GenCon Forge Booth -- The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

[Luke]

Ok, my turn.

The Ugly
• The lack of cheap/free wireless on the convention floor. Shameful in this day and age. I'm going to talk with Peter directly about this.

• Shower, shave, brush and change, gentlemen. If you're a mess, you're just distracting every one else.

• Also, if you're a zombie, just bag out. Go take a nap, take a walk, get lunch, whatever. Explain to someone that you're not up to it and take off. There were only a few zombies this year, but y'all can get underfoot.

• Shyness. Lose it. I was shy my first year, too. But it's an exercise in self-defeating behavior. You're a rock star at Gencon. Get in there and show everyone why.

• This is really ugly, but some of those games shouldn't have been on the shelves. I'd like a better vetting process or something.


The Bad
• I wish I could have made the credit cards go smoother. I invested a lot of time and money in making it happen and it all blew up in my face at the last minute. I was mortified. But, as Ralph said, it was a good experiment and next year it'll be fine. Thanks Clinton, Andy, Dro and Erin for making it work.

• If we are going to hold steady at this rate or grow further, I want more space for the booth. If Ron's planning on shrinking membership, I might consider maintaining the same space. Either way, I am prepared to spearhead the money and time needed to make this happen. I DO NOT want a geographically separate space. Come on people, that's sales suicide.

• Wednesday afternoon was a little disappointing for me. I felt like we could have used our time a lot better getting organized, acquainted and prepared. I think next year, Wednesday has to be mandatory for prep and organization time. Again, I'm happy to undertake this responsibility.

• I caught a few hard sells that made me wince. We were selling gangbusters, so I felt there was no need to demand from a customer, "Buy it!" Or to inform them that "This isn't a library." Ouch. I think the majority of our customers knew what was going on at the booth. A demo and some sales information and they are prepared to make their judgement. Or, alternatively, I would ASK a customer at the rack if they wanted a pitch. If they said No, I backed way off. But they often said yes. Try it, it works.

• Better farming from the monkeys. I think the monkeys need to be trained to survey the land a little better. If I'm running a demo, there's no need to line up three groups to play BW. Look around the booth, see who ISN'T playing and pitch their games. That way, the designer can chat until a table opens and the folks can jump in. Jasper, I didn't need ALL the DnD players. Clinton and Keith could have handled them, too.

• As Dro said, don't freaking steal each other's customers. This didn't happen to me personally, but I saw some pained expressions as it happened to other folks. Be a little compassionate here. If someone's just finished a demo, give them a few minutes to wrap up and chat with the customer. Those few moments are often crucial decision points wherein the customer is firming up his/her perception. Let the iron cool before you grab it and toss it back in the fire.

• I worship the power of Paul's rack, but I think we've outgrown it. Honestly, the long table was a waste of space. If we had a half or quarter table and a bookshelf style rack we could have made browsing easier and given ourselves another table's worth of space. Next year, I want a new display. Let's experiment and grow with our success and not become ossified with tradition.

The Good
• This was my best GenCon yet, both in terms of sales and comraderie. I was happy to have my own crew at my back, but I was happier that we were, once again, accepted into the fold and treated like peers. I really love you guys and truly feel at home among you.

• Dro.

• The quality of games and products on our shelves was stunning. I was much pleased with the diversity and utter coolness of it all. We are the cutting edge.

• Andy.

• The support I got when I asked for it. Saturday was really important to me. You see, I did very few demos last year and only did two between Thursday and Friday. So I was feeling shakey and a little undersold. But when I asked for support, you all rallied for me. It meant a lot to me. More than I can say here.

• Thor.

• Ralph and his cash register of wonders. Ralph, as I told you in person, you're a rock.

• Julie, you inadvertently get stuck being booth mom every year and you handle it with grace and aplomb.

• The sense of community, family and energy that we bring to an otherwise pretty soulless sales event. In part, our foibles create this air and it's cool. If we all had uniforms and worked like the guys at Decipher, it wouldn't be the same!

• Erin.

That's all from me. Thanks to all of you for making it another great year. I'm ready for next year!

Keith, Matt, Paul, Vincent, Greg, I hope you'll chime in when your collective head clears.
-Luke

[Matt Wilson]

Am Not Good

I didn't directly experience the credit card stuff, but that sounds like a contender. Let's explore serious options on that one. A small increase in the participation fee?  I dunno.

Only seeing most of you once a year. WTF is up with that? Intolerable, I tell you! We need more cons in the middle.

The number of exhibitors per square foot at any given time at the booth. We'll still have that problem even if we get a bigger space. Let's find a way to keep everyone from being there at once. What happened to sneaking off to play games during the day? Damn us!

Space. The next size up is pricey, but holy crap did we really have 23 exhibitors? I think it's not out of reach if there's that many of us.

I still didn't know many of the games on the shelf very well, and didn't know some of the people selling them very well. I have some thoughts on addressing that, for the special 'solutions and suggestions' thread.

I did in fact see someone flipping through my game from across the booth, and then saw another exhibitor come up and put his game in that person's face, and watched as the customer then put my book back on the shelf. That sucked!

Display space. I don't think Paul's genius rack is big enough to comfortably hold all of our games any more.

Identifying exhibitors. I think Ralph brings this up above somewhere. It could be as easy as saying 'your $XXX fee also includes a shirt.'

I also agree with his thoughts on organizing stock better. It's an annoyance now, but it'll get worse when we grow.

Am Good

This year, as with years before, I left thinking, yay, I have new friends and better friendships! That kicks ass. That's worth paying to attend, even if I hadn't sold any books.

As Luke says, we sell some righteous shit at our booth! I don't walk around the show floor much any more, except maybe to check out the Wicked and the Dead. I'm really proud to be a part of this. I just look at the shelves and the people and think, DAMN!

Again this year, I saw Andy K talking to a Japanese customer in Japanese. Dude, you are badass.

The coolness of everyone running the cash register.

The coolness of everyone who was there without having a game to sell.

[Meguey]

Ugly:
Polyesther and acetate are not your friend, and no matter if you showered that morning, you will stink by 5 pm. Again with the shower-deodorant-toothbrushing-*clean shirt* bit. Go for cotton or cotton-poly blends, and perhaps take a stink-check at lunch and fix as needed? The hall is a sweat-inducing place, for certain.

The rack (which I had never seen before, granted) seems to have outlived the space needs, and it's also an ovbious home job, although a great one. A good coat of neutral paint might help bring it up to the beautiful production value of the books on it and the posters/banners behind it.

(Seriously ugly; hope it's ok to say this) A couple games really needed better presentation, 'cause the games are great but they looked like rush-jobs. I know there's a hefty get-it-done-for-GenCon drive, but really, hold yourselves to your own standards, playtest and produce to that, and if that means you have to wait till next year to release the new game, bite the bullet and deal.

Bad:
The last minute credit card crap. Not anyone's fault, but fix it next year. It also would have helped to know sooner where the nearest ATM was.

On that note, not knowing where the bathrooms in the hall were until late Saturday. I walked twice as far as I needed to, and way more often than probably anyone else, because I didn't know there was a women's room in the hall.

The really tight space, combined with the "Wall." Yes, we could fill twice the space, yes, cost is an issue, yes, Luke is right about splitting the booth being a disaster. Fix by - Better vectoring of people upstairs to do longer demos/games, better self-selection of "Hey, I've been here for 4 hours, I should go mosey for awhile", and better general knowledge of games so folks felt confident both in telling/selling and demos even if the people most associated with a game were gone.

Yeah, the space between the rack and the register got really tight, and I could see it wasn't working as well as it maybe could.

The continual issue of random stuff being put on top of stock boxes and crowding the register.

ID for Exhibitors is needed; please don't make it a T-shirt. That winds up getting worn for 4 days, and totally defeats Ugly #1. Good clear graphic name tags ("Forge Exhibitor") pinned to the shirt of the day would probably work.

Not knowing the games well enough and really wanting to. This has been loudly covered by others, and I'll post more in the solutions thread.

PTA being priced at only $15!! WTF?

Meeting you all and maybe not being at GenCon again for years! Ack!

Good:
The amazing concern for each other I saw over and over. It rocked that everyone was keeping an eye on stock, so each individual designer didn't have to keep running to check. I loved watching people say "Hey, move my game to the back, 'cause this other one needs more exposure."  Even the vitamin C and throat drops and water were there, although not always accessable.

The enthusiasim and commitment of the whole booth crew. That's what kept people there 8 hours a day instead of taking breaks and time away - it was such a juicy place to be, in that the energy fed us and kept us going.

Arm wrestling Dave.

I loved finding a role, a way to clearly help, by labeling stock and keeping it organised, and by knowing where all the demo materials were. This gave me a way to feel like a real contributing part of the booth, even though I didn't know all the games well, and never demoed anything.

Having the freedom to leave if I needed to. I think I only had to use the Pregnant Lady Privledge once, and that was for the sit-in after 6 pm that one day. Oh, and for having my little basket with me at all times.

The constant flow of customers. We really could have been running half again, maybe twice the tables we had.

The overall layout. Having the register outside on the end, having gorgeous posters along the back wall, having the rack where it could be watched and restocked easily.

Staffing the register with Julie and Ralph.

Selling stuff I was proud of to people who wanted it. Everyone was so HAPPY and EXCITED about the games. It really felt like part of a revolution, rather than just shilling for some company.

Watching Luke demo standing up with his arms waving.

The amazing effect of actual effective social interaction on random con-goers. Eye-contact and "Hi, how are you? What do you like to play?" made people feel like real valid people, and we actually cared more that they got what they wanted from gaming than that they walked away with a huge stack of books.

People walking away with huge stacks of books.

Watching people double-take at Jasper's eyes, then watching their jaws drop when he greeted them so openly and wasn't an 'untouchable god'.

Hanging out with tremendous people all day!!!!!!!!!!!

[Keith Senkowski]

Joe
My best con yet.  Not only did I have a great time, but sold all the copies I brought.  Well all but one which I gave to Ken Hite.  I guess this means I sold out.  Fuck.

The were a lot of rawk'n games this year too and it looks like everyone did well.  This is good.

The whole dealing with the CC transactions by the stought few was great.  Andy, Julie, Ralph and Meg all deserve the double devil horns for being hard core help.

Setenza
Space.  Space.  Space.  We need more.  My proposal is to up the minimum buy in to $200 so we can get more space.  Either that or some of us smaller fish band together to by a small corner and connect the two booths together in a fancy L.

Credit cards need a better solution.  That was just messy and we should be better than that.

The rack needs to be replaced or modified.  I kinda like the idea of it being a single wall type of thing.  I'm sure some supports could be attached to the back, if ya dig me.

Tuco
No snag'n other people's sales.  That is just a cocksucker move.  If someone is looking at book X, don't replace it with book Y cause that is your book or a book you know more about.

I shower and you should too.  Shit I even had to go buy women's deodorent cause I forgot mine one day and that was all that had left at the Westin gift store.  If I must suffer this sort of humiliation it is only fair that everyone else does too.

Hard selling sucks.  We are the rawk stars of game design and shouldn't be hard sell'n folks.  A lot of the gamers are a skittish bunch and will duck and cover, or stand there listening to you all uncomfortable looking for a chance to cut and run.

This came up last year too.  We need to be, as a collective, have a better understanding of the shit at the booth.  We should all at least be able to talk up the games there, even if we don't know how to play the shit.

All I got for now
Keith

[Malcolm Craig]

The Good

First time on the Forge booth and it was an incredibly positive experience. Met so many good people from The Forge in person.

Got lots of amazing feedback on a/state (both positive comments and constructive criticism) from Forge people and from the buying public.

Experienced some fantastic games (Dust Devils and Sweet Dreams to name but two).

Selling more copies of the game that I had expected to and having people stand up at the end of a demo and immediately walk to the cash register and buy the game.


The Bad

Although I felt my sales technique did improve markedly over the 4 days of the con, I was still slightly uncomfortable hard selling people.

The crowds. In many ways this is good, but as other have commented, the crowding at the booth did get excessive at times.

The look of a potential lost sale on the face of customers when informed of the credit card procedure. Although most seemed happy with this, I did have a couple of "Oh no!" moments.


The Ugly

Forgetting that eating and drinking might be a good idea on the Friday and doing a virtual collapse at the Embassy Suites. Mortified I was, mortified.

Cheers
Malcolm

[Paul Czege]

I'm deeply conflicted. But I'm going ahead with this anyway. I think we did a seriously poor job of cross selling to games on our shelf that released at or prior to GenCon last year. It's easy to pick up a new game, show it to a customer, and say "Have you seen this?" You know they probably haven't. It's a lot harder to pick up Sorcerer and do that. (It's been out in print for five years. It had a huge influence on your gaming. It won the Diana Jones Award.) It's hard to pick up My Life with Master and do that. (It influenced your game design. It won the Diana Jones Award. It's constantly cited as the textbook narrativist game.) It's hard to pick up one of Greg Porter's games and do that. (Some of the games on the shelf have been out for fifteen years.) You personally are excited about the new stuff, because you already know the old stuff. And our culture is so totally focused on new new new. So you present the new. And it sells easily.

I'm conflicted, because sales success was not my goal when I wrote and published My Life with Master. I wrote it to show the industry the kind of game I wished they were publishing. My goal was influence, not business success. But at the same time, My Life with Master is not an over-ripe tomato on a shelf of fresher produce. I signed on as a primary booth sponsor out of the same goal, influence. I want to use my revenue from Half Meme Press to support indie designers who are just now publishing their first games. But I think my sales expectations for this GenCon were modest: ten full price copies of My Life with Master per day (that is, not counting retailer purchases). So, forty copies. This would represent fully a 50% decline from sales at GenCon 2004. And I didn't honestly think I'd come close to falling below that threshold. I don't know how many sold on Sunday, and with credit card sales these numbers may be one or two copies off, but my best estimate is that My Life with Master sold:

7 full price copies on Thursday
10 full price copies on Friday
5 full price copies on Saturday
13 full price copies on Sunday

If that's right, it represents a 57% decline in sales from GenCon last year. Was ten copies a day an unrealistic expectation? Was drawing the line at not more than 50% decline in sales unrealistic? I honestly have no way of knowing. The game sold 79 copies at GenCon in 2003, the year it was released. And 81 copies at GenCon 2004, the year it won the Diana Jones Award. But I was closing sales from demos on Sunday. So was Tony. And so was Michael S. Miller. And Sunday, when Ron called for sales attention to the game, was its best sales day. So my theory is lack of sales attention. Definitely, picking up Sorcerer, or My Life with Master, or one of Greg's games and saying, "Have you seen this?" is hard. I like Tony's suggestion on the [Dreamation '06] Lessons of GenCon thread: "And, of course, when you've put My Life with Master, Burning Wheel and Dogs in the Vineyard into someone's hands, they're likely to have gotten used to trusting your judgment by the time you put your own game on top of the stack and say 'And this is mine... you totally need this too.'" My conflict is that I don't want to take demo table time away from designers who are trying to create exposure for their brand new games. Being a primary booth sponsor, to me, is about supporting these designers in their efforts to create a presence for their games and influence the hobby. My personal frustration here is only that I think My Life with Master is an awesomely fun game, with capacity for influence that got undersold this year. I like the secondary influence of supporting other designers via booth sponsorship. I guess I was just taken by surprise that it meant so much less primary influence via exposure of My Life with Master to new interest. And if I'd anticipated this, I would probably not have been a booth sponsor.

And I think Sorcerer and Greg's games were also undersold. The only cross selling I saw to Greg's stuff was to F*ck This! Infinite Armies is an incredibly innovative product (maybe the most innovative product at the whole convention) with very tight mechanics. And CORPS and EABA are among the most tightly designed games of their kind. We devoted 20% of our shelf space to BTRC product. That relatively sizable commitment of shelf space should not assuage our guilt at the utter lack of cross selling. (And I'm pointing the finger at myself here too.) Last year, Greg worked the shelf, cross selling to all of our products. This year he mostly focused on his own, and I don't blame him a bit.

(And regarding the shelf. I love it. But I won't be offended in the least if someone steps up and delivers the next generation solution. I built the three sider as an improvement over the wire comic book rack of 2002, which hid products behind each other. Next year I'd absolutely love to focus more on Half Meme Press, without the transportation logistics and hassle of the shelf.)

Paul

[iain]

Hi Guys
My first post to the Forge so here we go!  Firstly I would like to say the guys from the Forge basically made my Con.  Talking to Luke, Jared, Alan, Matt, Ron, Vincent, and his lovely wife, Emily and everyone else, the list is so long, was amazing and the feedback and support i got regarding Mob Justice was fantastic, thank you all a thousand times and I will definetley be back next year.
Now on with a reply

Good

there was a fantastic sense of 'We're different but we don't care' around the stall and you could see people picking things up and getting pitches with looks of delight in their eyes.

People pushing other games as well as their own

The sense of team without the need for t-shirts:-)

Bad

There was a certain element of hard sell that I think was scaring off some people, a more relaxed approach may be better.  It was the big corporate attitude with the small indie image that I think may have put some people off.

The credit card problem was definetley an issue, and hopefully luke can persuade them to wireless up for next year.

better racks are a must, when you go to the forge stall you sould be able to see all games on display

more room was also needed, though not to much more, to my mind the Forge booth was one of the only ones that looked like lots was going on in the whole of the con

Some knowledege of other products is good but it is unreasonable to expect everyone to push everyone elses game.  A certain element of merchandising similar games together may help.

Post more later, time for food
It was a pleasure meeting you all
All the best
Iain

[jrs]

Good

The customers.  Really.  At the cash register, I interacted with fantastic people.  They were thrilled to see new games, patient and good humored about the convoluted credit card process, and would generously praise the games, the booth, and the Forge.  They made my work a joy.

Bad

Crowding.  Mostly by stuff that did not need to be in the booth.  I liked the large number of people at the booth--that is part of what gave the booth its vitality vibe.  I did not like the amount of stuff (backpacks, merchandice, coats (!?), coolers, water bottles, food, etc.) that accumulated around the cash register and re-stocking table.  I swear, at one point I was considering handing out a backpack with every purchase over $50.

Ugly

Cashing out.  Next year, there must be greater coordination between credit card transactions and the end of the day cash register receipts.  Although the end of the day cash7ing out process was no where near as horrible as the pre-cash register GenCon's, it was still no picnic.  I was very nostalgic for GenCon 2004 when cashing out was near painless.

Julie   

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Long-time lurker; first-time poster.

I won't do a full-blown good/bad/ugly write-up, since I wasn't an official part of the Forge booth. As many of you know, I was manning my own booth (Blue Devil Games) and repping for IPR and, by extension, many Forge games. For the record, I must have sent 100 people over for demos--particularly for Capes and Mountain Witch.

I only wanted to chime in on the space issue (and am posting here as the mod indicated further posts should not be made in the thread dediated to that issue). I think it would be worthwhile to explore a larger expansion than everyone seems to be contemplating. Imagine a space as big as, say, White Wolf's--a nice, open space with lots of tables--filled with the finest in small-press rpg's. This would be feasible if even more producers are brought inside the tent: IPR (and its member companies, including myself Blue Devil Games), Wicked Dead, etc. Hell, maybe we could even get Phil (Reed) to come back to GC. I'm sure there are some who wouldn't be interested, but I've always believed it made a lot of sense for the "little" guys to leverage their numbers.

We've got a whole year to work this out for crying out loud!

Okay, I'll add one "bad." Rampant jealousy. By me. Of you. Sure, my biggest seller might be a d20 Future campaign setting, but I'm an indie game designer at heart. (Heck, I did both Game Chef and 24-hour RPG this year.) I felt a bit handcuffed by running my own booth and secretly wanted to hang out with the gang, kick back, and play some great indie games. OTOH, it was great meeting you all in the flesh.

[Luke]

thanks for your comments, Justin. Moving forward however, I'd like to remind everyone who's read this far that this thread is for members of the Forge booth to discuss their thoughts on what went right and what went wrong. Customer and other observational comments are welcome in this thread:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=16478.0

thanks,
-Luke

[Michael S. Miller]

Liked

Seeing everybody (I'm amazed that I know so many people. I couldn't go anywhere at the con without seening a familiar face) and seeing everybody get excited about their games.

Beating Greg Porter at Infinite Armies. It was a demo, so I'm sure he let me win, but still...

Closing at least one sale from every booth demo I ran. Not always on the same day, mind you.

Seeing With Great Power... on the shelf, finally!

Seeing lots of folks on Thursday take both WGP and Capes and walk them to the cash register. Who says there's Distinguished Competition?

The after-hours gaming and shop-talk. Shop-talk is VERY important. Especially the stuff we got into on Sunday.

Dislike

I did not know nearly enough about everyone else's games. I pitched very poorly this year. I only closed a handful of sales via the "walk up and chat" method. I hate the "walk up and chat" method.

The restock situation was atrocious. Not only was it difficult to find stuff, but sometimes folks just plain didn't go through the trouble. For instance, on Sunday afternoon, The Mountain Witch was on the shelf in its own spot, and the spot of two other games that had not been restocked, including WGP. Tim's box was easier to get to than mine, I guess.

Me taking too long to realize that MLwM's sales were slack. Me taking too long to realize that when a fellow publisher says "sure, I can demo my game in 15 minutes" that they might be mistaken.

Needs to change

I neither like nor am I improving at the "walk up and chat" thing. However, my demo skills are very slick. To be a productive part of the booth, I need to focus on my strengths and demo more - and more different games. Next year I vow to have a demo prepped for each and every one of the primary sponsors, and at least half of everyone else at the booth.

The stock area REALLY needs to be organized better.

[Andy Kitkowski]

My comments are pretty much the same as the above.

For The Good, I must add that out of all the sales booths at the Con, NOBODY, no matter how much they were selling, how big their company was, or how many group T-Shirts were worn, had even a fraction of the energy (and sales effort) that the Forge Booth people had.  I was totally stunned, and a little disappointed, that more booths didn't act like Tunisian Carpet Merchants with their wares: Most booth folks, no matter how dressed up they were (pirates, gangsters, Pokemon, whatever), looked rather bored compared to the average Forge Booth member.  The only folks that came close were the "Utili-Kilt" guys, and the "Fake Hair Extensions for Women" booth. Everyone else truly expected their wares to sell themselves.

Yeah, so next year let's manage Sales/Excitement Power... while being wary of hard selling. It's obvious that in the feedback given in the other thread that when folks say they really don't have the money to buy Game X, they are not "Lying", but rather:
A) Are not trying to offend you by saying they're not interested, or
B) Really don't have the cash. (and may or may not buy your game after the Con: For that, we should prepare more "Contact my site after the Con" business cards/forms/methodology)

I even had some Forge folks trying to hard sell me stuff that I wasn't interested in, even after buying $565 worth of stuff at the Forge booth (for myself and others).  Since I'm polite (too polite to say "I'm not interested"), with most of it I waited until these Hard Sellers weren't looking, and slipped them back on the shelf.  If _I_ can be bothered by Hard Selling, it's an indicator that it's a problem.  Maybe next year in June/July we'll have to think of some ways to sell without hard-selling.

But again, I think that for the most part our sales tactics were sound, and our excitement was totally high, higher than any other booth I can easily recall.

One More Note: Chris AKA Bankuei is a specialist of shiatsu/accupressure.  He offered to massage my feet at one point when I was laying on the ground of chez Luke, rubbing them.  I didn't take him up on his offer then, primarily because I felt guilty that I didn't have anything to offer in exchange.  But man, next year?  I think that Chris could fund his entire trip if he just spent like 4 hours a day throughout the say selling foot/leg massages in some room for $10 a pop for 10-15 minutes.

-Andy