This idea has been bandied about for years, and now the time has come.  It's a fun little invented reward for people to come hang around the booth ... and that kind of reward can drive all sorts of other good stuff ("Come to the Playtest Track!  Your only chance to get your indie passport stamped in the developing games!") 

Anyway, I plan to make it happen.  I could use some help/info/inspiration from other people on how to bring the cost down to a level that won't put a pinch in my pocket-book.  Here's the resources I need to corral:

• Stamps for each game being run and each game being demoed• At least 200 little novelty passports, with at least eight pages or so apiece

Then when someone gets a demo or plays in a game we'll stamp their passport.  The resources aren't that much, really.  I already know how to handle the stamps:  I've web-searched a place that makes ~$4 custom stamps, and also gives free stamps off of automated templates for the cost of shipping and handling.  So as long as I'm ordering a decent number of the $4 stamps, it's negligible extra cost to jam-pack the order with lots of little three line "Game / Motto / website" stamps.  Anyone who wants to upgrade themselves from the cheapie stamps to something custom-designed with a logo can PayPal me some dough when I get organized.

The passports are a bit more of a poser to my crafting skills, though.  Maybe I could have covers Kinko-printed on cardstock (three to a sheet) then staple four pages of paper to the cover (six staples down the spine, two for each of the three sections), cut the books apart and fold.  If I did a hundred covers, that would be some money, but worth the price of entry to me, and the 400 pages of printer paper are a complete irrelevance, price-wise.  I don't know that I'd love the look of the end product though.  Does anyone have ideas for a better process?  Or places where such little booklets can be made by professionals at a price that won't squish my ambitions?

I'm totally on board. And I'm summoning Rob to look at this thread, since he is mister paper-crafts.

This is a pretty awesome idea, and I've got a decent stock of binding staplers and cutters, enough so that I'd be happy to help out.

That said, you're right, the cover is the tricky part, and I don't have a quick answer for you, though there are a lot of cool options. I'm willing to go into the lab and start prototyping to see what works well.

-Rob D.

This is hot.

yrs--
--Ben

Rob wrote:
That said, you're right, the cover is the tricky part, and I don't have a quick answer for you, though there are a lot of cool options. I'm willing to go into the lab and start prototyping to see what works well.

TonyLB wrote:
By the way, I can't help imagining that your paper lab has sparking jacob's ladders and great big knife switches.  Oh, and it's in black and white.  If it doesn't live up to my dreams, please don't disillusion me.

Other than being cool and fun (which if that's all it is, cool!) do you guys see a purpose to this that I'm missing?

Two things (at least in my head):  First, it's a created reward mechanism, and we can use it to encourage specific behaviors.  When someone gets a stamp in the book, that's like a pat on the head.  So if we want them to do something we offer a stamp in the book for it.

If you get a stamp for each demo you undertake then you get collector's syndrome, which pushes people to demo games that they haven't tried yet ("Gotta catch 'em all!")

If we offer special stamps for (for instance) Nathan's organized playtest idea then we can drive some traffic that way as well.

Second, of course, the artifact itself is marketing, both to the person who holds it ("Hey, what was that demo ... oh yeah, Agon!  That was cool.  And look at that ... their web-site is right on the stamp they gave me.  Conveeeeenient,") and to anyone else who notices a proliferation of battered little passports flowing through the convention.

Okies.  So, I'm no grand master o' arts & crafts, but I made something cheap and fast.  Check it out.  It's half a sheet of ivory colored 110lb cardstock with a single sheet of white paper folded twice inside.  I cut the paper once so that it comes out as four seperate pages.  I printed a single shipping label through my inkjet printer.  Avery 8163 labels.  I seem to remember it being something like $12 for the 250 labels that I have.

Now, what I made sucks, but I think that with some watercolor blue interior paper (very light color) and some navy blue cardstock, you'd probably have just what you're looking for.  I mean, they won't be uber-awesome with a vinyl cover or anything, but they're cheap, quick, and easy.

-Eric

If you want to lend some weight to this, offer some sort of freebie to people who get at least, I dunno, 10 stamps on their passport, at the end of the con.  Like a CD with a few free PDFs burned to it or something.

Freebie stuff is cool, but I don't think it's necessary to give the thing weight.  If one were to do something like posting up the names and "scores" of the Ten Best Traveled Gamers of Dreamation to a wipe-board every so often, then you'll have people jumping on board just to get their names up there.

I agree that there should be some prize for completing a passport. Even if it's just a "get ten stamps and be entered into a drawing for X prize" sort of deal. That said, the "Best Traveled Gamers" board is a neat idea.

Which also made me think that we could totally play off the passport theme. You could have an early slot where IGE "travel agents" plan your "vacation/trip," assigning you to games that meet your interests. Then they could give you an "itinerary" that shows when and where everything is. You could also have a "flight schedule" board showing when the next IGE games were running (Flight R104 - Burning Wheel - Departing From: Salon A, Table 14 at 8:00 p.m. - On Time). And so on.

I like the passport idea. You should probably leave the first page for personal data, like name and badge number, in case one gets dropped. It would be even cooler if we could take their picture and put it in the passport

At present, participants in Indie Game Explosion are awarded 0.25 Double Exposure Prize Vouchers per session.

What if points were awarded on the number of stamps in the passport?
For example:
5 points for 8-10 stamps
3 points for 6-7 stamps
1 point for 4-5 stamps
0.25 point for 1-3 stamps

Additionally, if each game designer that submits a game to be tested throws in a couple of bucks towards a grand prize, the person(s) with the most stamps could use that money at the IPR/Indie Explosion booth. I know I liked that prize when Tony awarded it last Dexcon.

I think this is a great idea!

I don't know if you guys have ever bumped into the Looney Labs guys at a con? They do something similar. They hand out a card with the names of the games they're demoing printed onto it, and each time you play a game you get a sticker. If you get a whole line of stickers you get some sort of spot prize (usually a promo card or somesuch). If you fill the whole thing you get another prize.

But, and this is the funky bit, all the demoers have a similar card which they wear around their necks like a badge. Instead of showing what they've demoed, it shows what they CAN demo. So if you want to fill in one of your stickers so are looking for a demo of, I dunno, Primitive to pick a game at random, you could just glance over to the various demoers and see who can sort you out with a game!

Don't know if this would work with the passport, mind you ...