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Fair ticket selling methods for large conventions

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Posts

  • ThanatosThanatos Registered User regular
    mcdermott wrote: »
    mcdermott wrote: »
    Maybe they could use something other than Twitter for people who don't use that service? Like, it's really, really not hard to set up a mailing list. At all.
    or people who don't like twitter can get over it.. I did.

    Is a dislike of twitter worth not going to PAX?

    They shouldn't have to, when there's a zero-cost alternative that takes five minutes to set up?

    True. But is putting the badge in your hand instead any real gain? You're still just talking about picking winners.

    Sell them in lots. Stagger times so people overseas (or who are at work without immediate unfettered access to a computer) can have a shot. Announce what time lots are being sold so people can make arrangements to get their passes. (But the strain on our servers! Not my problem. The price of success.)

    The twitter thing is what really irritates me, though, and I wasn't even planning on going. I'm too poor to afford a smartphone, let alone the $75-100/month a data plan would cost me, and twitter without a smartphone is fucking pointless; it's absurd that I'd have to sign up to a service I'd never use so I could maybe get a notification once or twice a year when a mailserver can very nearly be run on a toasted ham sandwich.
    Twitter is actually better for people without smartphones. It's super-easy to set up twitter to text you, so you don't have to camp a computer making sure you're around to get the email when the announcement goes out.

  • ThanatosThanatos Registered User regular
    mcdermott wrote: »
    KalTorak wrote: »
    Gabe made post:

    t.co/atjddqMr
    I can guarantee they hate the situation as much as we do. Good to see a response, though.
    I think their best bet is to extend it to Monday, sell one-day passes only, and try to reduce the content a bit but make the most popular stuff redundant if they can (i.e. the Bungee panel happens Saturday and Sunday). It may mess with the Omegathon some, but sacrifices have to be made somewhere, and I think making PAX accessible to as many people as possible is the way to go.

    I think opening up a third PAX is a terrible idea; it will dilute the content of them waaayyyy too much. It's one thing to ask people to show up to two shows six months apart (and a lot of companies still don't make both). Three would be overkill.

    Personally, I hate the idea of moving PAX to So-Cal, but it may be the best way to expand it.

  • Eat it You Nasty Pig.Eat it You Nasty Pig. tell homeland security 'we are the bomb'Registered User regular
    reasonably sure you can also set twitter up to email you alerts

    NREqxl5.jpg
    it was the smallest on the list but
    Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
  • KalTorakKalTorak One way or another, they all end up in the Undercity.Registered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    I'm too poor to afford a smartphone, let alone the $75-100/month a data plan would cost me, and twitter without a smartphone is fucking pointless; it's absurd that I'd have to sign up to a service I'd never use so I could maybe get a notification once or twice a year when a mailserver can very nearly be run on a toasted ham sandwich.

    I use Twitter way more on my desktop PC than on my phone.

    And how hard is it to set a Twitter account to forward to either a text number or an email address?

    Sal keeps talking about how it takes very little effort to set up an email mailing list; how does that amount of effort compare to the amount required to set up a twitter account, follow the PAX twitter, and have it forwarded to you?

  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    How about making everyone write an essay on why they want a ticket? :P

  • DarkAonDarkAon Portland, ORRegistered User regular
    reasonably sure you can also set twitter up to email you alerts

    I think that only may be for direct messages and @ replies, but there is probably a web app that will do it for you.

    However, the SMS functionality is pretty robust. I'd prefer that for time-sensitive info over email anyway (especially without a smart phone/no data).

    gdGxyA3
  • HamHamJHamHamJ Registered User regular
    jothki wrote: »
    How about making everyone write an essay on why they want a ticket? :P

    Make people have to beat I want to be The Man to get tickets?

    While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
  • DarkAonDarkAon Portland, ORRegistered User regular
    KalTorak wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    I'm too poor to afford a smartphone, let alone the $75-100/month a data plan would cost me, and twitter without a smartphone is fucking pointless; it's absurd that I'd have to sign up to a service I'd never use so I could maybe get a notification once or twice a year when a mailserver can very nearly be run on a toasted ham sandwich.

    I use Twitter way more on my desktop PC than on my phone.

    And how hard is it to set a Twitter account to forward to either a text number or an email address?

    Sal keeps talking about how it takes very little effort to set up an email mailing list; how does that amount of effort compare to the amount required to set up a twitter account, follow the PAX twitter, and have it forwarded to you?

    Setting up twitter and having it forward SMS to you is very easy. Probably would take about 5 minutes to set that up unless you are a luddite who is easily confused.

    Of course with email, you would have to deal with making sure it doesn't get filtered to junk mail, not helping those without phone data plans, etc. so I don't really see an advantage over SMS.

    gdGxyA3
  • TheBlackWindTheBlackWind Registered User regular
    I love twitter on the iPhone app and did not realize, until this very thread, that you can set it up to push notifications through email and text.

    Still not sure I can find it in the app, but I logged in to my desktop version and it looked easy.

    So it's not all Luddites :P

    PAD ID - 328,762,218
  • mcdermottmcdermott Registered User regular
    Not sure it will push tweets to email. But a Google voice phone number will, you can just turn it on when you're expecting something particularly....important....to be tweeted. ;)

  • anabbeynormalityanabbeynormality Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    Kyougu wrote: »
    Yeah, can't believe people are endorsing lotteries.

    Lots of people make plans to go to Pax with friends. Lotteries would seriously fuck with that.

    Lottery systems often allow people to put their name in for multiple tickets, so that those who win can bring friends.

    anabbeynormality on
  • RiemannLivesRiemannLives Registered User regular
    Kyougu wrote: »
    Yeah, can't believe people are endorsing lotteries.

    Lots of people make plans to go to Pax with friends. Lotteries would seriously fuck with that.

    Lottery systems often allow people to put their name in for multiple tickets, so that those who win can bring friends.

    Yes, and see Feral's post above on why that creates a perverse incentive that will make the problem worse not better.

    Attacked by tweeeeeeees!
  • anabbeynormalityanabbeynormality Registered User regular
    KalTorak wrote: »
    Gabe made post:

    t.co/atjddqMr

    I'm glad to see that Gabe posted on this issue. It's nice to know that it's something they are going to put a lot of thought into, regardless of outcome.

  • anabbeynormalityanabbeynormality Registered User regular
    mcdermott wrote: »
    No, make them nontransferable too. Then we can just BURN the extras. Fuck it, I got money.

    Now we're really winning.

    They could offer refunds for those who have to cancel. That way, if something comes up, the ticket isn't wasted, but there's no incentive for people to buy tickets just to make money. They could auction off those returned tickets with proceeds going to Child's Play.

  • mcdermottmcdermott Registered User regular
    KalTorak wrote: »
    Gabe made post:

    t.co/atjddqMr

    I'm glad to see that Gabe posted on this issue. It's nice to know that it's something they are going to put a lot of thought into, regardless of outcome.

    We already knew this...they care a lot about the attendees and community.

  • MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    The London Olympics was a lottery. What's the public opinion on that system been?

    I understand why people think a lottery would be better, but I really don't see it working. For one, the friends/group thing, though you still have that issue with someone missing out, but seems like it'd be more likely in a lotto.

    For me, the bigger issue would be the onus is now on P-A, Inc. to ensure a fair system - which will just give people more opportunity to cry foul. I think with a little Khooperation we can find a system that works.

  • tardcoretardcore Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    I don't care what anyone thinks on how big or how small these numbers are, looking at this still makes me sick: eBay

    tardcore on
  • FencingsaxFencingsax It is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understanding GNU Terry PratchettRegistered User regular
    I like how they say they aren't scalpers.

  • ThanatosThanatos Registered User regular
    Fencingsax wrote: »
    I like how they say they aren't scalpers.
    What they said was that they aren't primarily scalpers.

    And 55 auctions does not a disaster make.

  • KalTorakKalTorak One way or another, they all end up in the Undercity.Registered User regular
    Other than linking ticket purchases to IDs (do they do that?), how could you prevent scalpers who only sell one or two tickets anyway?

  • tardcoretardcore Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    It'll let 55 people who didn't get a ticket and REALLY wanted one, to finally go. I just wish that money was going to the PAX guys themselves or even Child's Play. I'm not saying the whole thing needs to be re-structured to avoid people like this (and I've seen more than 55 tickets total up for bids), because scalpers will always exist. I'm just commenting on how shitty it is for some of the people who now have to pay quadruple the price if they really want to get in, while taking the risk that they might not get the passes in time or god forbid get a bogus copy of a pass.

    But the point of this thread is to discuss amongst ourselves what we feel could be the best method of decreasing that "55" number, so just thought I'd offer one solution.

    Refundable, non-transferable (to another person or party) tickets. All refunded tickets will go back on sale. You can use Twitter to announce something like "hey, we've got 5 refunded tickets available, come and get 'em now!". Find out a friend can't go? Get a refund and that ticket goes back into the pool of 100,000+ that wanted a ticket.

    tardcore on
  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    Thanatos wrote: »
    Fencingsax wrote: »
    I like how they say they aren't scalpers.
    What they said was that they aren't primarily scalpers.

    And 55 auctions does not a disaster make.

    I believe he's referring to the people scalping the tickets who say they aren't scalpers on their E-Bay auction.

    Quid on
  • JurgJurg In a TeacupRegistered User regular
    edited May 2012
    Lotteries are dumb. I'd be pissed if tickets sold out too fast to something I wanted to go to, but I'd be fucking furious if I couldn't go because of a chance thing. The best solution is two batches. One in the morning, and one at night. If you can't make either of those two, oh well.

    Nontransferable tickets are also dumb. It make mitigate scalping, but it also increases the chances that tickets are unused, which is probably worse.

    Jurg on
    sig.gif
  • PhyphorPhyphor Building Planet Busters Tasting FruitRegistered User regular
    edited May 2012
    Zeraphael wrote: »
    I was one of the people monitoring almost constantly. I then had to attend classes since I'm a college person. The tickets sold out while I was at class and unable to surf the interwebs or use my smartphone. Suck. I use Twitter and everything else. This was insanely fast for selling out of the tickets. I've never seen it go this fast and I've been to several PAX Primes each time buying my 3 day pass a few days or even a week or so after they went on sale.

    Missed out this year I guess. There's always next year and the possibility of my coding an app to purchase said 3 day pass the moment registration becomes available. Don't know if that is feasible or not but I'm willing to try.

    Not sure what else the organizers can do really. It's worked alright in previous years. No reason to assume it wouldn't this year. It just snowballed and many people lost out.

    Amusingly, I actually checked about an hour before they went up, a little while before I went home from work... and rebuilt my computer and cleaned up for a couple hours when I got home because new furniture had gotten delivered that day; by that time the 3 days had already been sold out

    Phyphor on
  • zerg rushzerg rush Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    I'm confused, doesn't finance already have this problem solved? The solution is basically a dutch auction. You could either have it be a simultaneous offering or a progressively lowering auction.

    In a simultaneous offering, everyone puts in bids of how much they're willing to pay. So a rich person might put in a bid for 4 tickets at $300 each to make sure they get them, while a poor college student would bid $20 for a 3-day pass on the off chance they get lucky. Bidding goes on for a set time period, at which time all bids are finalized. PAX then lines up the bids by price, and sells tickets to the highest 60,000 people for their bid price.

    In a lowering auction, you start bidding at $1000 dollars (or some super high number), sell as many tickets as people are willing to buy, and let people know you have 60,000 tickets left. Then the next day, you drop the price to $900 and sell as many tickets as people are willing to buy and let people know how many tickets you have left. Then the next day, you drop it to $800 and sell... etc. As you get to lower values, you start stepping it down by $50 dollar increments, then $25 dollar increments and so on. 700, 600, 500, 400, 300, 250, 200, 175, 150, etc. Eventually the price will either reach the reserve limit (where they'd be losing money), or they will run out of tickets. In actuality, it tends to be that nobody bids until tickets look like they're going to be 'scarce' and then there's a mad dash to buy all at once, but that's the price you pay for trying to save money.

    There is also the variant that everyone who bids ends up paying the same amount as the point they run out of tickets. So, if you bid for $250, but they still have tickets until the $190 price point, you only pay $190; however if you bid $250 and they end up running out of tickets at $240, then you have to pay $240.

    However, with any of these setups, scalping becomes practically impossible, everyone gets tickets at the price that they're willing to pay, and PAX gets the maximum amount of money possible. Win-win-win. (Unless you're poor, in which case you should support a lottery)

    zerg rush on
  • CliffCliff Registered User regular
    There are a lot of topics and situations in which I think fairness is extremely important. Whether or not someone gets to go to a con isn't one of them. I find it particularly interesting that most of these posts adress this situation as one that PA has any reason to change. They still make the same amount of money regardless if you specifically get to go. Scalpers have to buy the tickets initially anyway, so they are not really losing money there either.

  • tardcoretardcore Registered User regular
    They have never come off as doing this for money. I think they've made it clear that they do it for the fans and they want to accommodate as many people as they can.

  • mcdermottmcdermott Registered User regular
    Cliff wrote: »
    There are a lot of topics and situations in which I think fairness is extremely important. Whether or not someone gets to go to a con isn't one of them. I find it particularly interesting that most of these posts adress this situation as one that PA has any reason to change. They still make the same amount of money regardless if you specifically get to go. Scalpers have to buy the tickets initially anyway, so they are not really losing money there either.

    I think it's fair to assume that the guys care about their attendees beyond the money they receive from them, so yes they have some incentive to at least consider if a change would improve the situation.

    Not sure what else the organizers can do really. It's worked alright in previous years. No reason to assume it wouldn't this year. It just snowballed and many people lost out.

    Many people were already going to lose out. That's the thing. X people want to attend, Y people can legally fit in the convention center, with X>>Y. No more or fewer people lost out because of their ticket selling policies. All we are talking about is how winners should be picked. The number of losers will not change, regardless of what they do (aside from moving to a larger space).

    Jurg wrote: »
    Lotteries are dumb. I'd be pissed if tickets sold out too fast to something I wanted to go to, but I'd be fucking furious if I couldn't go because of a chance thing. The best solution is two batches. One in the morning, and one at night. If you can't make either of those two, oh well.

    Nontransferable tickets are also dumb. It make mitigate scalping, but it also increases the chances that tickets are unused, which is probably worse.

    Yes, that would be much much worse. Right now the issue is choosing who gets a pass in their hand, but it's a fair assumption that just about everybody with a pass will use it. Start putting any hurdles in the way of selling it, particularly if you don't raise the price, and you risk passes going entirely unused. At $65, honestly it's not necessarily worth the hassle for me to resell a pass if there's any additional effort at all required. So now less discrete humans get to attend, and this is bad.

    Same goes for friends sharing passes, which is a thing that happens.

    Thanatos wrote: »
    And 55 auctions does not a disaster make.

    So true. It'll be more than 55, obviously. But even assuming like 10% or 15% of tickets sold at registration were to those intending primarily to scalp them, that's not a disaster. It would have had a minimal impact on the ability of people complaining to get a ticket...mainly just those who had the tickets in their cart and were checking out as they ran out, that kind of thing. You're talking like a 30 minute difference in sellout time. 99% of people who missed the sale would still have missed the sale.

    And every one of those scalped tickets will still go to a fan who wanted to go. Scalpers, whether or not we want to admit it, fix the problem of "zomg I can't sit at my computer 24/7." At least for anybody with money. And not even all that much money, in the grand scheme of things. I'd prefer the guys auction off a block themselves, with proceeds going into the con or to charity or even to pimping out their rides. I don't like that scalpers get the cash. But I do like having another avenue where I can, through my own actions, personally increase my ability to get a badge.

    Not that I need to, because at least up until now we still aren't seeing 1-minute sellouts and there were already avenues available through which you could (for the most part) personally increase your chances of getting a badge. It may have seemed silly to start getting tweets forwarded as text messages and make backup plans for who would buy your tickets for you if you were at work and so on and so forth...I mean, it usually takes days for these to sell out...right?

    But for some people, going was important enough that they wanted to be absolutely certain they got passes. And these people did.

    Honestly, I'd prefer the answer be "try harder or pay more." I really don't want it to come down to luck.

    Though if we're going to start with lotteries and nontransferrable shenanigans or any other silliness, I just hope we keep a significant block set aside for auction, because then I know I'll get mine. I guarantee that 15% of attendees aren't both willing and able to pay more than I am. ;)

  • AllforceAllforce Registered User regular
    MichaelLC wrote: »
    The London Olympics was a lottery. What's the public opinion on that system been?

    I can weigh in on this since I've done a massive Olympic trip before. It's not the same as what people are proposing here at all. You're talking about 1 pass for total access to 3 days of PAX to be put up via lottery for 200K peoplle, which is just going to put off a lot of people. You're either in or out, no in-between.

    WIth the Olympics you have to fill out an elaborate lottery form stating our daily agenda. You fill in a Primary, Secondary, and Alternate event you'd like to see for every morning, afternoon, and evening time slot you feel like seeing an event, and how many tickets. So basically you're going to get some of the events you want to see, and some of the secondary events, and even sometimes the Alternate if the first 2 are super popular. So basically on like July 23rd we'd have "Morning - Basketball, Track & Field, Gymnastics - Womens", "Afternoon - Swimming, Basketball, Boxing", and then take the evening off. Or do an event in the morning and the evening, whatever.

    So it works really well in getting you to a ton of events, all of which you're interested in, just some more than others. You're also talking about millions and millions of people though over hundreds of events that are held in arenas that can hold anywhere from 5-80K people at any one time.

  • mcdermottmcdermott Registered User regular
    It'll let 55 people who didn't get a ticket and REALLY wanted one, to finally go.

    This is making the ridiculous assumption that 55 people paying $texas for scalped badges don't "REALLY want one."

    Do you see why that is ridiculous?

    All you want to do is take those 55 badges out of their hands, and give them to someone else. All we're talking about is picking winners, not letting more people attend, or people who reeeeally want to go attend. I fail to see how being willing to drop a car payment (or two!) on a badge is any less a sign of devotion to attend than mashing F5 and/or taking a day off work to get one.

    So I'll repeat myself:

    Many people were already going to lose out. That's the thing. X people want to attend, Y people can legally fit in the convention center, with X>>Y. No more or fewer people lost out because of their ticket selling policies. All we are talking about is how winners should be picked. The number of losers will not change, regardless of what they do (aside from moving to a larger space).

  • tardcoretardcore Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    mcdermott wrote: »
    It'll let 55 people who didn't get a ticket and REALLY wanted one, to finally go.

    This is making the ridiculous assumption that 55 people paying $texas for scalped badges don't "REALLY want one."

    Do you see why that is ridiculous?

    All you want to do is take those 55 badges out of their hands, and give them to someone else. All we're talking about is picking winners, not letting more people attend, or people who reeeeally want to go attend. I fail to see how being willing to drop a car payment (or two!) on a badge is any less a sign of devotion to attend than mashing F5 and/or taking a day off work to get one.

    So I'll repeat myself:

    Many people were already going to lose out. That's the thing. X people want to attend, Y people can legally fit in the convention center, with X>>Y. No more or fewer people lost out because of their ticket selling policies. All we are talking about is how winners should be picked. The number of losers will not change, regardless of what they do (aside from moving to a larger space).

    I meant that as in "they get a second chance to get a ticket, but have to pay a much higher price".

    You're reading into what I said all wrong. Yeah of course many other people REALLY wanted to go, but they aren't willing to pay some of these prices to get a ticket that some folks already have. I mean, eBay has been around for years. Surely people who use Twitter have heard of eBay. I'm not arguing if it's fair or not and I'm sorry if I lead you to believe that. I was merely pointing out the fact that people who didn't get a chance to get a pass during the first (and second) go around can now do so at a higher price if they were so inclined.

    Completed listings. Three passes purchased for $299.95 each. Now there are some people who REALLY wanted to go and had the money who missed out the first (and second) time. These are probably people who don't use Twitter.

    tardcore on
  • mcdermottmcdermott Registered User regular
    edited May 2012
    Ha, totally misread your post. Chalk it up to lack of coffee. ;)

    So I think we're in agreement there, my bad. I do not agree that non-transferable tickets are an answer, even if refundable. Honestly, unless the scalping problem gets worse, I don't feel like we even need an "answer." Though I suspect it may get worse soon.

    So far the only change I've seen that I like is mine. Surprising, I know. ;)

    Lottery off half or so, sell some of the rest off as normal (even keeping the date unannounced), and auction off maybe 10% or 20% directly. Everybody has a non-zero chance of getting a ticket through the lottery end, but with other methods of "winning" available. Big questions are the ratio of the three, and what order to do it in.

    mcdermott on
  • mcdermottmcdermott Registered User regular
    Also, let me go on record and say that anybody paying real money for a confirmation code, especially given that badges won't go out until after the paypal dispute window has closed, is an extremely silly goose. That's just asking to get scammed. I'd really like to see PAX start sending actual tickets out that can be verified (through a site) and transferred which are then redeemed for badges, to help with this issue. As it is, whether to a friend or to a stranger, selling badges before they've gone out is painful.

  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    Wouldn't the easiest solution be to release the tickets in a few waves and release the times ahead of time that way people know when to sit at their computers?

    Or open up PAX Chicago or something.

    Lh96QHG.png
  • ThanatosThanatos Registered User regular
    Wouldn't the easiest solution be to release the tickets in a few waves and release the times ahead of time that way people know when to sit at their computers?
    That doesn't actually solve anything.
    Or open up PAX Chicago or something.
    I don't know that the guys are even up for running three PAXes a year, and if they are, a lot of companies and things would then pick and choose which PAX to go to; I think it would probably dilute PAX too much.

  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    Frankly, I'm not sure there's really anything to solve. Auctions aren't inherently more fair, really.

    I imagine they're already at Seattle's biggest venue, so the only thing to do would be to open a third day or eliminate three day passes and just sell one days.

    Thanatos, didn't you suggest something like that earlier in the thread?

    Lh96QHG.png
  • mcdermottmcdermott Registered User regular
    Wouldn't the easiest solution be to release the tickets in a few waves and release the times ahead of time that way people know when to sit at their computers?

    Or open up PAX Chicago or something.

    Unless you make them nontransferable this does little or nothing to help the scalping issue. Announced sale times only make it worse.

    This also removes the "effort" route, as you can no longer put in the effort and make backup plans to skip the melee at the cornucopia.. As it is, a lot of us leveraged twitter and backup plans to make sure we got ours well before the rest. I don't see how this is a bad thing.

  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    mcdermott wrote: »
    Wouldn't the easiest solution be to release the tickets in a few waves and release the times ahead of time that way people know when to sit at their computers?

    Or open up PAX Chicago or something.

    Unless you make them nontransferable this does little or nothing to help the scalping issue. Announced sale times only make it worse.

    This also removes the "effort" route, as you can no longer put in the effort and make backup plans to skip the melee at the cornucopia.. As it is, a lot of us leveraged twitter and backup plans to make sure we got ours well before the rest. I don't see how this is a bad thing.

    This is basically what I think people SHOULD do.

    I was just blue skying some "solutions" for discussion's sake.

    Didn't Gabe say that scalpers are hardly the problem since the average ticket sale was 1.7 per?

    Lh96QHG.png
  • ThanatosThanatos Registered User regular
    mcdermott wrote: »
    Wouldn't the easiest solution be to release the tickets in a few waves and release the times ahead of time that way people know when to sit at their computers?

    Or open up PAX Chicago or something.
    Unless you make them nontransferable this does little or nothing to help the scalping issue. Announced sale times only make it worse.

    This also removes the "effort" route, as you can no longer put in the effort and make backup plans to skip the melee at the cornucopia.. As it is, a lot of us leveraged twitter and backup plans to make sure we got ours well before the rest. I don't see how this is a bad thing.
    This is basically what I think people SHOULD do.

    I was just blue skying some "solutions" for discussion's sake.

    Didn't Gabe say that scalpers are hardly the problem since the average ticket sale was 1.7 per?
    I would be very surprised indeed if PAX's registration remained unchanged next year, and tickets were not sold out in minutes, meaning that a lot of people who leveraged just didn't get the page loaded fast enough.

    The only solution is to create more tickets. There are two way to do that: one is to move locations to someplace larger (almost certainly either Vegas or So-Cal). The other is to change PAX into something closer to 3-4 one-day events instead of one 3-day event. Limit people to buying tickets for only a single day each transaction, have redundant panels and things, and get rid of multi-day passes entirely.

  • OrganichuOrganichu poops peesRegistered User, Moderator mod
    edited May 2012
    it doesn't really seem like there are any metrics or methods (free time to sit around waiting, funds, randomness, etc) that people find entirely 'fair' or 'satisfactory' in determining winners. probably because people will trend towards the system that favors people like them. :)

    but for my part, i think funds or randomness are the two best arbiters. i like the idea someone mentioned of a decreasing auction where you can secure tickets if you're willing to pay more. especially because if you truly do pay more, those funds can go to charity. and randomness, of course, has its own symmetrical appeal.

    Organichu on
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