[Gen Con 2008] Post-Mortem

[Gregor Hutton]

I was pretty happy with my sales split between the Design Matters booth and IPR -- and maybe they will be a data point for other people.

For example, the 3:16 split was 42 through IPR and 50 through Design Matters (and just across the aisle from each other too). When you add in the numbers sold direct to Eero and to boothmates/bought for friends back home the total came out at 114 sold, with 18 comp copies given away. For Solipsist it was 5 through IPR, 8 through Design Matters and another 5 direct (mostly Eero).

I think it showed that even though I was on a booth at the con a significant number of people still went looking for and found the games at the IPR/Forge booth.

Since I want to have IPR represent me I was happy to see my books sell there. Of course, I didn't want Design Matters to lose out and I'm equally glad we sold well on our booth too. Eero being at the con and buying stock to take back to Finland definitely provided me with a nice top-up in additional sales. (And I hope that IPR will get the benefit of the post-Con sales of course...)

Solipsist's numbers are pretty much in the ball park of a typical new game at GenCon with 18 overall. Notably, I didn't demo this game at all, though I could have done so at Games on Demand as I had materials with me. I pitched it to some folks when asked and the review in Knights of the Dinner Table possibly helped. I think it's a nice looking book that reads pretty well (all credit to David who wrote it), but it is a high-concept game that won't appeal to every one. If it does appeal then it seemed to sell well to anyone interested. I was thrilled it got 18 overall.

People at the con were definitely being more careful in what they purchased this year, but I feel they reacted well to the experience that Design Matters offered. Whether that experience would work well for the Forge booth as a whole I am not so sure, though.

[Luke]

What happens to Ashcan Front alumnus? 

They go to the Forge Booth.

Graduates of the Forge Booth move on to the Collective Consciousness or Design Matters or strike out in a new direction.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

There's quite a lot to respond to, but it's not easy to put it all together.

I'll start by disagreeing with Andy's points. The issue isn't sales vs. demos/intros. The Forge booth has always been about promoting sales, and roping has often been successful that way, and beyond. I've seen people get roped, play a demo, buy a game, start posting at the Forge, design a game, and participate at the booth the next year or the next with it. This is the first and only year that the gears didn't seem to mesh as well. I'm pretty sure why not. The real issue lies between sales of stuff at the booth that isn't being demoed or featured and stuff at the booth that is. This has shown up in the past in a variety of ways, and with the addition of IPR stock that is neither buy-in, sponsor, or any other former-Forge material, the bookstore angle and demo angle are too divergent. The experiences at the shelf and at the tables just aren't the same or similar enough.

Related to that is the general issue of whether the booth is for people to reconvene at their favorite hang-out with people they know from the internet, or a to-the-public presentation with an emphasis on people who don't know anything about independent games or publishing. I have always driven the booth policy toward the latter.

Regarding event play, it can work for some people, but my general observation is that it's very, very ill-suited to showcasing new games, for a lot of reasons. The main ones are that it's confined to such an isolated group rather than being a public celebration of play, and that it's a hell of a lot of time to generate a handful of sales at best. (Yes, again, I know it works for some.)

Another, independent issue which gums up the picture are duplicate sales from booth to booth, which is what Gregor posted about. For purposes of the Forge booth, I actually don't mind that at all; I think it's great that 3:16 sold over 100 copies and it doesn't matter much to me where it happened. I should also point out that Gregor is not eligible to participate at the Forge booth for a reason, and this kind of success demonstrates that reason. And finally, given what I'm thinking of, the Forge booth next year will celebrate and promote (for instance) boxninja games by directing people to wherever Gregor is, but it won't sell them there. So that actually diminishes the duplicate sales issue by one (significant) booth, and

Here's what I have in mind so far, subject to any and all brainstorming but obviously to be decided upon ultimately by me.

1. A two booth space, with only one company paying for it, Adept Press.

2. About three demo tables and a rack of new games, including people who participated for the first time this year and anyone new who wants to. The number of people desired and expected should match this year pretty well: two or three returnees, five or six newcomers. I'm inclined to stick to the same buy-in fees. (For those who think I'm scamming somehow, the booth will cost me about $2400, and I'd expect to recoup maybe $1500 at the top, probably less, through buy-in money.)

2'. I am very greatly inclined to permit ashcans as well as publications as buy-ins, designated as such. This will depend a lot on Paul's decisions and what he wants to do with the concept.

3. Subject to Andrew's approval and collaboration, I'd like to run a kind of phone center for Games on Demand, with (get this) a list of volunteer GMs who are OK with being on-call for some of the con. So if someone wants to play a game of Sorcerer or Thou Art But a Warrior or something, I'd call someone who had committed for that game and that block of time and set up the Game on Demand more directly. Kind of, "Agent X! Thou Art But a Warrior! Can you do it at 1300? Over!" "Check! Check! Thou Art But a Warrior, 1300 hours, over and out!" In line with this, I'll look into what it costs to get a wad of event tickets, with the plan of passing them out with sales.

4. A lot of focus on Adept Press material as well, through activities. More thoughts on that will probably develop in that forum.

So, that's what I have so far. Help me turn my wheels or grind them as you see it!

Best, Ron

[Jason Morningstar]

Just thinking out loud...

Coordinating with highly visible whiteboards showing who is available for what at the booth/s in conjunction with GMs-on-call seems sort of cool. 

Time is precious, and I'm reluctant to commit for an amorphous four hour slot during which I may or may not get called. 

I love the idea of handing out generic tickets with the sales. 

One concern - I have no idea how Gen Con LLC feels about Games on Demand.  It was packed but I didn't see a lot of tickets changing hands.

[Andy Kitkowski]

The real issue lies between sales of stuff at the booth that isn't being demoed or featured and stuff at the booth that is. This has shown up in the past in a variety of ways, and with the addition of IPR stock that is neither buy-in, sponsor, or any other former-Forge material, the bookstore angle and demo angle are too divergent. The experiences at the shelf and at the tables just aren't the same or similar enough.

Ahhh, actually yeah that makes perfect sense there, and an even better reason for a Forge/IPR split. There's simply too much out there to demo it all or know about it, especially stuff that is being put on shelves (IPR) that doesn't have a corresponding demo-running rep (Forge). Hmmm.

-Andy

[SirValence]

Maybe this isn't the place for it, but before launching into the rest of my thoughts on this thread, I want to thank everyone for making me feel so welcome in the Forge booth. I really didn't know what to expect, and I was pretty anxious, but I ended up having the best time I think I've ever had at GenCon, listening to the amazing things people came up with during my demos, and selling enough copies of StoryCards to cover my buy-in.

The only way I could prevent Andy from having the experience he had, looking for info about StoryCards, is to have someone besides myself in the booth who could talk about it. But if he came by Saturday afternoon, I wasn't there because I was running a StoryCards event elsewhere in the convention. It's great to provide demos in the booth and full games elsewhere, but that only works if we have at least two people knowledgeable about each game. (It would have helped of course if I'd had a better display for the game, or at least had a deck open for people to look at: duh!) My publishing partner could have helped, but he had a regular badge instead of going through the Forge, so I don't know what the issues would be with him working in the booth (and he had other things he wanted to do at the con too, and he ran two of our four events as it was).

I'd be thrilled if someone ran StoryCards at Games On Demand, but I think scheduled events are better. Being in the program book amounts to free advertising, and you have a definite time and place to refer interested parties to. And it seems like whoever is in Games On Demand would need to know how to run all the games from the Forge booth at any time. Is that realistic? I mean, after seeing one demo of many of the Forge games this year, I might be able to repeat that demo for other people, but I couldn't run a full game: that would require practice with the game even before the con began.

[JustinB]

Holy crap, Gregor! You sold more than 100 copies of 3:16?!?

[Anna Kreider]

Thoughts on GenCon:

1)   Despite Josh's protests at the beginning of the con that he would make a terrible roper, he totally rocked the house with micro-pitches. I think micro-pitches are super-cool and I had some good demos with folks Josh reeled in that way. Who's going to say no to "do you like freedom?".

2)   It's the economy/gas prices, stupid! I am one of those data points, those people who demoed games and did not buy them. In my case, it's because I just opened my wallet and let the bank take all my money in return for a house. I'm hoping all those good demos I ran where nobody took the books will translate to sales down the line - because that's what I'm planning on doing. Fingers crossed.

3)   The IPR booth is too big. In 2006, I recognized everything on the racks well enough to do an elevator pitch of 80% of the stock, and I didn't even have anything to sell! This year, I could do that with maybe 50% of the stock. There was stuff on the racks that I had never heard of before – lots of it. I feel like I still did a pretty good job of pitching systems to people, but there was a lot of stuff that got no pitching love at all because the author was not there to talk about it and nobody had any idea what the hell it was.

Having nothing but new people at the booth made the problem of not knowing the catalogue even worse. And it's only going to continue to get worse as the catalogue of what's out there expands.

4)   Splitting booths is good. Maybe necessary. But at the same time, it punishes those of us operating in the indie hinterlands. What about those of us who get interested in design because of this wacky intertubes thing and then get kicked out of the Forge booth when our time is done? The Play Collective and such groups can't keep expanding infinitely to accommodate Forge Orphans. And they shouldn't have to. But at the same time, there are those of us who are involved in this design thing and who want to sell games, but who have no local coalition of designers with which to form a booth and sell games.

I'm very worried about the fact that I haven't heard much, if any, conversation about this. It's not a big problem this year, but I think it has the potential to be one next year. And an even bigger one in 2010.

Granted, this is a problem I have 2 years to work on, because I do still have a place if I want it at the Forge/IPR/however the hell it will be constructed booth next year if I want it. But at the same time, if this problem doesn't get solved, then I'm going to get cut out of that group of people able to sell games.

~Anna

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Anna,

That issue is a big part of what I'd like to talk about. I think there are some solutions available, but it's taking me a while to get it composed.

For now, I'd like to say one thing: the idea of a huge group-up booth is not a solution. Design Matters has the right idea: a small group of specific publishers with a particular vision, compatible both economically and in terms of game content (in this case, radical system-matters games). I think a dozen of those would be a fantastic thing, and the outlay for an individual publisher would not be so bad. Also, although it's not very compatible with GenCon policy (at present), ideally, I can imagine such booths occurring and lasting only for a while (a year or two, say), then new such booths re-forming according to new ideas, and generally taking on a more dynamic form - such that a given booth in a given year really is serving the interests of the publishers there.

My goal is for the Forge booth to continue to be one source (not the only one obviously) of pumping people into the position of being able to do that and not lose all their money.

Best, Ron

[Paul Czege]

I've been thinking about this a lot the past week.

I think Gen Con is increasingly structured in ways that devitalize the independent creator. With the way priority points work, the independent creator is incentivized to be the same exhibiting entity year after year. I think Design Matters was the shizzle this year because the participating designers are creative badasses who also happen to have been on the same creative biological timeline, and so everything at their booth was fresh. But look how hard Luke and the Burning Wheel crew have to work to put energy into their booth. And how many new fans did the Apophis Consortia make at Gen Con this year? Being the same exhibiting entity year after year it gets harder and harder to maintain your creative heat.

The indie comics guys are smart on this. They're constantly forming up into projects, splintering off into side projects, doing special event projects. They recognize that a creative being is about both independence *and* finding shared purposes.

But Gen Con increasingly works against this. If you want to do a shared booth for a project but still have your independent brand/company names in the program book, you now get hit with a $250 "booth sharing" fee for each name beyond the first. And because renting booth furnishings is so damn expensive, independent creators who want to form up for special purpose booths basically have to figure out alternatives for flooring and shelving and furnishings every time they want to do one. The energy that inheres to finding new shared purposes with others is drained completely away by hassling with this shit. You're so thwarted by the disincentives that you stick with your historical exhibiting entity year after year. (You even convince yourself that you're "building your brand" or someshit. That it's better for your enduring relevance *not* to express newfound shared purposes with others.)

We worked around these disincentives in the early years via the shared Forge booth; it was a con within the con. But after the last few years of indie booths, and increasing disincentives harmful to the creative relevance of indie designers, I think it's time for a structure that better supports us.

Taking inspiration from The Forge booth (the con within the con), the diverse indie booths of the past few years, the artist area at Gen Con, and indie comics conventions, here's what I'm thinking I'd like to see:

• A creator-owner area of the Gen Con exhibit hall with a low buy-in cost. Definitely less than $300.
• Furnishings, including carpeting, are included. Perhaps the furnishings are just a 4' table, a couple of chairs, and a wastebasket.
• There's an area of cafe tables dedicated to the creator-owner area for game demos. They have a time limit for usage.
  
• The amount of space you get for your $300 is small enough to encourage partnerships among the participants. And maybe you're limited on how many exhibitor badges you can order with your buy-in. (Which would also encourage partnerships, if only because you need someone to watch your stuff when you go to lunch.) Again, the indie comics guys are ahead of us on this.
• If you buy in, you get your company name into the program book.
• Creator-owners can specify they're part of a collective when they buy-in. The space allocated to their individual buy-ins will then be contiguous in the exhibit hall, and the name of the collective will appear in the program book in addition to the individual company names of the participants in the collective.
• There are no priority points. You get what you get. Do a new partnership next year. No loss.
• Probably this (the furnishings, flooring, etc.) is asking a lot from Gen Con, so they have a centralized cash operation the way they do currently for the artist area and they take a similar cut of sales.

So, that's a week of thinking on it. What would be your enthusiasm for this if Gen Con were to do it?

Paul

[TonyLB]

I am strongly in favor of GenCon looking at indie RPGs as a whole and saying "Money-money-money!" rather than "Urgh ... we want to support these guys because we like them, but the hit to our bottom line makes it hard."

I think that the solution proposed would be great for indies for however long GenCon could keep it up, but if that's not forever (and I just don't think it would be) then the eventual collapse would be pretty bad.

I'm of the mind to think that indie games should offer some indie-ish solutions to this business problem.  We've got a known system, we've got a lot of creativity, I think we can make things happen without asking for the external constraints to change.

If folks are serious about making new projects (and I think they should be) then maybe the concept of a line of priority points takes on a quality more like a performance space and less like a part of a group's identity.  One person holds down the business identity that accumulates the points, and other people come to them and say "This is a resource we would like to take advantage of this year, for our own purposes" and you have a continuity of the booth as far as GenCon is concerned, but no necessary link to years past as far as exhibit-goers are concerned.

Less than a week's thoughts on the matter, but something that I started thinking over once this discussion hit full swing.

[Darcy Burgess]

I goofed an posted this in another thread by mistake.  Other than this intro, it's unchanged.  It was posted originally in-and-around the same time as JustinB's "100 copies of 3:16" post.

------------8<-------------------

Hi,

I'm contributing this as a data point (and as an Ashcan Frontista, not a Forge booth member):

I ran 2 scheduled sessions of Black Cadillacs at the IGE.  Both generated sales at the booth (3 from the first, with 4 players; and 2 from the second, which had 2 players).

I think that there's incredible value to publishers pairing up, being knowledgeable about each others' games, and getting their games in the GenCon schedule.  Then, it becomes a matter of organization so that you and your 'partner' aren't running at the same time.  Then, someone's always at the booth.

For what it's worth,
Darcy

[buzz]

FWIW (since I was not at GenCon '08), I'm with Andy on the idea of getting more indie games onto the GenCon event schedule. I love the idea of GoD, but given how much effort I go to in order to attend (hotel fees, driving four hours, dealing with GenCon's creaky registration system), it'd be nice to know that I will definitely get to play whatever the New Hawtness or Old Coolness is I signed up for. I dunno from sales, but I'm just saying this from the perspective of an attendee who only gets to play indie games on rare occasions like GenCon.

[iago]

Ron asked me to post the booth gross in this thread.

The booth grossed approximately $19,800. I can get down to the dollars specific if folks want, but I figure that's close enough.

As I recall, the booth did well over $20k last year, but I don't have the exact figure on that.

There are a lot of factors at play here, some of which could have been addressed to IPR's benefit at least, but I don't want to derail too much.  (But for example, had last-minute buy-ins been possible under Forge policy, we would have had John Wick at the booth with Houses of the Blooded -- which, else-booth, sold near 100 copies at $40 a pop, which would have made the booth's take look less anemic.)

I think what we're seeing most of all here is that this was the year of new hotness debuting outside of the booth. Normally the forge booth is where a few rockstar breakouts happen. That happened this year some, but not lots.

[Brennan Taylor]

More data:

Booth take in 2007: $29,500
Booth take in 2006: $33,000