a mummified Anhka and some random kitsune cosplayer (couldn’t tell who they were dressed up ass) rotate being on stage and showing off, but that was fun as hell. The rave ended at a solid 3 in the morning, and I went straight back to that Airbnb because I wanted to enjoy Momocon before it ended at 5 on Sunday.
On Sunday I didn’t do much, I mainly just walked around, took more pictures with cosplayers (which I should probably specify, there were so many from Genshin, so many people just wearing UA’s PE uniform from My Hero Academia, a ton of black guys being lazy and just wearing Akatsuki cloaks, a bunch of Mitsuru from Demon Slayer, a ton of Miruko, I’d say about 25-30 percent of the people there were cosplaying, which I definitely need to do.
Anyway, the last thing I went to was a panel explaining what Genshin Impact is and what the world’s about, which is why I started playing it on Monday. Very fun weekend, and I might go to more cons, it just depends on location, if there’s a Smash or FGC major as well as the panels, as I spent way too much time listening and doing karaoke last weekend.
While pretty much none of that sounds fun to me, I'm glad to see reports of normal events again and people being able to have fun. It's funny because I like anime, manga, and JRPGs quite a bit just have absolutely zero interest in the convention scene or really anything like it. I'd expected Genshin Impact to flop when it came out, but I've seen way too much about it so at least must be a bit good. Every time I've thought about trying it I end up reminding myself I've already got 100 other games I could play and I don't need to go play a gacha game.
I did go to the Indy 500 though, where it felt like about 10% of the crowd were "cosplaying" in clothing indicating various levels of hate for Joe Biden.
I'm glad you had fun. I play Genshin and am continually surprised by how popular Raiden is. I dislike her character as presented, fundamentally. She becomes slightly redeemed in epilogues of the main story, but it was an uphill battle for me to ignore what had come before. I wonder if people really like her character, or they just like how she looks.
You didn't mention trouble with the hazmat policy of this event, which is striking to me. I loathe to ask, but what were the impositions you had to deal with concerning mandates and policies impeding the fun?
I ask because it coincides with a similar event I witnessed last weekend: "Combo Breaker." This is one of the staple yearly fighting game tournaments. I tuned in as I often do to these events to see good matches, especially offline matches (finally) where skill isn't dampened by lag. It is mid-match of Guilty Gear as I tune in. Commentators sound a little strange. Then the round ends and we get a shot of the competitors.
They have masks, and one is fumbling with his because he wants to drink some water, finally does and immediately pulls it back up. I assume this is some kind of virtue signal thing because they're on-camera. Pan the crowd: masked to the man. Every single one. The commentator booth is in the front row, and they are masked. This is why they sound like they're talking through blankets on the broadcast.
I go to their main site to see what policy has resulted in this and find: Mask required at all times in all locations, security staff will throw anyone out without a mask on. Additionally: must have full boosters of this (fairly complicated) list of approved injections, weird inconsistent definitions of what constitutes 'full,' official papers required to this effect and another complex list of entities that constitute 'official.'
The entire thing is a celebration of insanity. You have to be certified immune and wear a mask at all times. Everyone does. Justification for any one of these rules is contradicted by every other rule. The mask prevents spread, ok, then wear one and you'll be fine. No, no, your mask protects me so YOU have to wear one or I won't be safe. Ok, so lets all wear masks. But you need to have the government approved injections too, why if the masks do their job? To be extra double sure. Ok, then I'll take my mask off since now I'm immune. Yes but how will I know you didn't just sneak in with a mask and then take it off?! You have the injections, and you have the mask, you are fully battle ready, why do you care what I do? YOUR INJECTIONS PROTECT ME THOUGH!
Round and round we go. It never stops. Think up a new performance and we must all do it "for grandma" or... "for the kids" or... for someone probably, the messaging is muddy.
Fundamentally I knew, I wasn't going to see good matches at this tournament. The only people who attended were OK with all of this shit. I stopped watching.
I also know (hope) that geography plays into this. Combo Breaker is in Chicago. Momocon is in Atlanta. I'm eager to hear how it was different or the same.
I think a lot of why Raiden’s popular is because of her looks, but also she’s part of a really good team, also people like shipping her with either Miko, Sara or both.
There was security on the 4th floor at the escalator where you need to go down to get to the panels and exhibit hall where they did check for masks and badges, right by registration/badge pickup, but if you were outside, you didn’t have to wear masks, and you didn’t have to wear masks on the fourth floor at all, only if you went down to the rest of the con. Did it suck, yeah, but at some point people just stopped caring except at the 4th floor escalator, and people just carried water and food and never wore masks. They didn’t check us for vax cards, just masks.
Being an introvert, I just hate extroverted nerds smelly or not.
Remind all female cosplayers that all their fav chars are being covered up.
Glad you had a good time. Makes me sad that its been so long since I've been to a con. My buddies and I didn't go to the big one we usually attend a couple months before the covid BS started and I still haven't been to one since. Hard to believe that means it's been over 3 years since I've been to one...
Genshin is quite fun. Been a couple months since I've played, but before then I was on pretty much daily for at least half an hour. There's a lot of good stuff to go through, but I will say really nothing beats the first couple weeks, or however long it takes you to binge through all the story thats out. Once you hit the point where you've done all the major things that are out it can feel pretty stagnant, but once new stuff comes out its good again.
Still, that game has a ton of unused potential. The combat system is pretty fun and the spiral abyss being the only consistently high level activity available is a huge waste. They need some sort of endless wave activity or at least something where a really high level combat challenge isn't just a time gated DPS check. That way characters that are healers or otherwise not main or sub DPS characters can thrive and have a place to be useful.
That’s awesome man! I ended up going to another con last weekend closer to me that was a little more restrictive but it’s good to see that my experiences this year are not a one-off occurrence & some small glimmer of hope that things are improving. Hell we all need it because it’s super easy to let everything going on drag you down
Genshin is a cancer. It's made 3 billion in only 2 years. I don't know why people support it.
Because it's fun? Who cares if whales wanna whale. Let em do it. More money to devote to making the game good for me. An actual reason to consider not playing is that its Chinese.
The actual story is really good, same with the gameplay. Enough so people don’t really care that it’s made in China. People who play gacha games know what they’re getting into ahead of time, so that’s debatable.