Monthly Recap - October 2012

With Rincon behind me I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I am so happy it went over so well! Now to make it more profitable for next time!

The highlight of October for me is definitely my trip to Essen. I spent the entire last week in Germany for the worlds largest game fair! I've always thought it would be fun to go, but until recently I didn't have any real reason to. My current situation would allow it, so I started considering the trip. After mentioning this online I was contacted by Piotr from LocWorks, a Polish distributor that sells Tasty Minstrel products, offering me a free room for the week, and asking if I'd spend a few hours in his booth signing copies of Eminent Domain! How cool is that? Michael wanted to go too, and it turned out there was room for him as well - and a pretty good deal too: only 150 Euros for the week. On the down side, it was a 15 minute walk, a train ride, and a subway ride to get to the convention hall (total travel time: 45-50 minutes) - but it was fairly easy and very inexpensive. If possible, I'd like to try and stay closer next time, perhaps at the Atlantic Congress (RIGHT next to the convention hall), or perhaps at a hotel near the main train station (the same subway ride, but minus the walk and train). Then maybe I can more easily participate in more of the night gaming I hear so much about.

Essen was pretty amazing. It's kinda like Gen Con, but just the exhibit hall, and with 3 times as many people. Michael and I were trying to decide if we thought the space was actually all that much larger than the Gen Con exhibit hall, I think we decided it was probably about 50% bigger - but it was split into 12 spaces. It was kind of a maze to navigate, but I liked the large maps they had above each portal from 1 hall to the next.

There were a bunch of little snack windows as well as a cafeteria, but I wasn't a huge fan of the food options. Waffles (but no syrup - instead they had a lot of Nutella) or hot dogs mostly. I got some pork and potatoes at the cafeteria one day for lunch, and I got a hot dog once - other than that I really didn't eat in the convention hall.

I wandered around the booths to check everything out. Unlike Gen Con, most booths had tables for demoing games. Like full plays of big games. Many booths were stores, and even they had tables to play games. At Gen Con very few booths have that kind of space - Mayfair and Asmodee do for sure, and probably a few others, but most of the demos at Gen Con are just showing the game and maybe the consumer will buy it and go play it elsewhere.

That brings me to the next big difference between Essen and Gen Con... at Essen, there isn't any "elsewhere." The whole con is the exhibit halls. At Gen Con there are many different rooms including a library, open gaming, and scheduled RPGs and seminars and whatnot. None of that here - just booths demoing and selling games.

People attend Essen just to buy games - like a big shopping trip. Seriously, people go all the way to Germany (from the US, for example) with the intention of buying stuff. I've always seen the "Essen haul" geeklists at BGG, people bragging about what they picked up, with photos of games stacked over their head - but I never thought about what that means to the publishers. One publisher told me he easily sells 8-10 times as much product at Essen as he does at Gen Con.

I did not go to shop though. I was mostly scouting it out for a potential future TMG booth. I also met with some publishers and designers. It was interesting being on both sides of a game submission meeting - one time in the exact same meeting!

Since I was going, the guys at Panda Game Manufacturing invited me to play on Team Canada in the Europmasters Challenge - a big team boardgame tournament. We played Village, Airlines Europe, Vanuatu, and Last Will. Two of those games I'd never even played before! I did OK - winning Village, placing 3rd in Airlines and Vanuatu (tied for 2nd even), and last in Last Will (miserable performance there). We finished something like 19th out of 33 teams, which I guess wasn't so bad. It was fun! I've always wanted to play in a tournament like that. And I even got to keep the games! Thanks Panda!

Overall I think the trip was definitely worth it, and I had a great time. I'm really glad Michael decided to go, because I don't think I would have enjoyed traveling like that by myself.

The rest of October will be relatively uneventful compared to that. but next month I'll be heading to Dallas for BGG.con - so that should be good. If we're really lucky, we might even have a super-advance copy of Kings of Air and Steam for people to play!

Monthly Recap - September 2012

3 weeks late, but who's counting?

Looking at my dry erase calendar, September must have been busy... there's ink on almost every single day!

Strategicon

I mentioned Strategicon in last month's update. It was a lot of fun meeting Antoine Bauza and playing a bunch of his new games. One of them, Tokaido, was a big hit at Essen - selling out early and making a big splash. I guess that's to be expected from a designer who's other games (7 Wonders, Ghost Stories, Hanabi) are so popular :)

Rincon

I spent a lot of time last month making last minute preparations for the game convention that I had been working to put on. I'm happy to report that Rincon ended up being a big success! 366 people attended, which is more than I expected. Many were there for only 1 day though, but it's still a great turnout for what was essentially a 1st time con. The volunteers and convention staff did a GREAT job, and everyone seemed pretty happy with the convention. We have a lot of ideas for how to make improvements for next time.

Frisbee

I've still been playing ultimate 1-2 times a week, and my hip has still been holding up, so that's good.

That's a short recap for September, some of which was covered last month. See the next installment for more details about Essen and my trip to Germany!

Monthly Recap - August 2012

I seem to gravitate toward compartmentalization, so I will try giving topic headers for the various aspects of my life, then summarize each:

Games

Mike got an advance copy of Noblemen, and while I've only been able to play it about 4 times myself, I set it up at Strategicon and I know about 4 different groups of people played it there. I'm really excited about this one, because I had a hand in it. A friend from BGDF.com made the game, and sent me a prototype about 4 years ago. I played it a lot and offered many suggestions, most of which made their way into the game in one way or another. Finally the game is being published, and I'm proud to say that TMG is in on that with Pegasus Spiel from Germany!

In addition to that, I've played a couple of other games which TMG has decided to go in on: Rialto by Stefan Feld, and Il Vecchio by Rudigor Dorn. It'll be awesome to get some of those big names in the TMG lineup.

Other than that, I haven't been playing much. Most of the time I play anything lately it's been the Eminent Domain expansion (called Escalation), which should have all the illustration done by this weekend, when everything will go to the graphic designer. Pretty soon that one will be all wrapped up, and I'll have to turn my focus toward the next expansion, or another game altogether.

RinCon

RinCon planning is humming right along. I visited several game stores in Phoenix to hand out posters and Vendor packets, hopefully some of them will come down for the convention. I also hit up every vendor in the dealer room at Strategicon, and one of them has signed up to come to RinCon! We're currently at about 150 people - I wouldn't mind another 100 though. I'm sure there will be some latecomers signing up in this last few weeks. The show is less than 3 weeks away! If you're reading this, tell your friends to spread the word. We have a bunch of special guests now as well.

Kickstarter

Mike had to cancel the Stack It! kickstarter project because of potential copyright issues, so TMG doesn't have anything currently on Kickstarter. Past KS project Ground Floor (and Skyline) are on track for Essen delivery, according to the guys from Panda when we talked to them at GenCon. And Josh is wrapping up Kings of Air and Steam (another past KS project) as well. I look forward to both of those being completed and seeing final copies of them.

I've heard some chatter on podcasts or online about people being "done with Kickstarter" - deciding they've gotten over he novelty of it and aren't interested in supporting any more games on it. That's all well and good, but their reasoning makes me chuckle. People don't seem to differentiate between one type of Kickstarter project and another - they seem to lump it all together in one big pot and assume that any given project on Kickstarter is equivalent to any other given project. To me that sounds pretty silly - akin to "I've played enough published games I didn't like that I'm going to stop shopping at game stores." Each project may or may not have merit, whether it's on a crowdfunding site like Kickstarter or whether it's on the shelf at the store. It continues to amaze me how many people don't recognize that.

Travel

 In August I spent a week in Indiana at GenCon. It was an interesting and fun trip, Mike and I picked up a couple of submissions to consider, and we met some interesting people. It was a relief not having to be leashed to the booth the entire week, but at the same time, leaving the sales of TMG stuff up to someone else meant we couldn't do much when they weren't selling very well. Next year I think TMG is going to have a dedicated booth again.

At the very end of the month I went to L.A. again for Strategicon, where I met famous game designer Antoine Bauza. He was very cool, and even played one of my games!

That's nothing compared to next month's travel update... (that's right, a teaser in a blog post!)

Frisbee

I mentioned before that my hip is old and busted. It had been really getting me down, and I got sick of that, so I have started playing frisbee again. I am playing summer league, and I've started going back out to pickup on Sundays - and better yet, a group of club players have started playing a higher level pickup/practice on Saturdays and Mondays, and I've been going to that as well, at least when I'm in town. So far so good! My hip is holding up, and between that exercise and eating a bit less I think I've lost about 4 or 5 pounds.

Friends

This month a good friend moved to Hawaii with his girlfriend. We had a going away BBQ like old times, and like old times we played some Guitar Hero (which we've not done in several years). This makes 3 friends now that live in Hawaii, I'd better get out there to visit them before they start to leave! In fact, I think Steve might be moving back to the mainland sometime soon.

Speaking of friends from Hawaii - Tyler is in town right now, I am going to go hang out with him. See you next month!

Monthly Recap - July 2012

Another month down - here's the recap:

I mentioned last month that I'd gone to Seattle and to Protospiel - that technically was THIS month, but who's counting ;)

A friend of mine got engaged, which doesn't really count as my news, but seems like it's worth mentioning. I've sent a handful of emails to people on OKCupid.com lately, but none of those online sites ever seem to work out for me.

As for gaming events, I attended Gamesmiths (game design meeting), Ides of Gaming (monthly game day), and a new group that meets about once a month at Cartel Coffee Lab. I got to test one of my games (Alter Ego) at Gamesmiths - I'm not happy with that design at all right now and I think it needs a large overhaul. Ides is the game day put on by the Southern Arizona Gamers Association (SAGA), an organization of which I am the president. It was at a new location this time (Something Sweet) because our old venue got remodeled and didn't have space for us anymore. I liked being on campus, but Something Sweet isn't bad so far. This new group that meets at Cartel Coffee Lab, a coffee shop/restaurant on Campbell north of Grant, as well as up in Oro Valley. Cartel is near my house, so I thought I'd check it out. I went about a month ago as well. This time there were 20+ gamers there, which is a lot. The place was also fairly packed with regular patrons as well. A photographer from the local newspaper (AZ Daily Star) was there taking all kinds of pictures of the games we were playing. Maybe that means an article is imminent!

RinCon planning is still going on. Events are being added to the schedule, and people are signing up. We need to get some advertising going to make sure people know about the con - I'd like to take out ads in the paper in Phoenix, San Diego, L.A., Las Cruces, Albuquerque, and Las Vegas - all within reasonable driving distance (or perhaps a cheap flight). It turns out that when you run a convention, what you're really doing is selling hotel rooms, because in order to afford the banquet space, you have to guarantee a certain number of hotel rooms. So getting people to come from out of town will be key to this event's financial success! So tell your friends to come stay at the Holiday Inn and attend my con! :)

I did finally get some posters made, and they've been dropped off at Game Daze, Heroes and Villains, Amazing Discoveries, Bookman's, Casa Video, and hopefully Magic Tower as well. Game Daze was going to send some posters up to the Phoenix locations as well, hopefully that will pan out!

In other news, my hip has been feeling somewhat better - though it's clearly not 100%. I got some Joint Maintenance pills (Glycusomine, Chondroytin, And some kind of fish oil or something like that) which are supposed to help. I went out to pickup a couple of times - the weather was perfect for it: overcast, having rained that day but not still raining - and it's clear I'm out of shape, but it felt good to run again.

That's about it for this month. Next month I'll be heading to GenCon with Mikey in Indianapolis, so expect some TMG related new from that! In the meantime, you can check out TMG's latest kickstarter project: Stack It!

See you next month!

Monthly Recap - June 2012

It's been over a month since my last recap, so I guess it's time to take a look at what June had in store. According to google calendar I didn't have much going on - but then I haven't gotten all that good at utilizing google calendar (I think I'm getting better about it though). Bi-weekly meetings for SAGA (Southern Arizona Gamers Association) continued in an effort to keep RinCon progress on track. But the most notable thing was my annual trip to Seattle for Potlatch.

I haven't been playing Frisbee since February because my hip has been hurting. It started hurting about a year ago, but only sometimes, like if I moved it a certain way. I figured I'd injured it playing Frisbee, but I didn't like that it didn't seem to be getting better. After a little tournament in February I could barely walk, so I decided to give it a rest. Months of not running on it and several trips to the chiropractor made it hurt less, but it just wasn't getting better. A couple weeks ago I got an X-ray, and the radiologist diagnosed Moderate Joint Degeneration. It appears I've got some degeneration and a little bone spurring in there. This has been fairly depressing news, and it's got me thinking about retiring from Frisbee. I was worried it would ruin Potlatch for me as well. The good news is that, for whatever reason, my hip held up all weekend! I don't know if it was the softer ground in Seattle, adrenaline, or shear force of will - but I was able to run all weekend! Sure, I was slow, out of shape, and not 100%, but at least I was able to do it.

In other news, as I mentioned before, my house was robbed, and that inspired me to sell most of my board games. The auction went pretty well. I suppose it could have gone better if I'd promoted it more, but I wasn't in the right mind frame to promote it, and I'm happy to recover some cash anyway. My grandmother was nice enough to replace some toys for me as well :)

But it's not all gloom and doom... speaking of new toys, I did get a new car. Well, new to me. It's a 2010 Honda Accord Crosstour, and so far I like it a lot.

In addition to my hip holding up, I also got to catch up with a bunch of friends on my Seattle trip - including Rif, Mohan, Runjith, Sean, Jeremy, Amelia, Aaron, Emily, and of course Renee, Matt, Jonah, and I even got to meet my brand new niece Eliana!

After Seattle I flew directly to Ann Arbor for something called Protospiel - a meetup of game designers to play prototypes. I have been wanting to go for years, but because of the proximity to the Seattle trip, I haven't been able to make it. Last year I attended for the first time, and this year I returned. I was a little skeptical, thought I might be under-prepared or something, that it might turn out to be a big waste of time... I'm happy to report that it was NOT a waste of time, I had a very productive time at Protospiel :)

Finally, there's some recent TMG news I don't think I've mentioned. Things are going pretty well at TMG, despite some art delays on Kings of Air and Steam...
* Village, a game TMG is importing to the US from Germany, has won the Kennerspiel Des Jahres - which is like the German Game of the Year award. It's a really big deal, and it certainly won't hurt TMG! It looks like we picked a winner to pick up there.
* The Kickstarter project for Ground Floor was very successful, raising over $116,000! The manufacturing of Ground Floor and Skyline (another game by the same designer, which is included for Kickstarter supporters) is underway.
* People are receiving For The Win (TMG's latest game to arrive), and they seem to be liking it.

That's about it! See you next month...

Monthly recap - May 2012

I think I'll try a new thing... I have this dry erase calendar at work, and when I erase it and reset it for the next month I'll try posting a recap of the previous month of my life. Let's see if this idea lasts...

May 2012

I don't have much written on the calendar on the first 1/2 of the month, but I think that's because I was lax in updating it more than because I didn't do anything. It does appear that the month was somewhat uneventful though.

5/11 I drove up to Phoenix to meet with Patrick Nickell of Crash Games (as well as Fred McKenzie of Clever Mojo, Tory Neimann, and Nathan Kohatsu). We played some games and that was fun. The next day I stopped by and had lunch with my old friends Chris and Becky, who I hadn't seen since way before their second daughter was born (she's like 2 or 3 years old now).

5/19 the Ides of Gaming event that I run at Espresso Art on campus was bigger and better than it has been in recent history - more people and more fun all around.

5/25 - 5/28 I went to Burlingame, CA for KublaCon. KublaCon is a lot of fun, and I normally get to play a lot of games. This time however I was under-prepared as far as gaming is concerned, so I barely played anything at all. I did however get to meet Martin Wallace, attend several interesting seminars by Wallace, James Ernest, and Richard Bliss, listen to (and participate in) a live recording of a podcast (part 1 part 2), and visit with some friends.

I demo'ed Ground Floor (14 hours left on the Kickstarter! Will it break $100k?) three times, and got to play one of my prototypes once, and one of Martin Wallace's as well. I played only a couple of commercial games (Castles of Burgundy, Glory to Rome, Yahtzee Free-For-All, and Battle Line) and I played 1 game of Eat Poop You Cat (AKA Paper Telephone or Telestrations). Not a whole lot of gaming for a con at which I used to log 40 plays of various things!

I did take the airline up on its offer to pay me $311 in flight vouchers in exchange for bumping to a different flight. So I flew through LAX (instead of direct), had time to eat at McDonald's, and arrived about an hour or so later than originally scheduled. Seems like a good deal to me!

That's about it for May! See you next month...