Gen Con Scheduled to Emerge from Chapter 11!:

SEATTLE (January 9, 2009) – Gen Con LLC announced today that the US Bankruptcy Court of Western Washington has confirmed the company’s plan of reorganization and approved the company’s rejection of a hostile takeover bid.

“This is bright day for us”, said Adrian Swartout, CEO of Gen Con. “The entire team is looking forward to 2009 and continuing our growth as a stronger, more focused company. Our emergence from Chapter 11 is a testament to the skill and perseverance of our employees and the strength of the phenomenal Gen Con brand. Everyone here is excited to begin working outside of Chapter 11.”

Since filing for bankruptcy protection in February of 2008, Gen Con has significantly reduced its expenses and increased its cash position. The company’s cash flow is positive and prospects have never looked better. Under the confirmed plan, Gen Con will pay all of it creditors in full over time and will continue to operate. A three-member Advisory Committee will assist the company and its board, and Peter Adkison will retain ownership. “This is an extremely successful case,” said Shelly Crocker of Crocker Kuno, Gen Con’s bankruptcy attorney, “largely due to the efforts of Ms. Swartout and her team, and the cooperation of the Creditors’ Committee.”

Gen Con Indy 2009 will prove to be one of the best shows yet with thousands of events and hundreds of exhibitors. Gen Con attendees can expect to see all of their favorite programs such as the Costume Contest, Auction, Art Show, Family Fun Pavilion, eGame Arena and much more!

I consider this fine news. This year’s Gen Con will be my 10th, and I’m glad that it will still be run by the same people who have been running—and growing and improving—the convention quite successfully for seven years now.

[Hat tip to Matt Forbeck for being the first posting of the news that I saw.]

Trask over at Living Dice has posted the most recent news about Gen Con LLC’s Chapter 11 Bankruptcy filing, including a nice summary and some of the documents themselves.

In short, Gen Con LLC has come up with a plan to pay back their debts, and the creditors have until the end of December to decide on whether to accept those terms. So, it’s likely that everyone will have to wait a few more months for further news.

For my previous posts on Lucasfilm’s lawsuit against Gen Con LLC and the Chapter 11 filing, please check the posts under the gencon tag.

Living Dice has posted a document from Gen Con’s LLC bankruptcy filing. I haven’t really looked over the document and Living Dice says there may be more and updated documents available, but they didn’t dig them up.

A few excerpts from indystar.com:

This year, Gen Con Indy is expected to attract 25,000 attendees who will spend more than $25 million on lodging and entertainment.

So the average Gen Con Indy attendee spends about $1000 dollars over the entire convention. That seems a little high to me, based on the number of times I’ve seen gamers discuss how they attend Gen Con as cheaply as possibly — it seems to be part of “gamer pride” to try and work the system as much as possible.

Indeed, in a statement issued Feb. 15, Gen Con said the “flagship” convention “remains a vibrant, profitable event” and will take place as scheduled from Aug. 14-17. The Chapter 11 filing won’t affect its other conventions in France, Australia and the United Kingdom, either.

“Gen Con LLC will continue to operate without interruption during this process,” the company said in a statement.

Seattle-based Gen Con said it had to file for bankruptcy in Washington state because of “significant unforeseen expenses associated with attempts to expand its core business to encompass externally licensed events.”

In the filing, Gen Con lists its assets and liabilities as each between $1 million and $10 million. It owes $748,956.81 to its largest creditor, convention services company George E. Fern Co. of Columbus, Ohio. Gen Con owes the Indiana Department of Revenue $116,858.70 in sales and income taxes, but Gen Con disputes that claim, according to the filing.

» Read the rest of this entry «

Writing and Parenting Machine Matt Forbeck has some analysis of what’s going on with Gen Con Indy and Gen Con LLC. I’ve been super busy this weekend with a probably-not-about-to-be-secret-for-much-longer project, so I haven’t had much time to keep up with the public reaction to this announcement. I’m still looking forward to the Best Four Days in Gaming this summer, though!

from http://www.gencon.com/2009/corporate/news-pr/releases/2008/2008.02.15.Press.aspx

SEATTLE (February 15, 2008) Gen Con LLC announced today that it has filed for Chapter 11 protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the State of Washington. This action became necessary as a result of significant unforeseen expenses associated with attempts to expand its core business to encompass externally licensed events. Gen Con’s flagship show, Gen Con Indy, remains a vibrant, profitable event. Gen Con Indy will take place as scheduled August 14–17, 2008, in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The protections afforded by Chapter 11 will allow Gen Con to further its efforts to address its liquidity needs, preserve value for its creditors and explore strategic alternatives for the business. “Because the fundamentals of our business are strong; and because our debt problems are challenges mostly linked to one-time events, we feel confident that the profile of our company will benefit under Chapter 11 and come out strong in the end,” said Peter D. Adkison, CEO of Gen Con.

Chapter 11 refers to the section of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code that provides for court-supervised restructuring of companies as they continue to operate normally. This proceeding is intended to help companies to become stronger financially.

Gen Con LLC will continue to operate without interruption during this process and looks forward to an expeditious resolution to the short-term challenges and the ability to focus entirely on producing Gen Con Indy, The Best Four Days in Gaming. International Gen Con events are unaffected by this situation and will continue to operate as scheduled.

About Gen Con

Gen Con, LLC produces the largest consumer fantasy, sci-fi and adventure game convention in North America. Itts operations include Gen Con Indy and licensees for European and Asia Pacific Gen Con shows. It was acquired in 2002 by former CEO and founder of Wizards of the Coast Peter Adkison, who solely owns the company headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Gen Con is a consumer and trade experience dedicated to gaming culture and community. For more information visit the website at www.gencon.com.

The protections afforded by Chapter 11 will allow Gen Con to further its efforts to address its liquidity needs, preserve value for its creditors and explore strategic alternatives for the business. “Because the fundamentals of our business are strong; and because our debt problems are challenges mostly linked to one-time events, we feel confident that the profile of our company will benefit under Chapter 11 and come out strong in the end,” said Peter D. Adkison, CEO of Gen Con.

Chapter 11 refers to the section of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code that provides for court-supervised restructuring of companies as they continue to operate normally. This proceeding is intended to help companies to become stronger financially.

Gen Con LLC will continue to operate without interruption during this process and looks forward to an expeditious resolution to the short-term challenges and the ability to focus entirely on producing Gen Con Indy, The Best Four Days in Gaming. International Gen Con events are unaffected by this situation and will continue to operate as scheduled.

About Gen Con

Gen Con, LLC produces the largest consumer fantasy, sci-fi and adventure game convention in North America. Itts operations include Gen Con Indy and licensees for European and Asia Pacific Gen Con shows. It was acquired in 2002 by former CEO and founder of Wizards of the Coast Peter Adkison, who solely owns the company headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Gen Con is a consumer and trade experience dedicated to gaming culture and community. For more information visit the website at www.gencon.com.

Eriq Gardner at The Hollywood Reporter, Esq broke the news on January 14th that LucasFilm was suing Gen Con, LLC. This news didn’t make it to the gaming world until a few days ago in February, when GamingReport picked it up and other sites began discussing it.

Unfortunately, The Reporter’s summary of the lawsuit [which was filed on January 8th, 2008] was a little terse, and various postings around the ‘net have distorted the case and claimed false things — all of which could be avoided if people had actually read the brief complaint. A fair number of people are saying that Gen Con owes $1,000,000 to Make-a-Wish foundation, and no reading of the lawsuit bears that to be true.

As I read it [and I bounced the complaint and the bullet points over to a legal pal of mine for clarification -- thanks Daniel!], the complaints levied against Gen Con LLC are pretty simple:

• Gen Con LLC entered in an agreement — the “Fan Convention Agreement” — to run Star Wars Celebration IV in May 2007. They paid a non-refundable advance, but Lucasfilm alleges that they did not follow through with proper quarterly accounting statements nor payment, and Lucasfilm is seeking approx. $500,000 in compensatory damages plus interest.
• Gen Con LLC entered in a second agreement — the “Auction Agreement” — in which Lucasfilm agreed to provide items to the auction, with the proceeds of the auction going to the Make-a-Wish foundation. It is not entirely clear from the lawsuit if all of the auction proceeds or just those from the Lucasfilm archives were intended for Make-a-Wish.^#1 Lucasfilm is seeking approx. $150,000 in compensatory damages, plus approx $150,000 in pecuniary restitution, plus interest on both. In other words: they want the money that would have gone to Make-a-Wish foundation, and they they want to be paid for the merchandise that Gen Con allegedly auctioned off inappropriately.
• Lucasfilm is further asking for punitive damages to be proven at trial.
• Lucasfilm is also seeking pre-judgement interest plus the cost of the lawsuit.
• Lucasfilm has asked for trial by jury on all claims that may be tried by a jury. My understanding is that this is done because a jury trial is more expensive, and thus more likely to force Gen Con to settle, and due to the nature of the donations — the average person isn’t going to look kindly on anyone ripping off a major charity.

That’s the skinny: approx $800,000 in various damages, plus potentially more.

#1: Based on the following quote at It’s a Hit: A Record-Breaking Celebration IV, I’m led to believe that the Lucasfilm-owned items were the majority or the only items available at the auction:

Fans were a huge part of the success of Celebration IV, contributing to programming and events especially in the Fan Fair Hall and on the Star Wars Fan Stage. Star Wars collectors raised nearly $170,000 in four silent auctions and one live auction of vintage toy merchandise from the Lucas Licensing archives. The profits from the auction will be donated to the Make-A-Wish foundation.

Thursday, Feb 24th edit: My bad; the name of the blog I linked to is The Hollywood Reporter, Esq. Also, the proper name of the suit is “Lucasfilm Ltd v. Gen Con LLC”

Ah, the best four days in gaming. Also, non-stop meetings, seminars, and other crazy stuff.

I had a really great time. First, obviously, I have to mention Catalyst Game Labs — this was our first GC with our new company, and we had a hot booth with new fixtures and all sorts of good stuff, in a damned nice location. We had plenty of space to run demos, and we demoed Degenesis, Shadowrun, and Classic BattleTech regularly at the booth.

Our regular games were a bit of chaos. I’m honestly not sure of all the details, but they were shuffled around a few times and some of them were in very remote locations, and apparently Gen Con also printed up a bunch of tickets that didn’t match any of the previous information … this seemed to be a problem for a lot of companies and their games.

On the product front, I am incredibly thrilled that we had everything we wanted to have to the show there: the new Classic BattleTech Introductory Box Set, Starterbook: Sword and Dragon, TechManual, the Total Warfare reprint, and Technical Readout 3050: Upgrades for Classic BattleTech; Augmentation and Emergence for Shadowrun; new Quick-Start Rules for Shadowrun; and the debut of the Degenesis Quick-Start rules. We also had a new BattleTech t-shirt and a Saeder-Krupp t-shirt for Shadowrun.

All of the books will be in stores by August 31st, except for the ones that are already there.

All of this coming together so well was just… incredible to see. Did we have room for improvement? Absolutely, as always. But it was good. Damned good.

I didn’t get much time to wander the show floor, but I did snag some of Green Ronin’s new Freeport stuff, which looks hot; the 40 Years of Gen Con book, Post-Apocalyptic Hero from Hero Games, a copy of jim pinto’s new wrestling RPG, and a few other things.

The mood of the show seemed upbeat, too. Obviously there was a lot of talk about D&D Fourth Edition, which I haven’t done enough reading about yet to have any sort of useful opinion except “I’m not afraid of it putting Catalyst out of business.”

We won a couple ENnies — a gold and a silver — for the free pack of Classic BattleTech Introductory ceremony. I arrived at the ceremony just a few minutes before those awards were given out, so it was great to get to hoot and holller at Randall. I hope this leads to more recognition of minis games at the ENnies. Also, from what I saw, the ENnies ceremony itself was very well done this year, and was in a very nice location.

I have to give some mad props to Davidson, Seth, and Klaus for how much they busted their butts promoting Degenesis at the booth, running demos, and getting fans interested in this crazy-cool game. By the end of Friday we had given out all the Quick-Start Rules we brought, so with some quick help we printed up some new 4 page flyers the next morning so the information stream didn’t trickle to nothing.

Beyond that, it was great to catch up with and spend some quality time with people I haven’t seen for awhile, and I met some new people who are pretty damned cool, too. So that’s all pluses!

And of course, thanks to the fans that came out to the show, to our booth, seminars, and games — Gen Con is the four days of the year where I love my job the most, and it’s due to you guys.

GenCon 2006 was tons of awesome. In brief:

• FanPro had our largest booth ever, shared with Iron Wind Metals, and we also had a couple of the Virtual World Entertainment BattleTech pods there. We got to talk to a ton of fans, and ran a successful instance of our “Booth Runner” game for the second year in a row.
• We had awesome sales of our new products, including Street Magic for Shadowrun and Total Warfare for Classic BattleTech.
• Total Warfare looks really, really awesome. It’s so gratifying to see something that we worked so hard on come out in a virtually flawless manner. The hardcopy is gorgeous, the best-looking book FanPro has ever done, and it totally brings Classic BattleTech up to — and maybe above — the production values of other modern miniature games.
• Shadowrun, Fourth Edition had brisk sales and won two ENnie Awards, for Best Rules and Best Product.
• We pimped Degenesis as much as possible, with limited resources, and a lot of people seem enthusiastic about it.
• Our Dodgeball team won two 3AM games, including a victory over the White Wolf team.
• We had great service and fabulous rooms at the Hilton, had some good meals, productive meetings, and good times during the evening.
• Guardians of Order’s A Game of Thrones RPG got a bunch of 2nd place ENnies — and deserved first place in at least one, but was almost certainly hurt by GoO’s lack of support for the game over the year.

A super successful show!