Yellowknife’s Ptarmicon expects to lose around $7,000 after organizers said the convention went too big, too soon.
Billed as the world’s most northerly pop culture and gaming convention, Ptarmicon has previously been held at Sir John Franklin High School and the DND gym at Yellowknife’s Multiplex.
This year, organizers chose to upgrade to one of the Multiplex’s hockey arenas.
Ptarmicon’s president, Reigh Foster, now believes that was a mistake as audiences failed to fill the larger space.
“We were probably bigger than we needed to be,” Foster told Moose FM. “We had a lot of expectations for this year and we didn’t meet all of them.
“We’re going to carry on. This year’s going to be hard – over the next year we have to try to recover from this weekend, from going too big.
“We’re going to be trying to do more events in the community, reaching out more, doing fundraisers and things like that, so we can try to regroup for next year.”
This year’s headliner was Paul Amos, Welsh star of TV show Lost Girl and the forthcoming latest instalment of the Assassin’s Creed video game series.
Amos took part in a panel, signed autographs and played a Ptarmicon-themed edition of Family Feud against other guests. They included Winnipeg-based cosplayer Katie Murray – aka Nomadic Goldfish – who hosted a series of cosplay classes throughout the weekend.
“Everybody who came out had a lot of fun,” said Foster.
“Having a real cosplayer this year was very good. A lot of people came to her panels and wanted to learn more about cosplay and the technical parts of that.”
