Matt Conn

Hey Gaymers & Allies!

Wow – this has been quite a ride. From all the press and volunteers who have graciously donated their time, to all the support we’ve gotten from our over 1,000 (!!!) backers, this has been truly a dream come true.

We expected that it would be a hard fought fight to even get enough interest to raise $25K, and instead, the outpouring of support and love that you’ve shown us has forced us to think much bigger, and thankfully, we now have the support and capital to do that.

We’re hard at work on booking a bigger convention space that can hold now dramatically increased attendance demand, figuring out who will play at the GaymerConcert,  as well as bringing on volunteer & art coordinators. Within the coming months, we plan on launching a PanelPicker and Forums on our site so that we can grow the community and make sure that we are building the Con that you all have helped make possible.

A couple notables from this past week:

– We’ve been covered by a bunch of amazing folks these past few weeks, capped off by an interview with Matt and Kayce on the BBC earlier today. Check it out!

– We’ve hit our $50,000 minigame stretch goal – and will now have a GaymerCon Organizer Brunch on Sunday, August 4th for all pledges over $100. If you’ve donated $95 or $99, we think its worth bumping it up a few bucks for the meal and a chance to hang with cool kids like SMBC’s Zach Weiner!

– If you haven’t checked out the pledge levels lately, give them a look. We added a bunch of new things, including getting your voicemail message done by the Sniper from TF2 or GLaDOS, getting video game style art portraits of you hung on the walls, and gift baskets donated by some of our amazing friends, like Penny Arcade and Mega64!

– We’re creating a YouTube.com/GaymerConPlay Account where we’ll continue to host our Google Hangouts, Let’s Play videos, and other more lighthearted, less official content from the GaymerCon crew – come subscribe for more off the cuff, fun videos created by us and the community.

– We are EXTREMELY excited to be closing in our our top stretch goal of $60,000, and have been putting out lines to huge celebrities that we’d love to see at the con for the past week or two. We haven’t gotten any confirmed bites yet, but we’re confident that we’ll be able to get someone amazing to help push the Gaymer cause to that next level and show the mainstream that LBGTQ gamers come from all walks of life.

 

It’s been a crazy last couple of weeks, and as history has shown, the last week of a Kickstarter is usually the craziest – but we’re ready! We’re excited to make this con a reality and help make a gaming and tech convention where you can truly come as you are.
You are all amazing. We are honored and blessed to have the opportunity to bring this to life.

Please drop us a line anytime at Facebook.com/GaymerCon or @GaymerCon – we may be slow to answer, but we see everything you post!!

<3,

Matt & Jack (and the entire GaymerCon crew)

Like donkey krang? That’s not right.

Please go give it a look see and let us know what you think! We’ll have updates as it progresses..thank you all to everyone who’s helped us get this far…it’s on!! 😀

Dear World,

Welcome to GaymerConnect.com and the GaymerBlog.

We are a group of geeks who love to game and consider ourselves a part of the emerging gamer community, but feel like there is a lack of diversity and choice in that demographic. We know that there are many LGBTQ, women, and minority gamers out there, but they are not well represented in gaming media and culture.

This is why we are creating GaymerX and GaymerConnect.

Our goal is to provide a safe and fun place for gamers to congregate and celebrate gaming and geek culture from the prism of the LGBT, minority, and female perspectives. We respect all views and understand the viewpoints of those who are against this cause, and hope to work very hard to assuage worries and concerns that you may have, but we would love to hear from you either way!

 

GaymerX is important because gaming is a HUGE industry, one that is larger than movies or TV at over $11B per year spent, and yet, for example, there has never been a major release of a game that has had a gay or lesbian main protagonist, and games that have tried to provide even simple options (like Mass Effect 3) have been met with heavy protest.

We believe that there is a huge segment of LGBT, minority and female gamers who are not represented in the gaming culture well and although conventions like PAX have been extremely open minded and welcoming (and are fucking awesome), the gamer culture, overall and as a whole,  is still very focused on the middle class, young white male demographic which seems to dominate all marketing and product decisions. We want to break through some of those walls, and show the true spectrum of gamers that exist. Our hope with GaymerX is not to split the LGBT, minority and female population away from the main group, but instead provide a safe space for discussion and dialog.

We also know that there are objections that some people (maybe you!) have to our Con. There is criticism that we may be excluding ourselves or, that these issues have no place in the public dialog in gaming. We feel that the fact that many of these issues have never been publicly discussed in mainstream gamer media makes GaymerX important if just for the dialogue and debate that can come with the growth of the Con. It’s also important to note that we don’t wish to impose onto the lifestyles of those who are perfectly happy with the current state of being – we are focused on supporting and educating, not forcing political statements down throats.

 

Thank you for your interest in helping make the world a safer, better place for all gamers. We love you and appreciate your support.

– Team GaymerConnect