The Energon Pub

This was the logical next step. I didn't think I'd see it come to fruition this soon though.

Good thing cosplayers don't make any money or I'd be terrified of costuming. I'm almost happy I'm having trouble finding the time to finish brawl.... :S

Still, these actions show us where hasbro's focus is. The copyrights are their main focus, not much else....

It sounds to me like Botcon is eating itself. What was a fan con became a company convention and is now a corporate presentation that we are graciously allowed to pay to attend.

zodconvoy wrote:What was a fan con became a company convention and is now a corporate presentation that we are graciously allowed to pay to attend.

You hit the nail on the head.

metaphorge wrote:

zodconvoy wrote:What was a fan con became a company convention and is now a corporate presentation that we are graciously allowed to pay to attend.

You hit the nail on the head.

Hadn't that been the case since OTFCC 2003?

So what's going to be in Artist Alley? Three guys with some Mazinger fan art, one guy who really likes Go-Bots, and a tumbleweed?

zodconvoy wrote:It sounds to me like Botcon is eating itself. What was a fan con became a company convention and is now a corporate presentation that we are graciously allowed to pay to attend.

Yep. Maybe they ought to save themselves some money and just post pics of new products online. Who needs Funpub? OH WAIT. The profit they make from charging $300+ for 5 toys is probably still worth it to Hasbro.

So they're essentially also saying that hard-working artists shouldn't be paid for their work if it contains images of Hasbro property. Seems pretty BS to me. Why don't they compromise and require artists who wish to sell art purchase a one-time license for say $10 and they are permitted to sell their work for the duration of the 'Con. Hasbro gets their cut, everyone's (generally) happy. Y'know, instead of being dicks and outright banning it.

The Q&A is going to be hilarious this year.

guys/girls this is a toy company.....its "targeted" audience are children. it isn't very surprising they don't worry about their adult consumers. as long as kids go to stores and say mommy I want a transformer hasbro is happy. when they become unhappy they arnt going to worry about changeing things they are just going to move on........so yeah no more transformers.....

njb902 wrote:guys/girls this is a toy company.....its "targeted" audience are children. it isn't very surprising they don't worry about their adult consumers. as long as kids go to stores and say mommy I want a transformer hasbro is happy. when they become unhappy they arnt going to worry about changeing things they are just going to move on........so yeah no more transformers.....

The problem with this strategy (as I pointed out above) is it's rapidly becoming difficult to produce decent toys that can be sold inexpensivey, thus why Hasbro is trying to get out of the toy business....

Just watch, the next thing to fall victim will be the cosplay!

njb902 wrote:guys/girls this is a toy company.....its "targeted" audience are children. it isn't very surprising they don't worry about their adult consumers. as long as kids go to stores and say mommy I want a transformer hasbro is happy. when they become unhappy they arnt going to worry about changeing things they are just going to move on........so yeah no more transformers.....

A counter intuitive argument seeing as we are talking about a convention that no children can register for.

Anyone under the age of what? 18? has to be accompanied by an adult. A half Generation One themed boxed set.... for kids who weren't even alive for G1?

I'm more than a bit fed up with people making excuses for corporations taking foolish measures to protect their intellectual property against imagined threats. I'm a Transformers fan, not a Hasbro apologist.

If Hasbro wants fan loyalty they have to continue to earn it, especially since their entire business model rests heavily on exploiting parents' nostalgia for their own childhoods....

GetRightRobot wrote:

njb902 wrote:guys/girls this is a toy company.....its "targeted" audience are children. it isn't very surprising they don't worry about their adult consumers. as long as kids go to stores and say mommy I want a transformer hasbro is happy. when they become unhappy they arnt going to worry about changeing things they are just going to move on........so yeah no more transformers.....

A counter intuitive argument seeing as we are talking about a convention that no children can register for.

Anyone under the age of what? 18? has to be accompanied by an adult. A half Generation One themed boxed set.... for kids who weren't even alive for G1?

but hasbro didn't start botcon they juat co-opted it. they saw a way to make a quick buck and ran with it. also I apologize for getting off topic, I wasn't commenting on botcon so much as on hasbro.

GetRightRobot wrote:

njb902 wrote:guys/girls this is a toy company.....its "targeted" audience are children. it isn't very surprising they don't worry about their adult consumers. as long as kids go to stores and say mommy I want a transformer hasbro is happy. when they become unhappy they arnt going to worry about changeing things they are just going to move on........so yeah no more transformers.....

A counter intuitive argument seeing as we are talking about a convention that no children can register for.

Anyone under the age of what? 18? has to be accompanied by an adult. A half Generation One themed boxed set.... for kids who weren't even alive for G1?

This is truly a fan-thing indeed. This is arguably the ONLY place where our opinion truly counts.

RhA wrote:

GetRightRobot wrote:

njb902 wrote:guys/girls this is a toy company.....its "targeted" audience are children. it isn't very surprising they don't worry about their adult consumers. as long as kids go to stores and say mommy I want a transformer hasbro is happy. when they become unhappy they arnt going to worry about changeing things they are just going to move on........so yeah no more transformers.....

A counter intuitive argument seeing as we are talking about a convention that no children can register for.

Anyone under the age of what? 18? has to be accompanied by an adult. A half Generation One themed boxed set.... for kids who weren't even alive for G1?

This is truly a fan-thing indeed. This is arguably the ONLY place where our opinion truly counts.

....counted.

GetRightRobot wrote:

RhA wrote:

GetRightRobot wrote:

njb902 wrote:guys/girls this is a toy company.....its "targeted" audience are children. it isn't very surprising they don't worry about their adult consumers. as long as kids go to stores and say mommy I want a transformer hasbro is happy. when they become unhappy they arnt going to worry about changeing things they are just going to move on........so yeah no more transformers.....

A counter intuitive argument seeing as we are talking about a convention that no children can register for.

Anyone under the age of what? 18? has to be accompanied by an adult. A half Generation One themed boxed set.... for kids who weren't even alive for G1?

This is truly a fan-thing indeed. This is arguably the ONLY place where our opinion truly counts.

....counted.

The times they area changing.

RhA wrote:

GetRightRobot wrote:

njb902 wrote:guys/girls this is a toy company.....its "targeted" audience are children. it isn't very surprising they don't worry about their adult consumers. as long as kids go to stores and say mommy I want a transformer hasbro is happy. when they become unhappy they arnt going to worry about changeing things they are just going to move on........so yeah no more transformers.....

A counter intuitive argument seeing as we are talking about a convention that no children can register for.

Anyone under the age of what? 18? has to be accompanied by an adult. A half Generation One themed boxed set.... for kids who weren't even alive for G1?

This is truly a fan-thing indeed. This is arguably the ONLY place where our opinion truly counts.

Yeah, well it looks as though even our voice won't count there for much longer.

I'd sggest that any artsits out there who like to make money could take something they own the rights to, be it a small-press comic, prints of your own characters, or, if 2nd hand toys are okay, a bunch of cyberverse guys or something, and offer Free Sketches with the purchase of something Hasbro hasn't banned. Or, y'know, try to sell sketches of stuff they're not claiming ownership of. Original GoBots designs or something.

craggy wrote:I'd sggest that any artsits out there who like to make money could take something they own the rights to, be it a small-press comic, prints of your own characters, or, if 2nd hand toys are okay, a bunch of cyberverse guys or something, and offer Free Sketches with the purchase of something Hasbro hasn't banned. Or, y'know, try to sell sketches of stuff they're not claiming ownership of. Original GoBots designs or something.

..oooorrrrrrr, save a bunch of money by not paying their ridiculous admission costs and go to a FAN convention like TFCon, DairyCon, TFExpo, Auto Assembly, Roll out Roll Call. Instead of paying to get into a Corporate Function.

Okay, Hasbro has a right--I guess--to protect their intellectual property. I work in academia. I write papers. People use my ideas in my papers to make their own papers. I don't get money, but in my field, I get credited--they must cite me as their source. So I GET IP and wanting to be credited, even though in my case it has never fattened my wallet.

Here's the dumb thing, though: I can see their beef against direct competition: toys. I can't see their beef against fan art or fan crafts, because they're actually not LOSING any money. If they're not selling a competitive product, they are losing NOTHING.

Botcon is the big loser here, in both meanings of the word. I think they are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and honestly, I'm wondering if it's even worth it to go this year, and if I do go, I'm pretty sure I will NOT be attending future ones: the only reason I'd go is I've already sunk money into airfare, etc that's nonrefundable.

But to me, the dickest of dick moves, honestly, is that this is just breaking NOW. The fact that they're sending these letters out now to me is an admission that they're changing policy--in a sense, they are VIOLATING THE CONTRACT that they have made AA's sign, and pay for. If they'd announced all of this BEFORE registration, I assure you, my decision to attend or not would have been a NON decision, and I would have kept my money.

In short, breaking this with less than 30 days to go till Con time? When people have no choice to cancel their registrations? WRONG ANSWER.

HK, srsly.

GetRightRobot wrote:

craggy wrote:I'd sggest that any artsits out there who like to make money could take something they own the rights to, be it a small-press comic, prints of your own characters, or, if 2nd hand toys are okay, a bunch of cyberverse guys or something, and offer Free Sketches with the purchase of something Hasbro hasn't banned. Or, y'know, try to sell sketches of stuff they're not claiming ownership of. Original GoBots designs or something.

..oooorrrrrrr, save a bunch of money by not paying their ridiculous admission costs and go to a FAN convention like TFCon, DairyCon, TFExpo, Auto Assembly, Roll out Roll Call. Instead of paying to get into a Corporate Function.

So in short, you're calling a boycot on BotCon 2012?

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:

GetRightRobot wrote:

craggy wrote:I'd sggest that any artsits out there who like to make money could take something they own the rights to, be it a small-press comic, prints of your own characters, or, if 2nd hand toys are okay, a bunch of cyberverse guys or something, and offer Free Sketches with the purchase of something Hasbro hasn't banned. Or, y'know, try to sell sketches of stuff they're not claiming ownership of. Original GoBots designs or something.

..oooorrrrrrr, save a bunch of money by not paying their ridiculous admission costs and go to a FAN convention like TFCon, DairyCon, TFExpo, Auto Assembly, Roll out Roll Call. Instead of paying to get into a Corporate Function.

So in short, you're calling a boycot on BotCon 2012?

All I'm saying is there are other gatherings of fans, that embrace the fandom as a whole, not just the parts that increase sales for Hasbro (HAS).

Personally, it seems shady that they've made this announcement AFTER I've payed for my non-refundable airfare. It's a personal decision.

GetRightRobot wrote:
Personally, it seems shady that they've made this announcement AFTER I've payed for my non-refundable airfare. It's a personal decision.

This. Exactly. This is the 'eff you, fans' that really gets to me.

HK, still crabby

hellkitty wrote:Here's the dumb thing, though: I can see their beef against direct competition: toys. I can't see their beef against fan art or fan crafts, because they're actually not LOSING any money. If they're not selling a competitive product, they are losing NOTHING.

I've got a feeling the likes of Aaron Archer and his fellow designers, the guys that often interact with the fans at these conventions, are sitting in their offices being held hostage by Hasbro Lawyers who are preparing a massive fight against 3rd party/KO companies and they need to cover ALL their bases before they can launch their assault.

They know what they're doing sucks, and will piss off a lot of fans, but they probably see it as the only thing they can do to protect their IP as a whole.

It'd be nice if they could give more clarification as to the why this is happening, but again, most likely a legal issue and they can't disclose.

I guess it's only inevitable that they'll be targeting kitbashers soon.

hellkitty wrote:

GetRightRobot wrote:
Personally, it seems shady that they've made this announcement AFTER I've payed for my non-refundable airfare. It's a personal decision.

This. Exactly. This is the 'eff you, fans' that really gets to me.

HK, still crabby

I'm going to BOO the S**T outa these people at the panels. Wanna join in?