FIGHT THE TECHNOCRACY! SPEAK TO A HUMAN!

Remember our Early Bird offer? That if you bought your ticket before November 10th, you’d get the gala film screening included in the ticket? We picked that date because it’s connected to our venue bookings – we needed to be sure of a certain number of tickets sold. Which happened. And we’re super happy! You guys rule! Thank you!

Guess what didn’t rule though? Our Facebook advertising. We made a basic FB ad designed to tell people about our Early Bird deal. It was designed to reach people in many European countries and targeted based age and on certain interests – World of Darkness, Vampire, role-playing games… Obviously, we targeted both men and women, because our team and our WoD communities contain both (as well as other genders, which FB advertising does not currently recognise).

At first glance, the ad was a big success. It had excellent reach, a good click-through, and created both ticket sales and contacts with player communities in countries we previously knew no one. Hooray? Well, kind of. Because when we read the small print, we realised that out of the literally tens of thousands of humans our little ad reached, less than one percent were women. Less than one percent! This either means that female and non-binary role-players or fans of World of Darkness do not actually list these interest in their Facebook profiles. Or that the algorithm does not believe them when they do. Whichever it is, it points at something being wrong in the world. (In case you wondered, the male to female ratio of WoD fans is not 100 to 1; White Wolf has pretty good info about this). Having now sufficiently recovered from our annoyance meltdown, we’ve decided what to do.

To give ALL people we’re not already in touch with a chance to use the Early Bird Offer, we’ve decided to extend the deadline on the rest of the convention tickets we had budgeted with the screening. We’re adding a month onto the original deadline, but one week has already passed. Either way, assuming the batch isn’t all gone, you can get convention + screening tickets all the way through December 10th. No matter what gender you are, because that should not make any difference.

This is where we need your help, however. Are you coming to Berlin in May? Could you do us a massive favour and talk to a World of Darkness friend about the convention? Especially a female or non-binary friend, or a friend who might be a little private about their hobby for professional reasons. Tell them you’re going, share the link to the website or invite them to Like our page. These are the people we can only reach through good old word of mouth.

Maybe this event is not for them. That’s totally ok! Let’s just make sure that decision is not made by a computer.

Let them take Berlin, Troels, Juhana, Johanna and Bjarke PS – We’ve talked to our friends at Dziobak Larp Studios, the organisers of the Polish Convention of Thorns larp, who offer a split payment option on their larp tickets. They say it’s a lot of administration but absolutely worth it because it helps so many more people plan ahead. This is a really, really good idea!Beginning next week, we’re going to offer a payment plan option, where you can split the cost of your convention ticket and still secure a spot at the larps – and it will of course also be valid with the Early Bird option.