I've found these post-Gen Con discussions interesting and helpful in the past, so let's start a new one for Gen Con Indy 2008.  What worked in the booth (and in the extended "diaspora" game space) and what didn't?  What can we improve on for next year?  Also, while there are celebratory threads elsewhere, feel free to share the best things about Gen Con here. 

For my part, this was the best year yet in Indianapolis.  I think I've finally found the balance between working the booth, seeing the show, and playing games.  How about the rest of you?

My no-Brennan IPR bent left me seeing the same 400 square feet for most of the show. Not my favorite GenCon, but it was still a good time (helps that I'm a bit of a workaholic).

The demo-to-"sales corridor" flow seemed a bit anemic this year.  I am not sure of all of the factors, but over the course of the con I developed a hunch that it might have had something to do, in part, with the Forge regularly exporting the expertise it develops to other booths.  This is not meant as a bash on the folks who were new to the booth, and there certainly were still some standouts.  I just feel like I've seen it stronger.

Sales-wise from IPR's perspective this year was a significant (several thousand dollars) drop over last year.  There are a LOT of factors going into this.  Certainly the fact that Design Matters and Play Collective both were able to process credit cards this year helped draw some sales traffic away. Also Forge booth policy meant we could not, last minute, get John Wick a buy-in -- which sent him elsewhere with hot ticket item/traffic-draw Houses of the Blooded.  Elsewhere, he sold nearly 100 copies of Houses of the Blooded, which would have put him in first place at the Forge booth in a "doubling the top seller's sales" sort of way.  Also, IPR ended up shipping a number of hot-seller items to the show that then were taken away and not sold by IPR, but by other booths (which honestly is no problem from my perspective so long as the folks taking books away are paying a portion of the costs to ship those books to and from the show).

At the end of the convention, Ron said that it was time for the Forge and IPR to split into separate booths. I tend to agree, not as a sour grapes thing, but as a "the priorities of the two halves are definitely not lining up" way.  This has not been the healthiest of years for conventions for IPR.  We lost money by attending Origins, and I don't yet know how our costs will stack up against our revenue for GenCon.  It's clear to me, still, that IPR must have a presence at GenCon, but there will be enough changes and there are enough questions that it's also clear to me that IPR at Gencon 2009 will look significantly different from what it's been before.

To be clear, it wasn't (from my perspective) that we weren't running demos.  In fact, compared with previous years, I think the downtime was pretty minimal.  Except for the usual lunch-time lull, the tables were regularly full and I had to send designers and customers to the tables in back of the booth as a matter of course.

But man, did it seem like everyone was having a tough time turning demos (even spectacular demos where everyone was laughing and yelling) into sales.  In my more frustrated moments, I kept thinking to myself: "You obviously just had a great time.  Why won't you buy this game?"

So either the attendees were tight with cash this year, or I really mis-read their reactions.

Yes, thanks for that, Tim. That's exactly what I was meaning to indicate.

There's also a real possibility that some folks are coming by the booth to demo games they already own with the designer, so they can "see how the designer runs it".

But there was definitely also an anecdotally "fair amount" of demos that just weren't turning into sales despite all indicators to the contrary.

Definitely felt like the indie dollars were coming to the con this year, but that dollar may have been stretched out over more destinations than before.

I'm with Tim. I know I did demos this year that would have been sales of the game last year. The feeling I got was that people were coming over for books they had heard buzz about before, mostly, and then not picking up much in the way of unplanned purchases. Whether demos will turn into post-GenCon sales remains to be seen. I don't actually know how Fae Noir sold this year in specific numbers, but I'd be surprised if it topped 15 or so sales and pre-con I expected it to go 20 at least. By Sunday it felt like there was no point to running demos since even from the best demos I wasn't getting sales.

I was especially disappointed with the CandyCreeps sales. We did about 15 of those and I had expected 30 to be the low-end sales number for the game, possibly even 40-50. A $13 game with fun character creation that's a good read would have been an easy impulse purchase last year, but even though we demo-ed to over 100 people this year (mostly laughing and having a good time), only one or two actually picked it up.

I'm blaming the economy, but still.

I think pretty clearly the game that really broke out was Zombie Cinema, since that DID get a ton of sales right out of demos. Anyone know what the price point on it is?

I bought about 6-7 games at the Forgebooth but I didn't play any demos. They were mostly games that I heard about at Games on Demand and the Embassy Suites or before Gencon via blogs and were games I couldn't buy directly from the designer's themselves at Gencon. Talk at GoD and ES 100% influenced my decisions of what games to play and buy.

I heard much talk from others that they wouldn't buy a game unless they were sure they would play it. A few people also seemed concerned about new games they hadn't heard about and wondered why they weren't available as ashcans or preview copies first.

My attention felt split in many directions. Between all the different booths, Forge, Play Collective, Ashcan, Design Matters, Pelgrane, Burning Wheel, John Wick, wherever Andy K was... I felt I needed to check them all out first before making final purchase decisions. That being said, I felt the Forge booth was the absolute best place to browse games. Where some of the other booths felt like great places to "hang out". I don't know how that influenced sales.

Some people seemed concerned about the amount of purchases they would have to carry home (trying to avoid checking in bags at the arport) but given the small sizes of most of the games for sale, I don't think this was a significant factor.

Pitches seemed off to me. People kept pitching me based on setting and when I would ask about the mechanics they didn't seem to have an answer. Zombie Cinema kept coming up as the "hot" game but no one I spoke to could tell my why it was good other than it was awesome.

I definitely think some people play demos to learn how to play games they already own. Which could be great long term.

CandyCreeps sounds cool but I've never heard of it until now. I didn't notice it at the booth.

Related, we're discussing why 3:16 was a success here:
http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=7375

Rock,
John

Hiya,

My impressions of the demos and sales match what's been stated so far. That said, Space Rat moved quite well after all, and my impression was that most of the sales were spread through the weekend days, perhaps influenced by all the fun demos on Friday which didn't necessarily prompt immediate sales. Again, my experienced eye picked up that demo success in terms of enjoyment was very high.

Some personal discussions with other publishers, some non-independent and with very high-ticket promotion, led me to think that the con-goers were a bit tight-fisted this year, but now, other more general discussions reveal that a number of companies did quite well. I've found that public discussions of company success are a bit dubious in the non-independent business, though; people always say "it went fine! it's going great!" no matter what. So I remain a little inclined to point to the economy too, or at least willing to wait for harder data.

It's absolutely predictable that more and better independently-oriented booths, con-wide, will drop some sales for a booth that up until then was the destination site and literally the only place to get the games. I don't mind saying that as the main proprietor of the Forge booth endeavor, that's what I call success, not failure. This was and is a revolutionary strike at how the industry operates, not a venture that's measured in terms of Small Business for Dummies. Another reason to point out that the Forge, and specifically the Forge booth, is not a company or even an organization.

Anyway, though, that still leaves open the main priority at the booth, for me, which is to maximize the chances of success for the buy-in companies. This year was actually about equivalent in that regard: some of them actually sold out in the several-dozens print run; some had a harder time but I think generated recognition along with minor/moderate sales, and I don't think anyone sat lonely with no fun and no sales. I think the big surprise was How to Host a Dungeon, which by name probably generated some nervousness (it did for me), but upon arrival flew off the shelves. Still, I would have liked to see more raw funds get spent on those games overall. It kind of hurts me that we can't promote former games at the booth as well as I'd like, especially those whose designers are more focused on new projects at the con. I'd like to see Dogs and PTA and Polaris and MLWM and Unversalis and Dust Devils demos going full blast there ... but maybe I'm too ambitious about that.

Anyway, the Forge booth will be amicably separate from IPR next year - it was a great match at first but now the visions are understandably divergent. The demo tables and shelves need to be integrated again. I have some notions but will develop them further and will post them well before the end of 2008 so people won't be scrambling to make their plans. That'll be another thread.

Umm, where was I? Oh yeah, I'd like to talk about new booths and how they do and don't work, and what I (myself, on my lonesome) think might be good to consider. That's more than merely my pontificating, because what I think will inform my decisions about the Forge booth strategy for next year. I'll work up a post about that for later. All I'm sure of now is that whatever it is, it'll focus on those buy-ins as the priority, and not operate, or expect to operate, as the One Stop Shop any more. Sort of back to the energy of 2002 in a way, maybe a kind of Ashcan Front Step Two.

Best, Ron

I hear you about the pitches.  I feel like I did better this year than in the past, but there are just too many games at the booth to get a good grasp on them during the con.  I think the demo session on Wednesday was a good start, but due to a variety of complications, wasn't as successful as it should have been.  For next year I'd try to get it started earlier (meaning booth setup has to finish earlier) and plan to do it in a reliable space (the Embassy was off-limits to non-guests).

Without seeing a demo or reading the book, it's hard to grok the key mechanics of a new game.  It's much easier to pitch the setting.  I liked Josh's pitch for Sons of Liberty ("Do you like Freedom?") and Nick's for Candycreeps ("It's like Tim Burton's high school!").

Some numbers.

Top selling products at the booth sold between 40 and 50 units.  (Compare to other-booth sales of hot ticket items: Houses of the Blooded close to 100, Maid RPG close to 75, etc.)

Anything in the 20's was doing VERY healthily for relative booth performance.

Anything in the teens was still fairly solid.

Fred, thank you for posting those numbers. It's quite reassuring.

This was my first GenCon, so I've nothing to compare it to. However, it went well for me. Though I didn't arrive until just before lunch on Friday, I was able to squeeze in a fair amount of demonstration. None of these demos led to immediate sales of my game, though I imagine that some of the demos may have led to purchases later in the con.

Fred and the IPR crew were very kind -- my game enjoyed a really nice placement on a top shelf, and they made sure that the game (all of the games, in fact) remained well-stocked throughout the event.

Ron gave several demonstrations of my game on Thursday, and people were still talking about them on Friday and Saturday. Damned decent of him.

I tried to learn other designers' games, but despite playing in several demos (Space Rat, The Shab Al-Hiri Roach, How to Host A Dungeon, Zombie Cinema, Story Cards, Thou Art But A Warrior, Grey Ranks), I didn't feel comfortable running these demos myself. However, after participating in these demo, I was better equipped to describe these games (in terms of setting, mechanics, and overall feel/theme) to customers, which proved useful more than once.

Jason's "one-sentence descriptions" document proved invaluable. This list of games featured a single-sentence description next to each title, which piqued the interest of several potential customers. There were only one or two copies left on the last day of the con, so the number brought to the event was adequate.

As far as I could tell, the demo tables were near capacity through much of the con. Despite occasional lulls, the activity was generally quite frenetic. As noted, this didn't always translate into sales, but it seems that there are several possible explanations for this.

From across the aisle, the energy at the Forge/IPR booth seemed high and positive, but it seemed like there were two audiences (understandably) - the people there to buy games, and the people there to check out the demos. With the demos being "the Forge Booth Thing" by now, I don't think it's a wonder that people coming to the booth are aiming to experience those without necessarily having the intention to actually buy anything. That's a "in my head" thing, not something I can back up, but maybe it'll be helpful to consider. I know analyzing the successes and failures of our in-booth demo experiences led to Kevin and I deciding not to have demos at our booth.

For what it's worth, we will be publishing all of the information we can about how the Design Matters booth worked out, in terms of sales, units moved, and so on, hopefully next week (as we all take some time to breath, run the numbers, and draw some conclusions). We want to be a solid data point for future booth endeavors. Some quick things: we moved 161 units over the weekend, with 3:16 being the standout (at 50 even). Here's the initial breakdown, pending a final doublecheck:

3:16 = 50
Sweet Agatha = 37
Empire of Dust = 18
Solipsist = 8
Urchin = 2
Roanoke = 5
Best Friends = 4
Bizenghast = 6
carry = 4
Dread = 14
Annalise = 12

Our goal for the con was to break even, and we ended up turning a small profit. I'll be interested to see how our sales of back-catalog items compares to IPR sales.

Anyway, I apologize if this is diluting the thread, but I hope some of that info is helpful to you as you start thinking about next year, Ron.

Not a dilution at all, Nathan!  That's good, solid information and I'm glad you guys made your money back and then some.  I look forward to seeing the rest of your analysis.

Heya, this is just coming from an outsider this year (and IPR big spendah), but I too think that a Forge/IPR split would be best, after seeing the booth and hearing reactions about sales.

I'm wondering if the Forge booth is too big, basically. And the stress of tying the Forge booth (in the dealer's hall)'s original goals of "help promote and demo independent games, show awareness" is direct in conflict with the feelings bound up with wanting to/expecting to sell product.

In short, I'm wondering if having an IPR booth with a very small play demo area, and then having all the people who normally sell their wares run *actual, scheduled events of their games in the GenCon event catalog* might be a better way to meet both the goals of the Forge to introduce independently produced games and the DIY culture, and the IPR goals of turning product.

Maybe turn those 15 minute demos into several 1-hour demos in the gaming area, or full 4-hour sessions. List them in the catalog, so that people actually show up with tickets to play. Games on Demand might also assist in this purpose, but I'm also kinda loathe to see *everyone* showing up to run their 15 minute demos there instead, when people are expecting to play in something new for 4 hours or so.

Some models I saw:
Remember Ad Astra games, who historically ended up with a booth next to The Forge? Ken, realizing that exhibition floor space wasn't cutting it, took his show to a corner of the miniatures hall, and "set up shop" there. They ran lots of scheduled events, as well as constant 15-minute demos of the game (and also were cleared, I believe, to sell their game from the minis room). It worked out well for them: Raised a lot of awareness, they had a lot more space to stretch out, and they sold out of all their product.
In the case of The Forge, a takeaway might be to emulate that sort of thing, but simply handing out fliers at the end of their demos or sessions to lead people to the IPR booth in the con hall instead of selling directly from non-dealer space.

In any case, I'm thinking that actually scheduling demo events (be it 4-hour "real sessions" or multiple 1-hour "demo sessions", each GM listing and running their own game's events) might be hotter, and quieter, than running small demos for passersby and eagerly hoping that they then buy the game.

-Andy
(oh, forgot my experience, will share in next post)

Tim wrote:
But man, did it seem like everyone was having a tough time turning demos (even spectacular demos where everyone was laughing and yelling) into sales.  In my more frustrated moments, I kept thinking to myself: "You obviously just had a great time.  Why won't you buy this game?"

Since everything is getting shaken up, many of my comments have been obviated.  Here are some general thoughts.

1.  The Forge Booth has been a "tentpole" destination.  People will come to Gen Con 2009 looking for the Forge Booth. 

2.  Other booths either rejected the Forge Booth association or rallied to it, but either way there was both some direct benefit and sales cannibalism going on.

3.  Regarding sales cannibalism, this will be an issue for IPR when it stands alone.  If Bully Pulpit Games is shilling our products from our own booth, say, that's going to have a negative impact on both of us. 

4.  I'm concerned about new guys and cheap buy-ins.  The Forge booth plan helped support me for two years and I feel that there needs to be a conscious effort to support new creators.  I'd love to see Design Matters or Play Collective embrace cool weird people outside their circles, for example.  What happens to Ashcan Front alumnus? 

Thinking, thinking,

--Jason

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.

Jason wrote: What happens to Ashcan Front alumnus? 

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

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.

Ron wrote:
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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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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

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.

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.

More data:

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

I can provide a newbie perspective here. I hope it's helpful.

Having the Forge Booth infrastructure in place meant that I could go to Gen Con (something I've wanted to do literally since I was a kid) and it gave me a goal to help me develop my game. The booth is living up to its goal of providing a point of entry for new designers. If I'm going to have to get creative to find a place for myself at Gen Con in the next 2-5 years, I feel like I can take on that challenge thanks to the experience and connections I'm building here.

The Forge Booth felt like it had the right balance of business and pleasure; like we were all having fun, but it was serious fun. I think that the Ashcan Front and Play Collective sometimes had a bit of a socializing traffic jam in front of their tables.

I could have used some kind of survival guide posted as far back as January with tips like "we all stay at the Embassy Suites" and "don't register for Gen Con on your own if you're buying in".

There were times when I couldn't find anyone to demo my game too. At those time the ropers and Forge veterans came to my aid. Most of the time I barely had to get up from my seat between demos. My game sold well, and I attribute this success directly to being able to demo it as much as I wanted. The collective spirit is alive and well in the booth. Also, getting demos from the other designers meant I was able to pitch their games when they were away from the booth.

I had to cancel last minute for GenCon this year, so take my comments with a spoonful of salt but...

Honestly, I think a diverse plethora of small booths are a great future for indie games at conventions like GenCon.  6-8 designers at a booth, and having booths whose composition changes every year: this is a great way to increase the inter-designer connections within the community.  Honestly, despite the Forge booth's mandate, I don't think it's a bad model for first time designers either, as long as the other folks at a booth are more experienced.  Elizabeth Shoemaker seemed to do just fine at the Play Collective.  Contrasting Anna's worry about geographical cliques, the Design Matters booth was composed of people from NY, NJ, Boston, and the UK, and we would have been glad, I think, to have taken people from anywhere as long as their games and approach to sales fit what Kevin & Nathan were trying to put together.

As for priority points, I think there are three approaches: 1) seeing individual booths as fluid things, so they collect points but aren't really firmly attached to a group of designers, 2) fuck 'em, who cares? pitching out a bit of extra dough didn't seem to hurt Design Matters that much this year, 3) once we can prove that a different model is successful, lobby GenCon for a more reasonable approach to incentives.

Honestly, even if I wasn't moving to a non-commercial model of distribution (more on that below), I find it REALLY difficult to imagine why any designer who was going to be at GenCon, releasing a major new product, would prefer to be at IPR instead of independent at a 6-8 person booth. IPR has so many other products to present that it's hard to give anything, especially a major new release, the attention that a separate booth can.  Perhaps it would make more sense for games that are selling in the 15-25 copies range, of which there are still a bunch, but if you're expecting (from experience) to move 30+ copies, it seems like getting your own booth is the way to go.  IPR definitely still needs to be there, but I worry that looking for the next SOTC or Dogs to finance con visits is going to distort IPR's convention priorities, in the way that IPR's retail priorities also seemed stacked towards titles that move a ton of copies.

As for testing the non-commercial waters for the first time this year, I moved 50+ copies of the beta edition of Geiger Counter (I don't know how many Nathan had left) by giving it away for free when people purchased products from the Design Matters booth.  I bought in a half-share in Design Matters to do that and, though I'm really bummed that I couldn't go, I consider that a unqualified success for distribution.  Play wise, I'll have to wait and see.  I'm not sure what kind of distribution the other ashcans there had or what they were aiming for.  By piggy-backing on booth sales, my intent was to get these games in the hands of folks who were already playing and buying "alt roleplaying" products, instead of counting on them stopping by the Ashcan Front in addition to the other indie game booths.

Can anybody here speak to Game on Demand and how well that integrated with sales / play of the small press games from our little series of booths?  Were people grabbing tables to play D&D?  Did people try out games and then come back and buy them?  We've talked a bit about demos not translating into sales, but did full-on play translate into sales? Because that's more what the Design Matters folks were hoping for, I think.

It feels like we have this discussion about demo's leading directly to sales every year.  I'm not sure it shakes out that way.

Demo's add to the vibe of the booth, make it a place people want to walk over to, making the booth a destination, a fun place to be.  Sometimes people go away without the game and come back later when you aren't around or tell their friend about it or look up the game next week online.  Don't sweat the immediate sale, just sweat getting the game across and having a good time playing it.

OK, we have a direct counter-example to the demo-to-sale model at Design Matters this year.  Can you guys speak to how your approach did and/or did not work?  I'm so indoctrinated into the demo model that I was really skeptical when you announced you wouldn't be running tables, but you obviously did very well.  How?  And what did you learn in the process?

I'll just throw this out there so that it's been asked.  It may sound like insanity (I kind of think it does!), but maybe there's something to be mined from it:

1) Do we need GenCon?

2) If we do need GenCon, do we need the exhibitor's hall?

D

Jason, I think the issue about demos is very booth-specific. The Design Matters booth was composed of people who are all well-known among a strong well-paying subset of the GenCon purchasers, i.e., you and me and the rest of the independent-nuts crowd. That was its target market.

When I talk about the efficacy of demos, I'm always focused on the real target market of the Forge booth, which is not the familiar-with-it crowd. It's the people who walk by who have no idea about independent publishing and almost no idea about the possible diversity of design for role-playing. Those are the folks who get into the demos and go, "Boink! What the hell is this? This is really good! What, there are more of these?" The ones who turn the hairy eyeball onto their rather-frightened significant other and insist that they buy Bacchanal or The Roach or whatever.

But that's the Forge booth's target; for other booths, it doesn't have to be, and in the case of Design Matters, it arguably shouldn't even be much solicited.

So it seems to me that we're not talking about demos vs. not-demos for all booths. We're talking about a difference in primary target customers per booth. Design Matters did best by putting forward a distinct visual aesthetic which matched the shared goal and vision of the people who were promoting their games there, and by living up to that aesthetic with their games. It didn't rely on blowing the minds of people unfamiliar with it, but rather on confirming and exciting the expectations of people who were.

Best, Ron

Darcy wrote:
I'll just throw this out there so that it's been asked.  It may sound like insanity (I kind of think it does!), but maybe there's something to be mined from it:

1) Do we need GenCon?

2) If we do need GenCon, do we need the exhibitor's hall?

D

Further thoughts on some posts so far.

Jonathan: yes. What you said. I am on exactly that same wavelength.

Darcy, one of my dreams dating back a couple of years is to see as many Forge Midwests and Nerdlycons and similar things emerge as possible. I guess we could dub them "playcons." They're diametrically opposed to the current big conventions, in that there's no distinction made between publisher and congoer, and no emphasis at all on marketing of future play - rather, it's on playing, period. They could range from smallish local get-togethers that aren't much more than an inclusive game night for a given area (Go Play Peoria is like this, or a grade up from it), to pretty-unique events that are more like the weekend camping thing that Nerdly did, with strong cross-country or even international draw. Forge Midwest is about midway between these two examples..

I would like to see at least some of them include commercial opportunities, as we did a little bit with the last Forge Midwest. Not booths or static exhibitor tables, but more of a front-pocket to front-pocket buying situation for those who decide they might bring some stock.

As I see it, GenCon is a fine thing, but it does exhibit the limitations that Paul described for independent publishers. I think it's also important to recognize that no, independent publishers do not need it. It's there to be utilized if it works for a given publisher, and that's all. I'm encouraged by the appearance of so many playcons over the last couple of years, and I hope they grow into a more definite environment of our burgeoning scene. It may be that attending a couple of these per year becomes more cost-effective and more successful in terms of business (perhaps in intangibles that become tangible, like long-term sales and powerful playtesting) than attending GenCon.

Best, Ron

I occupy a position on the borderline between Forge-insider and pure-consumer, I think. Here are my impressions of some issues (large or small) in the Forge booth this year.

Too many choices. I was overwhelmed by the number of products on the bookshelf, which rivaled many other publishers. The number of products kept me from picking any of them up and browsing through them and that meant I was less likely to buy based on a read-through. A table with one copy of each book on it -- and a limited number of books total -- would have been better. Laying out a book on a table invites me to pick it up and look at it. I feel less comfortable pulling a pristine copy off a stack of them and reading. So many great choices! Gah!

(Aside: At one of the booths, as I purchased a little Isis figurine, I noticed a fabulous-looking Egyptian miniatures game book next to the cash box. I picked it up and read it and almost bought it. When I put the book down, the clerk moved it to another table and said, "Let me get this out of the way." I told her, "It was in the right place; you got me to pick it up." She left it "out of the way," though.)

Tired ropers. The ropers at GenCon 2006 had more energy, I feel. When I went to the Forge booth on Thursday, the ropers were great. When I went back on Saturday, they were only satisfactory. (This might be due to people knowing me, I admit, and thus perhaps they're thinking I don't need "help." But I buy a lot of product!) There were some pretty big chunks of time on Saturday when I saw customers standing by the corner table, looking at pamphlets, but getting no attention from ropers (I said some nice words to them and told them about the demos).

Selling past the close. Dude, don't make me gnaw off my own leg to get away from you, especially once I've said I'm going to buy it. ;) A related problem: selling past the point that I stopped caring. When everyone at the table is going "uh-huh, uh-huh," pointing their feet away from the table, trying to stand up, etc., let them go. Thank them for their time. You don't want to make potential customers want to escape the entire booth just because they don't like one game.

Long demos. Some of you ran demos that ran past the 20-minute mark. Was this intentional this year? I remember in 2006 how everyone was working hard to get their demos down to ten -- even five -- minutes. A couple of the demos in which I participated went long. My personal feeling is that if you haven't hooked me in ten minutes, every minute past ten that you don't hook me makes me less inclined to buy the game: the lack of a quick hook gets exaggerated over time.

Where's the product? Play to the flow of traffic. The product was tucked between the crowded tables and the back, so people wandering by the booth couldn't browse. I didn't get the impression that many people wandered through the middle. As I understand it, the sales model is thus: a) people wander by the booth and see lots of people having fun at tables, b) ropers invite them into a game, c) gamers play demos and love the game, and d) they buy the game. Maybe they buy other games they see on the shelf, too. My personal feeling is that the shelves should be right out facing the aisle so that wanderers see the games and can flip through them. Or maybe you keep the shelves in the back and put a "browse table" on the aisle. In any case, people in the main aisles pick up the games and look at them. Rope those people into demos. Demos turn "maybes" into "yesses."

Hi Adam,

I think most of what you're saying reflects the growth in size and widening of product at IPR. This was the first year where the gap of IPR stock, the "store" side of things, had diverged fully from the Forge mission of showcasing these particular publishers who'd showed up. That's pretty much the reason in a nutshell for having IPR be its own thing from now on.

I appreciate the advice and observations. A lot of what you're saying will enter straight into the booth approach next year.

Best, Ron

Coming back on an earlier point.

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!"

Yeah it just about killed me that I couldn't take advantage of that, Graham. Thanks for trying.