A comprehensive write-up of FFXIV Fanfest 2023 North America; and how to do better

[Wilhelm_Frost]

I would first like to preface this with a note that I did enjoy myself in many ways. The panels were wonderful, if a bit brief. The concerts were beautiful. Being present was an honor. I have nothing but love in my heart for the development team, the musicians, and the event staff in particular, with whom I empathize greatly for the lack of coordination and support they seemed to be getting.

That said, with all my heart I hope Square-Enix never again uses the LVCC for their venue.

So let's take it from the top.

• Security and Safety
  
  A handful of metal detectors, an x-ray and a security team getting people through as quickly as they can are "good" in the 'security theater' sense of it, but within the first couple hours there were people just coming in and ducking through the roped off sections, ticket or no, with whatever they had on them. Fortunately; nothing tragic happened, but this is simply unacceptable in North America. The Las Vegas Convention Center failed, utterly, in a grossly negligent way, to provide a safe convention environment for its patrons. I would, if I were in a position to do so, consider litigation on behalf of Square-Enix over how severe the failures were.
  
  They had a single checkpoint, and half a dozen points of entry that would circumvent it, and did little or nothing to maintain order in those points, while still providing what ultimately felt like a hostile and abrasive experience. Failing at the most basic elements of their function at every turn.
  
  There were a few security staff members whom I saw out on the floor on occasion but these individuals would not have been adequate in any fashion for any significant problem.
  
  Square-Enix could do nothing for this, but should be aware of it.
  
  The safety problems that were Square-Enix responsibilities were issues of traffic management, a lack of space and seating, and unclear direction and planning for major convention moments such as concerts and the keynote.
  
  It was painfully obvious that the idea of fifteen thousand human beings was an abstract concept in the minds of the event organizers, and that there had been little planning done on behalf of queueing theory and basic predictive modeling. This lack of planning, which I will go into detail on in the next point, created a number of unsafe situations where the audience ran the risk of accident, injury, or trampling by sheer crush of people.
  
  The lack of radio communication between venue staff was distressing. Who could they call for help in case of an emergency, or if they needed direction, instruction, or assistance?
  

[Wilhelm_Frost]

• Organization and Queues
  
  This was an absolute disaster, in every sense of the word. To a baffling and uncomfortable degree. But I will do more than complain, please allow my thoughts to better inform your organization team, so the other conventions might have a better time than we did. Kindly pass along these notes, specifically.
  
  Understand that your audience is, in most respects, an audience that wishes to follow your direction. When we do not get that direction, we do the best we can with what we don't know.
  
  Queues tend to form organically, but because they form organically, they are shaped organically, naturally following straight lines through open space, and generally trying to avoid proximity to other members of the queue as much as possible as an organic human tendency.
  
  You had lines that stretched the span of the convention hall, which created traffic flow problems because you did not create an organized and clearly appointed space in which these queues could be constrained. For want of a little tape, and a little foresight, you had quarter mile lines that wrapped around other areas, spilled out into hallways, and interfered with other diversions.
  
  Your staff on hand were simply too few and too poorly utilized to provide anything other than frustration and disappointment. Many of us did not get to complete activities we wished to participate in largely because the staff-to-guest ratio was too small, and the reality of fifteen thousand individual participants was not looked at in mathematical and logistical reality.
  
  By the second day we could see how stressed and exhausted these staff members were, and of course they would be! They gave up on their posts in several places because there was simply no possible way they could do the thing they were assigned to do in the time they had to do it, which is detrimental to all three parties involved!
  
  The stress that the event staff experienced could have been mitigated, and should have been mitigated. They deserved better, and I would not be surprised if there were fewer applicants for these roles in the future.
  
  It reflects poorly on Square-Enix as an organization when people who traveled great distances with investment of time and finance can't say proudly and confidently that they were able to have fun at the event with minimal hassle.
  
  It diminishes enthusiasm among the audience when stories about the event include significant common agreement to the severity and significance of issues had.
  

[Wilhelm_Frost]

Your event organizer needs to understand that there are logistical impossibilities in dealing with 15,000 people in the span of 16-20 hours of operation. So I am going to offer a little napkin math on the obvious and glaring problems of the Battle challenge, and merchandise booth. But these thoughts can also largely be applied to every activity offered in similar fashion.

The formula you are looking for is "(R/T)(S)(E)" = (P)
where R= Total run time
where T= how much time each play of the activity takes
where S= the number of stations the activity has
where E= efficiency, with 1 equaling 100% uptime (and realistic planning suggesting nothing higher than .8 at the absolute most optimistic to leave room for machine or human error.)
where P= the number of participants.

This will tell you how many people you can theoretically process.

Solving the equation

We will assume that these stations operated from 9AM to 7 PM both days, for a grand total of 20 operational hours (R=20 hours). During this time, the average per-operation time is 20 minutes (T). (R/T)=60

In two days, each station will be used 60 times based on this model.

We will assume I correctly counted 40 stations (S) = 40

And we will assume that the efficiency of operation is 100%. There were no errors, no glitches, no surprises, everyone queued robotically and everything operated at peak possible order. (E)=1

(60)(40)(1) = (P) 2400 total participants

Roughly 1/6 of your total audience could participate in what was a highly anticipated attraction.

To be frank, 1/6 of your audience at the scale of 15,000 people is actually pretty good, all things considered, if it were organized in a way that made sense. Having people in queue for multiple consecutive hours did the opposite of 'make sense'. These poor convention goers missed panels, activities, diversions, a chance to make new friends, enjoy the cosplay artists, and will largely only have stories of waiting in line all day for a chance at twenty minutes of fun.

It is this which is shameful. The person in charge of organizing this should feel shame.

That said, this can be fixed. First, under these exact same circumstances; issue 2400 "Battle challenge passes" in the same vein as the photo/signing passes. If you have a pass, it comes with a time stamp. Be there at that hour.

In addition to that, you keep a short standby line. Instruct your staff to allow perhaps 20 people maximum at a time, and to let the standby queue tell them there's a very good chance there won't be time, that it's on a pretty tight window.

In so doing, yes, people will be disappointed, not want to wait in line for "maybe", complain there weren't enough stations, etc. But they won't be complaining they stood in line for seven hours!

[Wilhelm_Frost]

The merchandise booth shouldn't have existed at all.

I repeat; the merchandise booth shouldn't have existed at all.

For appropriate gravitas, allow me to reiterate once more; The merchandise booth shouldn't have existed at all.

Your poor staff members! The poor hopefuls waiting in line all day! All the things they missed! The ones who waited in line only to find out that the thing they had been waiting for was sold out! What a nightmare, for everyone involved!

Merchandise orders should have remained through the online portals you already rely on. The only thing you succeeded in doing is cause people to miss panels and events in exchange for a tension headache. You did not have the staff for it, and without purposefully setting up an actual store could not have had the staff to deal with 15,000 potential customers in 20 hours. Even established brick-and-mortar retail stores would struggle with that, logistically.

The presence of a merch booth was hubris. Pure hubris. Your average "Big Box" retailer in the US serves 10,000 people a day. We're talking a large warehouse sized venue with a daily staff count of 50-70 individuals, and a 24 hour operating time. 10,000 people. You were going to attempt this in a shoebox with six or eight sets of hands?

There was no way this would have ended well.


Every issue we had stems from a mathematical and observational lack of understanding of the sheer volume of traffic you were attempting to handle. Your organizing lead failed at every avenue, or perhaps was non-existent. The complete absence of one would not surprise me, given the severity of the queue and organization problems I observed.

The absence of demarcated lanes of traffic in front of the main stage was not only baffling, but patently dangerous. People could only try to squeeze past each other milling hither and yon, and at peak times this resulted in a claustrophobic and incredibly tense experience. A simple dividing stripe down the center of the lanes with some directional arrows would have at least given us the hope of an order to it all, and kept traffic at least attempting to flow in a consistent set of directions. Imagine how chaotic it would have been if there had been an accident or medical incident! People could have been injured or worse!

There are many posts already about ADA accommodations, and while I would love to add my own half-penny thoughts on the matter, I don't feel I am particularly qualified to speak on them, nor do I have more to add than has been said by those who are more keenly aware.

[Wilhelm_Frost]

• Activities and Diversions
  
  Setting aside the already well-outlined problems of logistics, this actually was a very nice experience marred by a poor dismount. I had a chance to participate in each thing, snapping photos and collecting badges. I got to meet the people near me in line, and chatter happily about things we were looking forward to. I had fun being abjectly terrible at contests of aim, and enjoying in the triumphs of others.
  
  This was an area in which the Square-Enix team had a chance to shine, creating many vivid and wonderful little memories, and I want to make sure that I express gratitude for their efforts. The props and backdrops were beautiful, and I could tell a lot of love and care went into the creation of these things.
  
  The badges we collected should have allowed us to unlock the final Fanfest digital badge, but unfortunately the staff gave up early in the second day, and I will likely never get to see what that looked like. This is truly a shame, because I did put quite some time into making sure I got to see as much as possible, and I really did want to enjoy it 100%.
  
• Panels and Guests
  
  These were delightful, for the most part. Phil Spencer of Microsoft addressed the crowd as if he were speaking at a stockholder meeting and I was fully unimpressed, as he clearly has no idea how much FFXIV means to us or why it does. But the Square-Enix executive and CBU-III team clearly do, and that's the more important thing.
  
  My only major observations here stem from prior observations. With queue times as long as they were, people had to pick and choose whether they would be present at a given panel, or continue to wait in line for the activity they wanted to participate in. Panels were also somewhat short, with a fair bit of swift glossing-over, when we would have gladly enjoyed additional time to hang on the presenter's every word.
  
  This is just how things are in a two day convention, but I hope we get to hear more from everyone, because the anecdotes, observations and fascinations of the staff are things we passionately want to learn about!

[Wilhelm_Frost]

• Final Thoughts
  
  I know I have come across in a fairly brutal fashion, and I don't want you to leave here thinking I didn't enjoy myself. I did. Tremendously. It was a joy and an honor to be a part of the FFXIV Fanfest in Las Vegas, and I wouldn't take it back. The photo I got to take home with Matt Hilton and Toshio Murouchi is something that I will keep as a cherished memory for the rest of my life, and the friends I got to make will spur a hundred new stories.
  
  But I want every Fanfest to build upon the lessons of the ones that came before. I want the audience in Europe to have an even better time than I did. I want Japan's Fanfest to absolutely eclipse the one in Europe, and I want next year's U.S. Fanfest to triumph even over Japan's!
  
  So we must look at these things with an honest and sharp critical eye. We must focus on what did not work so that the things that did can shine all the brighter next time.
  
  Please understand that I am nothing but humbled and grateful to have been present, and overjoyed to be a part of this community. For ten years I have walked alongside so many others, shared so many stories, so many triumphs and so many heartbreaks. My criticism comes purely from a place of love, and a desire to see live-venue entertainments like this succeed and thrive.

[AwesomeJr44]

Not going to read through this all, mainly because it's a lot and I don't really care about fanfests, but I have heard a lot of complaints about this one. Hopefully SE can take the feedback from this one and do a better job for the EU/JP ones.

[RileyDarooster]

Just want to say this is very solid and constructive! I hope the right people see it.

[Avenger]

A few additional suggestions (based on experience at NA fanfest 2023 vs. other, larger conventions):

1. Queue inside in the air conditioning, not outside in the 100+ degree heat.
2. Make better use of the space. 15K convention doesn't need to be vastly overcrowded when the venue supports 100K or more. The keynote could have been in a larger space with much more seating and standing room.
3. Use line staff to manage the end of each line and make sure it is growing properly and in the right direction.
4. Have line staff count people in line and have the counts in the app like PAX did for panel lines.
5. Don't rely on the clunky GPS and fix the broken app if you are going to use it for battle event or other registration - also explain the process clearly in advance. And do the math as noted above. And bring back t-shirts somehow. ;-)
6. Have enough space for the keynote and concerts because everyone is going to be there; also have staff maintain ADA sight lines and aisles. No mosh pit/crush area at front if possible.
7. Lower the insanely deafening sound. Piano concert was crazy loud. Primals even louder with a very muddy mix and distorted amplification. Even the orchestra concert was unnecessarily amplified and too loud.
8. Don't confiscate people's water bottles as happened at the orchestral concert.
9. Open more food courts outside, including the north hall food court which was inexplicably closed.
10. More cars on the monorail to and from the event.
11. Provide official/discounted conference hotel housing options near the venue.
12. Realize that attendees have an huge (huge!) demand for merch as well as food and drink.
13. Provide additional seating/chilling areas besides the Quiet Room.
14. Hire experienced event planners and plentiful operations staff who have successfully run larger events.
15. Orchestral concert ticket presale for fanfest attendees.
16. FF TCG tournament and learn-to-play sessions.
17. Don't do Las Vegas in the summer. San Diego or even Reno would be fine.

[Avenger]

The battle challenge signup was a savage trial and the app seemed buggy and unreliable. But day 2 was easy, especially the standby line since most of the signups were parties that (very understandably) didn't want to split up. As a result there was a high demand for single players to fill in. I ended up doing the challenge 3 times, including with my FC that had an assigned time. At one point I was actually the only person in the standby line. I'm not sure this is what was intended, and it's not at all what I expected or would have predicted. But I really enjoyed doing the battle challenge with my FC. I don't know if they will change the system for London, but for NA the standby line was the way to go for individual players.