I want to introduce my girlfriend to gaming as a social experience. Does she need to create a profile here so that I can buy her a badge? Why can't I easily buy two badges?

Your girlfriend will need to create an account as well. Then you have to add her as a friend, and she has to accept your friend request. Once you have done that, you should be able to purchase her a badge.

There is actually a way to do it, look for some 'buying badges for' posts..kids and friends, posted my Marimaccadmin.

I buy my a wife a badge every year and have her listed as a friend without her having an account.

Really, everyone needs an account with an email.  You can sort of make a dummy account without one, but for event emails and changes and such, everyone should have an account in the system, and it's not a big deal, you mostly just need an email.

I can see Mike that she does have a account, there's just no email attached to it.  It would be better for her to have one, as something could happen to one of her classes that she needs to be emailed about.

Marian McBrine
Event Coordinator
Gen Con LLC

If I'm introducing new people who have any sort of hesitancy about going or if planning time is tight then this becomes an issue and a barrier to new people. I've never seen any event where I could not just simply register myself and get, for example, 4 event passes and handle the coordination of my group. However, it doesn't seem to have hurt your attendance with pretty wild growth year to year. However, it makes it a huge effort for me to get people coordinated and signed up in time so that we can get passes at a descent price. The incentive this weekend was that passes were still available at a reduced price. I assume that has passed and so we probably won't attend. The whole system seems entirely overly cumbersome, for little gain to the consumer, but lots of gain for GenCon.

Anyway, thanks for the help.