I just finished GenCon SoCal and it was a physical beat-down. Four days on my feet was wearing.

So, how'd it go?

I think I can safely say that no one sold what they wanted to. We did sell within expectations, though. The con is still new, and attendance is low. Because we only had a 10x10 booth, and attendance was what it was, demos were scarce. There were many short demos of the Wicked-Dead board game, Necronomonopoly. In addition, I ran a demo of The Mountain Witch, and another demo of The Shadow of Yesterday. Both went swimmingly, and many promos for The Mountain Witch flew out of my hands. I sold about 15-20 copies of TSOY.

We did expect much higher sales on Sunday, which was the worst day of the con. Freezing weather and rain probably cut down, as most attendees were local.

My high point was the "How to Start Your Own Game Company" panel. I was on the panel, and I hope I helped a few people realize that going into debt to print 2,000 books that will be around 10 years from now, long after your company is, is maybe not a good idea. I managed to get a good snap off when one of the panel members said, "Well, do you guys want to talk about little side-job vanity presses or 'real game companies?'" This member owns a company that factually makes very little money and has personally screwed over many small-press people, and helped others run into bankruptcy. When I replied that my game company pays my rent most of the time, his eyes got pretty big.

My final opinion on the con is that it is a good way to meet a lot of people and get them interested in your games. It is not for the present a good financial investment in the short term - I did not cover the booth cost + hotel room + air fare with book sales - but I think it can grow to that, especially with a good indie presence.

Lastly, it was great to see John Wick and Jared Sorensen again, and meet Alexander Cherry, Jeff Diamond, and Annie Rush.

Rock! I think you're right, a steady and bigger presence at growing cons really pays off in the long run. You rarely cover costs, but you often meet someone or find some resource that turns out to be kick ass.

I was very sad that I couldn't go. :(

anyway, did you sell any copies of the NPA?

-L

Alexander can answer better, but many copies of the NPA sold. We also sold out of many games, including With Great Power, Run Robot Red!, Alien Summit, Cat, and The Secret Lives of Gingerbread Men.

From an players perspective, GenCon SoCal was not much to write home about. except for the huge CCG and Clix tournaments, which drew crowds, I think there was less actual gaming going on that at Dragonflight, the local Seattle convention. Both my RPG events got canceled, and even on Saturday the board game floor was sparsely filled. Frankly, in many ways it seemed more like a trade show than an gaming con...

That said, I had an awesome time playing TSOY in the hotel room after hours ;)

Attendance was low?

I guess that's not too surprising, but it's not what I (uncritically) expected. Both the name "GenCon" and the southern California locale are winners for gamer culture ... oh well, maybe it's a growth-expectation thing ...

Was Jeff Diamond there? Christopher Kubasik? Jesse Burneko? (at the con, not at the booth)

Sales don't sound too terribly low to me, though. 40 copies sold was a great blowout for a new game at the first Forge booth (2002), especially one without huge glittery covers and so forth. The high-water mark is Obsidian, with 200 copies sold at its premiere GenCon in 2000, and it had a whole display, as well as Elizabeth and her shirt. Sorcerer sold 100 copies in its first GenCon (2001), and Clinton, you know how hard I worked that booth.

I see every reason to think that the huge boom in presence and sales that we saw at GenCon 2002 and 2003 in the midwest can also occur in SoCal. Just think what everyone who bought something there has in their hands, right now.

All it takes is doin' it again.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote:
Was Jeff Diamond there? Christopher Kubasik? Jesse Burneko? (at the con, not at the booth)

I see every reason to think that the huge boom in presence and sales that we saw at GenCon 2002 and 2003 in the midwest can also occur in SoCal. Just think what everyone who bought something there has in their hands, right now.

All it takes is doin' it again.

Saturday, he runs up to the booth and says, "Hey, I was reading your book and it's awesome."

I went because I was in the neighborhood* and I wanted to hang out with friends. I made a nice bundle of cash, sold some books and got to chat with a lot of people about what self publishing meant.

I also got Vernon Wells ("Wez" of Road Warrior fame) to sign a copy of octaNe.

What sucked was the general lack of enthusiasm. Vincent posted awhile back about sad faces at GenCon and man, it was like an outpatient program in the convention center. Yikes!

Also, I won't ever do a panel with more than one or two other people. In fact, I'm making plans RIGHT NOW to do something big for GenCon Indy in 2005 *crosses fingahs*.

* Finally home after 33 days abroad in Australia and California. Man, are my arms tired. From carrying luggage, I mean.

I work nights, including tonight, so as soon as I arrived home this morning, I went to bed and collapsed - four days on my feet makes me weary, just like most people. Now that I'm awake, I'm ready to talk about the show.

Yeah, attendance for GenCon SoCal was "low", at least in comparison to GenCon Indy (I can only otherwise compare it to my local conventions here in Phoenix AZ, which is definitely higher). I've been trying to find attendance statistics, but I guess it's too new to be sure. Since I was in the booth all weekend, I can't really compare it to my experiences last year as a plain ol' attendee, but it felt about as bustling, apart from Sunday's whole dead thing.

Fastlane sold pretty well, I think - I left with 10, and I think I arrived with about 26, but I'm not totally sure (I grabbed a few semi-full ten packs, and I think my 26 count is right, but I'm not SURE, y'see). It'll be interesting to see what Clinton's final tally is, since he has the notebook. Not all of those Fastlane copies were sold either - several were either gifts (one to my younger brother, for instance, and two more to Jonathan Tweet and Ken Hite) or traded (one to John Wick for Enemy Gods, one to Tav of Behemoth 3 for their cool Stirges book - and Tav, if you're reading this, I'd play one of the Stirge-riders! They sound cool!) I know Fastlane is a good game, but I also know it's a weird concept and thus a hard sell, so any copies sold make me happy.

Fastlane and the NPA were being sold as a discounted "bundle" this convention, in addition to being sold separately. Of the twelve copies of the No Press Anthology that arrived Friday morning, one was damaged (still sold, though at a discounted rate, to Clinton himself - thanks again for that, man), one was a gift to Annie Rush, and eight more were sold at the table, leaving me with two that I'm going to try to farm out to local retailers here to recoup some of the cost. I have to admit, I'm not altogether happy with NPA's sales - I honestly expected to sell out completely, considering NPA's sales at Indy and the buzz since then.

Sunday was the big disappointment - I swear, it was deader than Thursday, at least in the exhibit hall. I'm sure the lingering cold-front that'd made it cold for the whole weekend, and the all-day rain that finally started on Sunday didn't help. There were no sales for either the NPA or Fastlane on Sunday (the one sale that we almost had, which was for a bundle of both books, walked away to get cash from the ATM and never came back).

I'm still not totally sure if I came away with a loss as I'd personally define in (payment for booth + payment for NPA shipping), though I'm 100% sure that I didn't pay for the entire con (including hotel room, airfare). But I got my name out there, I had some fun, and had some good sales. on 3 out of the 4 days, and got to meet some great people (Clinton, Peter Adkison, John Wick, Annie Rush, Jeff and Michele Diamond, and quite a few more), and catch up with a few others (Jared, Jon Tweet, the guys over at Behemoth 3).

All in all, I'll still happily do it next year, though I'm gonna need to buy better shoes for standing around in all day (any suggestions? Dr. Scholls is a big disappointment). I'm hoping to have at least one more published creation from Twisted Confessions available, too - preferably by Indy. One thing I learned from Wicked Dead is how easy it was for them to cross-sell within their product group.

Anyway, I need to get ready for tonight's graveyard, so I'm off for now. Hopefully there'll be posts from me soon in my forum.

Lxndr wrote: I honestly expected to sell out completely, considering NPA's sales at Indy and the buzz since then.

All in all, I'll still happily do it next year, though I'm gonna need to buy better shoes for standing around in all day (any suggestions? Dr. Scholls is a big disappointment).

Hey Alex,

Yeah, attendance for GenCon SoCal was "low", at least in comparison to GenCon Indy (I can only otherwise compare it to my local conventions here in Phoenix AZ, which is definitely higher). I've been trying to find attendance statistics, but I guess it's too new to be sure.

Peter Adkison reported on 2003 SoCal attendance last year. His comparative preliminary report on 2004 attendance is here. It suggests 20-25% greater attendance this year.

Paul

My life that weekend revolved around a) writing and b) taking care of two big ol' boxers for a friend who's out of town (I'm getting to stay in her place in Santa Monica -- which I love).

I schemed for a short while on Friday night about doing a jaunt down on Saturday. But couldn't figure out how to handle the dogs. (For the record, it's a bit of a haul down there from Los Angeles.)

I look forward to my life being a bit more "my own" next year and having time to attend.

Christopher

Wicked Dead West Coast did rather well. We sold a few books, shook a lot of hands.

Strangely, our on-line sales spiked during the con. I can only assume that was due to word-of-mouth going on. Our on-line sales were about half of our floor sales.

So, either people went home and told their friends, "Check this out!" or they went home and bought the .pdf on-line to try out something that intrigued them.

The seminars were embarrasing. Aldo (yes, I'm using his name), looked me in the face and said I wasn't a real game company.

I was tempted to ask him how his sales were in comparison to CAT and Gingerbread Men, but I'm trying to be Good John these days. ;)

We sold 10 copies of Masters and Minions books 1&2. Not having Book 3 ready for the con might have hurt sales - as Nat put it, the series would be an easier sell if we had all 52 flavors, not just rum raisin and butterscotch ripple! And it remains true that ordinary gamer-consumers want the minotaur book, while game-designer types want the stirge book. As it turned out, we saw about as many designers as we did consumers.

I felt like we had learned a lot from our Indy experience, so I was disappointed it didn't translate into better sales. Here's what we had this time that we didn't then:

- More table space to set up various demo-things, give-aways, and displays
- More time selling at the booth, as opposed to Indy where I spent almost all my time running a scheduled tournament (although panels did eat 2+ hours of my time each day)
- A booth listed under our own name in the program book (despite our Indy experience, I still made the mistake of saying to people "yeah, go over to the Forge booth for cool reason X" only to have them come back saying "There is no Forge booth")
- Demos that were designed to be short demonstrations of the core appeal (play either the monsters or the 'heroes'), as opposed to a tournament that invested between 4 and 12 hours in each player

Demos did result in sales about half the time, but due perhaps to the low traffic flow through the exhibitor hall, we actually reached fewer players with a short demo than we did with a scheduled event at Indy (though it sure was nice to have my hits of DMing-energy come in shorter bursts and not grueling marathon sessions all weekend long).

I don't at all regret going -- definitely cool to see Alexander again(*) and to meet Clinton, Jared, and John; I enjoyed being on panels; and I made a number of personal contacts that promise to be very useful, or at least satisfying to my fannish self.

Best moment for me might have been someone coming up and saying "I've heard all about your stuff, it gets great reviews, sell me both books right now" -- but I'm not sure we'll do So Cal again until I'm sure there'll be more folks like him.

* Just replied belatedly to your post at RPGNet.

Aldo (yes, I'm using his name), looked me in the face and said I wasn't a real game company.

Meeting Clinton Nixon, John Wick, Jared S. and Alex made the trip worth it. Talking with, and more importantly listening to, the sincere enthusiasm and genius of these guys was totally enjoyable.

As for sales, feh. Clinton nailed it. But I'll add that sharing a cramped, tiny booth situated across from the audio/video vomit of the Star Wars pavilion would be a challenge for anyone.

Overall GenCon SoCal 2004 was a pretty good convention. There weren't tens of thousands of attendees, but the few thousand people who did attend were friendly and open minded. And attending as an exhibitor reminded me that getting our games out there to more people is less about clever new marketing and waaaayy more about the fun of playing the games.

I'll be there next year for sure.

Being in a cramped booth wasn't really that big an issue, I don't think, although we were kind of spoiled that first day when it looked like Luke Ski might not be showing up and we temporarily co-opted his booth. Overall, it actually felt less cramped than Indy's booth this year, since while Indy was twice as large in space, it was probably four times as large in people...

On the other hand, being right across from the audio/video vomit of the Star Wars pavilion, yeah, that was quite a challenge. I swear, my hearing just got worse over the weekend, at least partially a result of that goddamned monitor. It got to the point where the words coming from the monBy the end of the weekend, even after John Wick turned the volume way down, I still could barely hear what people were saying to me, even if they were also standing IN THE BOOTH.

That said, we probably could have taken more advantage of being RIGHT NEXT TO an open gaming area (close enough to steal the chairs) on Fri - Sun. Probably should have put up sign-up sheets and whatnot to run demonstrations of our games after Thursday. I really think Orbit demos might have helped sell Jeff's game, though by the end of the weekend I was convinced to pick one up m'self.

Again, Fastlane did sell 10 copies altogether, compared to 18 at Indy isn't too bad, all told (especially without a single game, demo or otherwise, run all weekend). I'd have liked more sales, but Sunday felt even deader than Thursday (conversely, I was exhausted after what Peter called 'manic Saturday'). Unlike Wicked-Dead, I haven't seen any change in online sales either during or after the convention, but then I have less books out overall, and they have a really good synergy going cross-selling within their game set.

I do have to say though, that I was sure that Behemoth 3 would have sold more copies than I did, what with their own space and their D&D-based products having a de facto larger audience than Fastlane. So seeing Tav's post saying that they sold 10 copies of M&M (is that apiece, Tav, or together?) did kind of take me aback.

Nonetheless, the numbers on SoCal do seem to be placing themselves at least 20% larger than last year's, and that's likely to only grow from there. Even if things are slow there now, they are getting better, and now the whole "Forge" concept has a foot in on the ground floor of that convention. I consider my investment well-spent on a personal and pro-indie note, even if it may not have been completely profitable from a pure business standpoint. And that doesn't even count meeting Jeff, Clinton, John etc., and re-meeting others (which I would have done as a visitor to the convention anyway).

(Oddly, the weirdest personal note for me at the convention, was my telling the publishers of Tunnels and Trolls, "hey, if the guy you think is gonna finance the next printing falls through, call me - I might be able to throw a few grand your way." At least, I think it's weird.)

Greets.

Hello there.

I enjoyed meeting you fellows. Remember me? The new company without a booth or product? (But I did get interviewed by OgreCave whereas I read you guys got overlooked?)

I nabbed a copy of TSOY, but didn't get to grab Run Robot Red or InSpectre. Finite space and the "crushability factor". My brother grabbed Necromonopoly, but we haven't had a chance to try it yet (though I do think Cthulhu in a top hat makes for a great T-Shirt!)

I read through as much of TSOY as possible on the plane flight home while smashed up against a window. Overall impression? Good stuff.

I was hoping for more people and all that, but getting to discuss biz stuff and all that sort of thing was worthwhile.

Clinton, I think I spoke with the "big-eyed" panel member you're referencing about distribution models at some point.

Regards,

Sean

Reality Blurs: A Game Design Studio

Hi Sean,

It was a pleasure meeting you! I checked out the Reality Blurs site - very nice graphic design.

I did get some press at OgreCave, which I've been craving forever. In my case, I believe it was indirectly due to Aldo of Impressions, who represents Behemoth3 to distributors -- one of the main things Aldo does is a magazine called GameBuyer, of which Allan Sugarbaker is the editor; Allan is also one of the guys who does OgreCave.

Note that editorial coverage in GameBuyer is available to anyone who submits stuff to them (I'll post guidelines & deadlines if folks are interested), not just Impressions clients; that I made the decision to go into distribution forewarned with a lot of Forgite advice, and that it's too soon to say whether or not our approach to retail & distribution was worth it; and that I have no reason to believe Aldo is, within the bounds & limitations of his role as a fulfillment house & rep to the three-tier system & its prejudices, anything other than a competent professional.

Further discussion both public & private is welcome, but this might not be the thread for it (we are in Actual Play, aren't we??)

- Tavis