Posted By John Bubriski, 16, April, 2013, in events
Just in case people ask us, or we forget ourselves, here is a quick review of the breakdown of our expenses from PAX East 2013.
The Megabooth and the Minibooth
Before we jump into the expenses, a quick note about why our booth costs were so low. For those who didn’t know, we were part of the Indie Megabooth.
The Megabooth is a collection of Indie Game Developers that rent one giant space together and partition it up. And in the Megabooth, we were part of the Minibooth. The Minibooth is a “shared” booth that houses multiple Indies at a time, that rotate daily (You can choose to do multiple days too). This year the Minibooth was a 10x10 booth with 2 tables. 2 Indies on one table, and the last Indie sharing the other table with promotional materials for the booth. The Minibooth provided us with:
- Exhibitor badges
- Power (yes, you may have to pay for power if you get your own booth)
- A Monitor
- A shared TV (which we ended up skipping because we didn’t need it)
- Half a table and a chair (whole chair, not half)
- Other secret perks of being part of the Megabooth
- Street cred
For our booth costs, we had half a table for all of Saturday, which was perfect. All we had to worry about was showing up with our game and any promotional materials we had. This was an unbelievable convenience and we would utilize it again in a heartbeat! Also, the location of the Minibooth couldn’t have been better, as we were on an intersection.
Convention Stuff
Now our costs for what we needed for the convention:
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Booth | $410.00 |
| Banner | $175.00 |
| 500 Buttons | $115.00 |
| Stressballs | $35.00 |
| T-shirts | $105.00 |
| Total | $840.00 |
We were in the Indie Megabooth Minibooth (Saturday only)
Life Stuff
But wait! There’s more… expenses!!! Mainly, I left out the life essentials, which will vary greatly depending on your location. PAX was 3 full days of convention awesomeness, not to mention the party we attended the day before:
- Food
- Travel
- Gas
- Parking - avoid hotel parking garages as they raise the prices on the weekends
- Flight (If you’re travelling)
- Hotel (if you’re travelling)
We are pretty lucky in that we’re only an hour or so from Boston, so we only had to pay gas, food and parking. We spent around $320 on food/parking/gas for the three days. Others might not be so fortunate.
Also, don’t underestimate food costs. The restaurants around the convention center are exepensive, not to mention the gouging that happens IN the convention center. If you’re not from the area, I would do a grocery run the second you touch down to avoid paying $3.50 for a small bottle of water.