I've tried to closely follow the threads lead up to GenCon this year, as well as reviewing the threads about last year's booth and the rule about newbies only being allowed to sell a single product surprised me.  Is this a new development? 

This kinda pours a ton of cold water on some of my retailing plans and it sounds like it could possibly infringe on Jason Morningstar's ability to sell Drowning & Falling, which would royally suck.

I realize you folks have a lot on your plate and I apologize if I missed an earlier announcement about this.  I also realize that you have no real responsibility to tell us anything before we really need to know.  Still, I'm having to rethink things yet again now.

I like this policy alot, actually.  I've been working the booth for awhile now and can agree completely with Luke's assessment above.

In fact the biggest struggle for me as a booth participant is the inherent battle between the Forge Mission and What's Best for the Booth.

See, what would be best for the booth (i.e. as measured by maximum sales volume for as many people as possible) would be to limit the whole thing to a much smaller subset of companies and products.  The biggest obstacle (in terms of stress, chaos, customer disatisfaction, and lower sales) is too many products and too many companies.  It limits your ability to have quality one on one time with customers, it makes customers feel mobbed, its absolutely impossible to keep all of the games straight, it takes alot of extra time and effort to keep the shelves stocked etc. etc. etc.  Best for booth would be fewer companies, fewer products.  Trust me, Ron would sell hella more Sorcerer stuff in an "Adept Press" booth than he does at the "Forge Booth".  (you may be tempted to not believe that, but if you're a veteran of the booth and see how much time Ron* dedicates to stuff other than selling Sorcerer you'd know...* = for Ron substitute any number of other folks including Luke, Vincent...or for that matter me).

But that flies 100% in the face of the entire reason we're doing a Forge Booth to begin with.  The whole purpose of the Forge Booth is to open the flood gates and give the opportunity for maximum indie folks to get exposure at GenCon.  Limit the booth to just a few and we might as well not even have one.  Make the booth about the 10 companies who can generate reliable sales numbers every year and the whole thing becomes...a sell out (for lack of a better turn of phrase).

So how to make the booth most effective/efficient without losing sight of its mission is a struggle we've dealt with every year.  From how to run demos to who gets wall space for posters, to rotating stock for best shelf exposure.  Each year those issues get more complicated and every year we've made improvements.  My snagging a cash register so we could handle the added volume and variety of product was one such improvement (yes, one year all cash was held in an envelope in Jake Norwood's hip pocket).  This year's addition of IPR takes that to a whole new level.

Sharing booth space with Wicked Dead is another really exciting experiment.  I'm thinking that much like the Forge Diaspora into the blogosphere, down the road we may see a similar diaspora at GenCon.  How cool would it be to have 3 or 4 mini Forge Booths set up by companies who got their start at the Forge Booth and now can spin off on their own.  Heck give it a few years and we could potentially take over an entire section of the exhibit hall.

So each year we try some different things to deal with the fact that the more successful we are at furthering the mission of the booth, the harder and less efficient the booth becomes.  Limiting new publishers to one game is an experiment I heartily endorse...at least as a worthwhile experiment.  We'll see in August how effective it is.  Besides, for $160 you're getting the deal of a lifetime anyway.

Heya,

Well it will save me money in printing costs :)  Thanks for the breakdown, Luke.

Peace,

-Troy

I'm very sad I won't be able to sell Hierarchy and Timestream.

This isn't an argument against policy, or anything.  It's just me expressing my sadness.

yrs--
--Ben

Ben wrote:
I'm very sad I won't be able to sell Hierarchy and Timestream.

This isn't an argument against policy, or anything.  It's just me expressing my sadness.

yrs--
--Ben

abzu wrote:

You benefitted mightily by focusing solely on Polaris, so I'm sure you can see the merit of this.

-L

Just a quick curiosity.  When you say "one game", do you mean one game, or one product?  Or, to be more succinct, if one were to have, say, five games bound in one book, how does that fly?

Dav

Dav wrote:
Just a quick curiosity.  When you say "one game", do you mean one game, or one product?  Or, to be more succinct, if one were to have, say, five games bound in one book, how does that fly?

Dav

Technically, couldn't newcomers pony up $200 and sell multiple products?

Ben wrote:
I'm very sad I won't be able to sell Hierarchy and Timestream.

This isn't an argument against policy, or anything.  It's just me expressing my sadness.

yrs--
--Ben

Thunder_God wrote:
Technically, couldn't newcomers pony up $200 and sell multiple products?

Thanks for the explanation, Luke.  I totally understand why such a move is justified.  I guess I'm looking at this from 2-3 major concerns:

1) If I'd known earlier about this, I might have pushed harder to split the cost of a seperate booth with some other fine people (we can skip the discussion on how foolish or wise this idea is because, believe me, Ben and I have already covered all this ground, multiple times, in fevered discussion/arguments; to summerize, I've very pro Booth-diasporization,while Ben thinks we should all stay together).

2) If we have to bite the bullet about shelf space and being able to pitch all the booth products, we should ALL have to bite the bullet.  Sure, limit newcomers to 1 product, but limit oldtimers to 2-3, say, or 1 product and it's associated supplements (like BW or Sorcerer).  I don't think that's too much to ask, honestly.  Sure, I'd love to be able to sell every indie game ever written (especially Nighttime Animals Save the World!), but that sounds like it's just not feasible.  If people are in a situation like Wicked Dead, with a bunch of unrelated short games, wouldn't it be better for them to have an associated booth or partial-booth with all their stuff together?  That's what I'm mentally planning for myself, for next year.

3) Speaking personally, I'm not worried about making a ton of sales or making my investment back.  At this point in time, this is a vanity press for me, not a small secondary career or a real publishing venture.  I just want to get my products (all my products) into the hands of people who want them.  Maybe focusing on one product will help me do that better, though.  I suppose we'll find out.

Also, making a "Special GenCon Anthology" doesn't work for me, because my main product, Push, is already an anthology (a journal, really) featuring pieces by lots of fun people.  Shoehorning a few of my own short games into the book would make it 50% Jonathan, 50% Other People, which is not what the journal is about.

Hi Jon,

1) Ben is correct. Because we may feel like we're the most important center of the world evar, but if we don't stick together we will be sentenced to the most obscure corner of GenCon imaginable. And I don't know about you, but I'm not interested in having Porn Baseball Cards and Blaring Speakers of Self-Published Computer Strategy Game as neighbors any more.

2) I know, it sucks to be the little guy. You and all the first years will get over it. Next year when you come back, and you know what you're doing, you'll have license to go to town.

3) I said these exact same words myself just four short years ago. I did, I swear. But you gotta remember a couple of things: Getting your product into people's hands means selling it. Selling means charging money for it. Charging money means making money. People want to buy your game. And, lastly, the booth at GenCon is not a coffee house, a book store or anything else like that. It's a bull market in which you try to convince jaded gamers everywhere why they should buy your game. GenCon is for selling. I know, it sounds dirty. I hated it in 2003 when Ralph and Ron pounded that into my head. But I have learned my lesson. It's too big and crazy to be for anything else. One way or another, at GenCon, getting your game into people's hands means selling it.

4) The Forge booth is unique because we encourage people to sit with us and play our games. Can Push be demoed? In the past we've noted that products that cannot be demoed do not sell as well as those that can be and are demoed. Thus less "hands into" and stuff.

That said, you should come and join us at the booth this year. It's shaping up to be a wild time and I think you'd enjoy yourself and perhaps be better armed if you ever did decided to strike out on your own.

-Luke

Just a quick note in support of Luke, here. I am already freaking out about shelf space just based on the number of people posting to the Game Designer thread.

Even setting aside the physical shelf-space, I worry about the metaphorical shelf-space in all of our brains.  Even at last GenCon I felt like I wasn't doing a good enough job of pitching certain games (Sweet Dreams, for instance, I couldn't get a bead on, and I didn't even try to learn Infinite Armies, because Greg so clearly had it under control).  When I already feel like I'm playing catch-up the idea of adding dozens more is pretty intimidating.

How big is the Forge Booth, these days?  Are you still working out of a single stall, or pushing out into larger spaces?

TonyLB wrote:
Even setting aside the physical shelf-space, I worry about the metaphorical shelf-space in all of our brains.  Even at last GenCon I felt like I wasn't doing a good enough job of pitching certain games (Sweet Dreams, for instance, I couldn't get a bead on, and I didn't even try to learn Infinite Armies, because Greg so clearly had it under control).  When I already feel like I'm playing catch-up the idea of adding dozens more is pretty intimidating.

Hi Luke,

1) Well, if we all want to be together, but we're running out of room, the next step seems to be to get a bunch of independent booths in the same area.  Four seems like a lot of booths... until you have 30+ people wanting to sell multiple games there.  I think we could probably fill 8+ booths with clusters of indie creators.  But it's probably still too early to plan for next year yet.  I'll pick your brain more about this at GenCon.

2) Dude, I'm not whining.  I'm not trying to change your mind.  I already signed up and am ready to send you my $100.  I'm just saying it'll be hard to effectively pitch 4-5 different products from a single creator, not to mention booth/shelf space (and I'm very thankful for those oldtimers who are just selling a couple of games).  I don't think having a bunch of products is just a problem among the newbies.

3) I'll take your jaded words of experience on this one.  You're probably right. But you'll still have to pound that into me, since I'm an idealistic fool.

4) Push contains two short games (in addition to the other content) which can definitely be demo'd, but they're gonna be a bit more difficult than some of the others.  

Shreyas' classical-Indian-dance-gesture game Mridangam is gonna be a challange, but Shreyas, Thomas, and I have begun talking about how we might do that, teaching folks a few simple gestures that they can use to negotiate their way through a basic conflict.

My game, Waiting for the Queen/Tea at Midnight is intended mostly for chat play, but you could whip through the entire game in tabletop fashion in 20 minutes, so doing little speed games of it should be fine.  It's a two-player game, though, so running it for large groups of people is more awkward.

In any case, thanks again for organizing this and really stepping up this year.  I was really whining about the One Game Policy in a "I wish you'd told us 2 months ago!" way, not a "Change it and make it better, Luke!" way.

A quick note on the one-game policy, because I don't want feathers to be ruffled or people to get upset.

Luke and Ron have set this policy, and they are in charge of the demo area of the booth. The policy 100% applies in this area.

I am running the store area of the booth, and as part of that agreement, I will be selling all products available from IPR. Some first-timers are IPR members, and some first-timers have more than one game listed through IPR. All of these games will be available for sale via IPR's portion of the booth, but each first-timer in this category will be choosing one game to demo. The other games will not be demoed at the booth, even if I have them in the store section.

Various wrote: ...not being up to speed on enough games...

Thanks Brennan. That's good to know.

May I bump this? I am sincerely interested in the reply to my question above.

Thank you;
David

Luke Is right. Trust me, I'm not a publisher, I'm not emotionally or financially invested and I've been selling other people's stuff at the booth  for two years. Luke is right.

Concentrating on one game, and making sure everyone is familiar with it is the way to get your game sold. Troy, thank you for shouldering the Sell Sheet burden. Not everyone everyone realizes how important that project really is. As has been touched on, your game will not sell if the people selling them don't know what they are like. I can sell damn near anything that has been on the shelf over the last few years. It's familiar. The goal of any first year publisher should be making their game that familiar. This is why the one game policy is so important. We're all smart folks, but we can only process so much new information at a time. I for one would like to thank Luke for saving me from the aneurysm I would have gotten if I had to familiarize myself with thirty new games.

Those of you who are still dubious, accept it for now, see how it goes, and if you feel you need to, fight to change it for next year.

Hiya,

One other point - just because you're officially selling only one game at the booth during working hours doesn't mean you have to leave your other games and books at home.

Let's take Troy, who was originally planning to bring Cutthroat, Hierarchy, and Stand Off! to the booth this year, and now is only bringing Cutthroat. Troy should bring all three games, or the other two in as near completion as possible. He should play and promote Cutthroat at the booth, of course. But he should play the others during after-hours sessions. A lot.

Here's the point: combine (a) a good experience with Cutthroat at the booth (one set of costs, one set of returns), with (b) one good thread about after-hours play of his other two games. You tell me the effect you think that will have on his post-con sales success, which very bluntly is a crucial variable. Go take a look at threads about after-hours sessions from last year, and ask the publishers about their sales effects.

Best,
Ron