PAX East 2024 marks a momentous occasion in Take This’ history: the 10th anniversary of the AFK Program. It’s also the 10-year anniversary of my own attendance at PAX and–get this–using the AFK Room.
Ten years ago, my friend Shawn asked me to help him with a PAX East cosplay photography project.. I’d never been before, but I agreed to help him out. We set up on the third floor of the BCEC and spent all Saturday recruiting cosplayers to pose for the project.
During a break, I decided to explore the show floorI will never forget that breathtaking feeling of riding the escalator down onto the expo floor for the first time. The sounds, the people, the lights, the absolute sensory overload. I lasted about thirty minutes before I urgently needed to escape the noise and the press of people. I was overwhelmed and overstimulated, but happened to notice a sign for something called an “AFK Room.” I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but as someone who grew up in the days of AOL Instant Messenger, I knew what AFK stood for. I went in and it was glorious. The lights and voices were low, the vibe was calm, there were coloring books and art supplies, and some people in there even had their heads down enjoying the calm and quiet.
Check out our 10 Year of AFK video!
After the chance encounter at PAX East 2014, I regularly volunteered for Take This in both the AFK Room and the Hope Booth, Take This’ information station at events. And in a Cinderella kind of moment, Take This hired me as the AFK Program Manager in May 2023. I was so excited to join the team and put my years of experience to work supporting and improving the AFK Program. In all my time volunteering, I had noticed two common misconceptions: 1) that the AFK Program is just a quiet room and that 2) Take This is paid to be in these spaces at conventions.
In anticipation of the 10 year AFK Program anniversary, let’s set the record straight.
It’s Not Just a Quiet Room
The AFK Room was deliberately designed to be more than just a space away from the chaos of the convention. It can be overwhelming especially if you, like me and many others, sometimes struggle to manage the sensory overload of a loud, crowded event. Sometimes you just need a break from noise and to breathe uncrowded air. However, this often means leaving the event and missing out, something convention attendees will often avoid even if it’s detrimental to their own well-being.
The AFK Room encourages attendee self-care by providing onsite support to attendees. The AFK Room is operated by volunteers who know how to maintain a soothing, restorative environment and are trained to offer general mental health education and resources. There is always at least one licensed mental health provider in the AFK Room during operating hours. And while they are not there to offer therapy, these licensed professionals provide support to volunteers and to attendees.
AFK Outside the Room
Planning for each convention where Take This will have a presence starts about four months ahead of the event. Here is a partial list of the work involved in bringing the AFK Room to an event:
- Weekly, all-team planning meetings
- Completing convention applications and signing convention contracts
- Designing and purchasing branded swag (more on that later)
- Recruiting volunteers
- Creating shift schedules and arranging shift leads
- Arranging and confirming room layout and location with convention
- Reviewing and updating internal policies and volunteer training, especially those regarding role clarity and emergency response procedures
- Scheduling and conducting multiple volunteer trainings
- Scheduling and conducting training for shift leads
- Shipping supplies and swag
- Arranging staff travel and hotels
- On-site coordination of shift changes and badge handouts for dozens of volunteers
- On-site setup and teardown
- Putting together a report of each convention and debriefing
If that weren’t enough, the AFK Program is more than just the AFK Room. There’s a ton of behind-the-scenes work with the convention itself! Because convention staff are the foundation of success at any event, we offer training in mental health awareness, self-care, and crisis communication to the staff of every convention we work with. We also offer convention consultation on policy and mental health friendliness. In fact, our usual policy is to do a full convention evaluation before bringing an AFK Room to a new event. Sometimes conventions don’t have the infrastructure, policies, or culture which can support an AFK Room effectively, though we often see conventions make significant positive changes after receiving these evaluations.
If all of that sounds like an enormous amount of time and effort, it is – and it’s absolutely worth every moment of planning and prepping. Creating more safe and mental health-affirming space for the gaming community is a core feature of Take This’ organizational goals That said…
$15K for AFK
If you look at the list above, it’s probably not shocking that each AFK Room costs around $15,000 to plan and run. We are truly grateful for all of the support conventions provide us, from complimentary badges and room space to financial support for training and travel. However, not every convention is able to cover the full cost of an AFK Room. In most cases, it costs Take This about $12,000 to bring the AFK Program to a single convention.
This is part of the reason we do so much outreach at shows via theHope Booth. It’s why we ask for individual donations as well as corporate sponsorship. We expect the AFK Program to cost around $65,000 in 2024 and, as a non-profit, our ability to continue to provide the AFK Room depends on financial support from the gaming community.
Costs are simply the reality of being a nonprofit; what we do costs money, and we’d like to keep doing it!
Impact of the AFK Program and How You Can Help
There is no doubt that the AFK Program has helped hundreds of attendees over the past ten years. Between social media posts and attendee feedback surveys, we’ve heard how much of a difference a visit to the AFK room can make to a convention attendee. In 2023 at PAX Unplugged, we had our first ever check in board – a simple sticker chart that helped us understand how people felt coming into the room and how they felt when they left. This super simple piece of data collection was remarkable: 96% of attendees who used the AFK Room at PAX Unplugged felt better leaving the AFK Room than when they had come in. For the data nerds out there, the reported average mood on a scale from 1(Not Okay) to 5(Good) when a person entered the AFK Room at 2.5; it averaged 4.5 on exit.
So what can you do to help? Well, there are a few things you can do!
- Make a donation
- Purchase something on our Throne
- Participate in a fundraising event
We understand that financial support isn’t possible for everyone. That doesn’t mean you can’t help! You can support Take This by doing any of the following:
- Follow us on social media (@TakeThisOrg)
- Interact with Take This social media content
- Join our Discord community (discord.gg/TakeThisOrg)
- Sign up for our newsletter
- Visit the Hope Booth or AFK Room
We appreciate any and all support our community can provide. We have loved providing the AFK Program for the last ten years and we look forward to ten more!