The end of last week saw the yearly Spiel trade show in Essen, Germany. Over 4 days 150,000 people descend on the Ruhr valley to see the latest releases from the world's game companies. Held in an enormous convention centre, the show fills 9 of the 12 halls with booths ranging from the glitzy, spacious efforts of the largest German publishers at the front down to small, unbranded stalls of guys trying to flog copies of their hand-made game at the back.
Wandering the halls you can buy (for cash only usually) the latest games, hot off the presses as well as play the games and often meet the designers, artists and gaming luminaries who wander the halls between meetings.
The show is very busy, especially on the weekend - the front halls can be literally elbow-to-elbow at times - but it's still a great way to try out a bunch of new games before all your friends get them (or they go out of print briefly!).
I have no intention of visiting the show as a punter - I don't buy enough games to make the trip to Germany worth it, especially as I can buy the games in the UK shortly afterwards at a similar price, however I did enjoy attending twice as a publisher while I ran Reiver Games.
I thought it might be interesting to share what I learnt about attending Essen as a publisher.
Both years I had the same booth in Hall 4 where the smaller publishers hang out. I had 10 square metres (5 metres wide by 2 metres deep) with 9 metres of plain white walls on three of the sides. I paid for a carpet and the hire of tables and chairs (which are all pretty expensive from the venue - I saw some guys opposite from me in the second year nip to Ikea, buy cheap tables and chairs and they even sold them on at the end of the show to another exhibitor!).
In 2008, I shared half my stand with Peter and Melchior of Geode Games, in the second year they had moved next door to a stand of their own. Both years I had three tables at the front of the stand with a wall of games in shipping cartons along the back - I got several games out of the shipping cartons and faced them out along the top so that people walking past could see what it was I was selling and I had games easily accessible in case of a sale. It sounds obvious, but you need somewhere to be able to play your games: get (or bring) some tables and chairs.
Both times I took three friends to help out, in 2008 Duncan, his wife Lucy and Mal joined me (and in fact Dunk drove) on the ferry from Hull to Rotterdam and in 2009 Dunk, Lucy, Andrew and I flew to Dortmund or Düsseldorf and then got the train to Essen. Seeing as they were friends attending purely out of good will, I paid for the ferry/flights and their accommodation (both times in Apparthaus Arosa self-catering apartments). Four people sounds like a lot, but if you've got three tables of gaming it means you can have one person explaining on each table and someone selling games/taking cash. Although what we mostly did was let people have some time off. I did the majority of every shift and it's really hard work - if you're getting paid overtime it's not too bad, if you're doing it as a favour for a mate it's a bit much without a break. It also meant that we could have someone leave early and go and cook us some dinner - if you've been flat out from 8:30am to 7pm talking almost non-stop and with very little for lunch, that is worth its weight in gold! I tried to give the others one morning/afternoon in three off, though they didn't always take it!
In the first year I took one pallet's worth (800 games) of It's Alive!, the only game I had at the time. A friend (Dean of Ludorum Games, now sadly also closed) drove my games to Essen in the van he was taking his games in for the bargain price of £50 in petrol money. I sold about 150-200 copies to punters and the remainder to Fred distribution in the US (though I think they sold them on to ACD or Alliance a while later). I came home with 4 copies! The second year I paid £200 to get a couple of pallets shipped there by a local distribution company (500 Sumeria, 500 It's Alive! and 200ish of Carpe Astra) and from what I remember, I sold about 150 Sumeria, 100 It's Alive! and 50ish Carpe Astra. I then had to pay DB Schenker (the distribution company who have a concession at the venue) £400-500 to ship one pallet back. Ouch!
In hindsight, I'd have been better to man-up, hire (or buy cheap) a van and drive it there. Then I'd have been able to take cheaper furniture that I could reuse the next year too, and no crippling return shipping fees.
In my second year I also invested in some plastic banner signs. Two 3 feet wide and 2 feet high with my company logo on for the end panels on the sides so that people walking down the aisle would see them, and one each for my three games (3 feet wide and 4 feet high) with pricing information on for the back wall. Three feet wide banners fit nicely in the one metre wide panels and a couple of S-shaped metal hooks from Ikea over the top of the panels and through the holes in the banners held them securely in place. The banners would have been nicely re-usable had my company not run out of steam by 2010.
So, I think in summary, attending Spiel is expensive for a small publisher, so try to amortize costs as best you can across multiple visits, rather than paying again and again for the same thing each year. I'd also recommend that if you're trying to sell to shops and distributors rather than just directly, that you try to arrange meetings with as many distributors as you can beforehand to tout your wares. Oh, and have a price in mind for shops and distributors who are buying in bulk, they come round with surprising frequency and it's nice to just be able to sort it out without having to pause the game you're playing.
A couple of weeks ago I did a post about solo playtesting, while hinting that it was part of a series. So, finally, here is part two, about taught playtesting.
Once you've got the prototype into a workable state (i.e. it's not totally broken, or dull!). The next stage is to play it with others. In the first instance, it's best to just play the game with you teaching it to the other players.
Why bring others on board? Two main reasons: other impressions and other strategies. Playing the game by yourself is not a huge heap of fun, especially if the game has any hidden information (you have to pretend you don't know what's in the other players' hands and what hidden actions they've taken). With real players it's easier to see how the game works when the information is truly hidden. You know what you think about the game, what about everyone else? Publishing is all about guessing whether other people will like a game enough to buy it. The more accurate your guess the fewer duds you'll publish and the better hits you'll get. Playtesting lets you get a sample of the gamer public and see what they think. If they all love it, then hopefully it will be a success, if they're not bothered or hate it then maybe you're best off dumping that game, or significantly re-working it.
I should note at this point that the playtesters' feedback is a sample of the public as a whole, but they are not a random sample and like any other sample can be affected by bias. This is especially true when you do the majority of your playtesting with friends and family. Don't be surprised when they love your game. They want to support you and will do that by telling you the game is great and asking to play it again. This bias is why the next phase is so important. At this point the game is likely to change every time you play it, or you might be wheeling out something that sounded good on paper but when you play it is shockingly bad. Friends and family are great for this, as they have more patience with your misses than the gaming public. At this point honest friends are worth their weight in gold. Someone who can play your latest darling and say: 'Man! That was shit! I mean _really_ bad.' to your face is much more useful than someone who thinks it and doesn't say it or is just predisposed to liking it because it's one of yours.
The other big advantage of playing with other people is getting other ideas and strategies. You've played it a lot solo, it's great. It works really neatly. They you play it with Bob and he uses a different strategy, one you'd not considered. All of a sudden your great little game is broken :-( Yeay Bob! Much better you find this out before you invest thousands of pounds (dollars, euros, etc.) in the manufacture of the game - it's not too late to make changes at this point. Fix the problem and try again.
While you are still making a lot of changes time spent writing a great set of comprehensive rules is probably time wasted. Why invest time writing a set of rules with lots of diagrams explaining move 'A' if when you finally play that version, it turns out that 'A' is actually a bit weak and you have to replace it with move 'B' instead? While the rules are very fluid it's not worth the effort creating an awesome set of rules and hence you can't blind playtest it (more on this next time). So you have to teach it to your testers. Taught playtesting isn't the be all and end all, you have to taken into account the bias in the feedback you get and obviously without a set of written rules to learn from you're not going to get much in the way of rules feedback. But it serves a purpose, and it's very valuable if you are aware of its pitfalls.
The flavour text is done now, but an unexpected visit from the International Trade advisor meant I didn't get as much other stuff done as I meant to.
Over the next week or two, I'm going to give previews of the four characters in Carpe Astra, as well as some of my thinking behind why they are as they are. The four characters are played by the players and represent the power-hungry elite of the galaxy. I've got the flavour text (character and card) and some brief blurb which will appear in the rules, on my website and on the box to set the scene for the game. While most gamers are au fait with sci-fi in general, I'm trying to bring my vision of a dystopian future to life, to help the players get in the spirit of the game.
The galactic empire of the game is definitely a human one, but there are passing mentions of other aliens species, so we're not alone. The characters are all ruthless, driven and successful, not very nice people - that should make the slandering aspect of the game more fun - with plenty of latitude for some terrible slanders to besmirch their reputations.
I've made them equally split along gender lines, and want them all to appear of non-specific race, as if the races of planet Earth today have melded over the intervening time, without the continents of our history to constrain peoples movement. Each character represents one of the six powerful guilds of the game: The Military, Traders, Priests, Engineers, Expansionists and Politicians. They also have a colour which will be the colour of the pieces that player gets to use.
First up, in the red corner, we have Admiral Ch'un, representing the military. She's a career officer, appearing to our eyes to be in her late sixties (though actually over 300!), she looks scarred and stern.
Flavour text: During a military career spanning over 300 years Admiral Ch'un has built a reputation for bravery, ruthlessness and winning at all costs. Thinking nothing of wasting the lives of her underlings, she often does the unexpected and has an unequalled record of military victories.
The character flavour text will appear on the player guides (one for each character) with a picture of the character and an overview of play.
In other news, I spent an hour and a half with a Trader Advisor this afternoon during an impromptu visit. I had some questions about Passport to Export a UK government programme to support new exporters. I found out that I am eligible for grants up to £1,500, which is great. I also found out there's a £250 joining fee :-( and they'll only match your spending. But both trips to US/German distributors and trips to overseas conventions (e.g. Essen) count, so I could get half my expenses paid for the Essen trip, which I was planning to make anyway. I'm now considering visiting US distributors, and maybe a US convention such as GenCon or Origins too.
So, I've handed in my notice, I've four weeks (minus a few days holiday) left at work - then what?
First up, I need to get my company off to a good start. To help this I've a few meetings to line up over the next few weeks.
I'm now fairly convinced my next game will be Codename: Network, but it's still changing fairly rapidly as the designer and I try out new ideas. I need to spend a decent amount of time improving it, stabilise the rules, get a signed contract with the designer and then start on the artwork and publicity. I'm thinking of a pre-order drive, offering fans a chance to get the game early (and cheap) and by cutting out the middle-man making more money myself than I would if I sold to a shop. I also need to get shops interested in ordering the game in bulk. How to do that? I'm not really sure yet. One way is to contact the shops directly, another is to get gamers who want the game to contact their local shop (this already happened for It's Alive!), a third method is to get a distributor to stock the game and then run a solicitation advert in their trade magazine. I've no idea yet which one will work best.
It's an exciting time, but even with eighteen months experience in the industry, the change of situation, and hence business model will incur a steep learning curve.
Friday was a mixed bag, I had a little bit of time to cut out It's Alive! bits, I met the small business advisor but the professionally made boxes didn't turn up. D'oh!
The small business advisor gave me a lot of advice around tax (VAT registered or not), business status (self-employed or limited company) and how to limit your tax burden. It was very informative. Plus free, which is a bargain.
The boxes didn't turn up while we were in, we had to pop out at lunchtime, so they could have arrived then, but there was no 'We tried to deliver a parcel' note when we got back, so we don't know whether or not they tried. Hopefully they'll try on Monday, but I've got to go to work that day so I'm hoping for one of those notes that explains how to collect the parcel from the depot. I've six games left to finish in the meantime, the boxes are made so it's just the interior to make. I've five finished copies at home, and twelve notified orders. Now that I can make a game in half an hour I can notify more people that their copies are ready. Some people pay up immediately, others take a few days or more, so rather than wait on those people I can move ahead a little and reduce the waiting list. Of course, now that it's holiday season people may well not be around to check their email.
I had a six month catch-up meeting with my bank manager today. It was good to go through my progress over the last six months with someone who wasn't completely invested in the project, and who has a business brain.
He started off the meeting telling me the copy he had bought as a Christmas present for his kids has been a success, they've played it four or five times, and the youngest kid (a twelve-year old) loves it. Good stuff. We went through my finances (which he says are better than some of his customers who have been running their businesses as a full-time concern for over six months), and my current fears about the slackening of sales. He suggested that I speak to the local Business Advisory Centre, who I had approached before starting Reiver Games. I seem to remember that my advisor was supposed to arrange a catch-up meeting three months after our last meeting (in May), so I've contacted them again to try to get together.
I'm also trying to get in to Vapnartak 2007 in York as a presentation game. Sadly I don't think I can afford the traders fees, so I'll just have to show it off instead.