The discussion on Casual Campaign Larp Wellington - discussion - brainstorming made several mentions of game timing as a barrier to participation, both from Wellington and Auckland. In Wellington, we tested this issue in last year’s marketing survey (see slide 8), and discovered that while there was clearly higher demand for evening games, there was also a substantial market for afternoons.
In practice, we’ve found that some people can only do afternoons, and some only evenings. We haven’t had any problems filling afternoon theatreforms, so they’re now just part of the mix to ensure everyone in our community gets to play sometime. The primary barriers to more afternoon games are GMs and venues: GMs run at the times which suit them (oddly enough), and for some its more of a hassle, while it can also be difficult to find venues for an afternoon game (Vogelmorn, our favourite venue, has a regular booking in the Saturday afternoon slot, while Petone Community House can’t give us their larger downstairs room).
For Auckland it might be worthwhile to survey on this sometime to find out what size the afternoon market is. Though Moonbright ran pretty successfully in that slot IIRC.