Wits and Wagers game show

a shot of the game show in hall E. good crowd, but my group lost pretty hard core!
end of the game show and everyone is happy. We left dom and satish as they quickly ate food and prepped for their next show.

Ran into Tom Vasel (spelling?) in the board room and had a good conversation with him, that I ended with an 'ass hole' statement i didn't mean to say (damn it!). Gavin "Thanks. ... I should actually listen to your podcast sometime..." Tom "... Yes you should." Damn it :P

Back at the hotel, can of soda, shower, blogging, now sleep!

Friday after 6

By 6pm (hall closed to the public) we were all pretty much wrecked. Satish stuffed a bunch of moldy sandwiches in my back pack and asked me to fridge them tonight. Dom and I joked about porn and having booze at the bar next year. we reviewed out sales figures -- we both did less sales today than yesterday, even though the crowds were larger (mysterious!)

Our day end was:

4 jetsetters
1 nerd trivia
1 inquisition
3 criminals
2 Tlip
1 Zolmh
1 bombshells
3 Get Bit!

which actually wasn't much lower in cash value than yesterday, but felt odd because the get bit orders didn't pick up. Lots of people seemed 'i'll get it later' ish in their feeling about it, though everyone seemed very happy with it as a product.


satish lets out a massive, earth shattering monkey fart and asks about putting porn in rule books. We're all happy and cracking jokes, but the guys are wiped -- they are doing even more than we are with 3+ game shows a day, and Satish's voices is almost gone by this point.


notes of the day:

Met a nice woman who teaches a grad program for game design in NYC. She seemed interested in having her students talk with us about the baby steps you can take from 'grad' to 'published'.

UK distributer dropped by and liked Get Bit. He feels like we could do about 90 units through him this year, though I'm not sure how that works into the first release. If he can hold on for a little bit, it would be awesome to produce a second run of get bit knowing 90+ units were already called for.

Dave Stopped in around 11'ish and there were no crazy pants, or wearing of crazy pants, which was releaving. I'm glad he got a press pass for Critical hits -- i had not known of suck things until yesterday morning when press pass wearing Mofo's were walking through the hall while we were setting up

Did a pod cast interview with some pod casting guys (I have their card but no memory of their names! Gah)

Ta Te Wu stopped by and asked to show us a submission later during the con

Steve and Steven stopped by and were the loudest most awesome demo guys so far :) It's hard to describe their awesomeness... they referred to the
swimmers in get bit as 'steves' and played down to the pelvic bones. I guess it was just a fun scene they made, and i miss having those kind of people around me.

Walked around the con wearing mister robot. got a hug and several more photos that i may never see on the internet. please send us links if you see them! I also danced with PikaChu while wearing mister robot.

Hell of a time, and sorry to anyone i missed!

Friday

Criminals demo (went sideways apparently). We actually got more than one demo of the game in, and people not only enjoyed the game, but bought copies. Must report back to John that Kory is now in the lead for sales (they jokingly said they were in competition over who's game would sell best).
Little more Get bit -- can we ever really get enough of it? We had a number of limb - injury players try it out (like this woman here). I wasn't sure how to respond to the man in the wheelchair missing both his legs, mostly because I didn't know how he would feel about the game, but he got a laugh about it, so al is good :)
back to criminals. the game got to heads up in the second round, and the "Trouble Shooter" got outed.

Friday morning cont

Fellowship of the Dice is behind our booth (the booth space on the otherside of them is totally empty). Nice guys that did a documentary on gamers and gaming. I hope i am awake enough to see the screening on sunday morning. It got a B+ on scifi.com so it can't be all that bad (a fear of documentaries about gamers). Both film writers and advertisement men, so they know a bit to start with. All in all, worth keeping an eye on in the future, if only because they are nice, and think my robot dance is funny

Friday morning

drive up Broad street to the "Cat Building" as Mecha has started calling it. It is a pretty silly looking building from the west.
Tsunami press' booth (behind North Star's booth). I don't know what to make of these guys... they don't have their game here, and the game they want to sell is a remake of the original space combat game (hex grid and cardboard unit tiles and all) from the 70's and I'm not really sure what market there is for them. It doesn't help that some very nice map making companies have booths elsewhere nearby.

Big dice seller behind us. Nice guys with some fun products (like asymetrical six sided vegas style 'clear red' dice). They seem to get a lot of attention and sales.
Expo seems smaller this year, and the tables help that feeling. Lots of space that feels like it would normally be booth space is just given up to free table areas. this one is to our north east. you can see the live action fighting stadium behind the booth the the palm tree (foam sword play)
map for a custom built war game, or custom map for a war game. not sure which. nice printing though, and nice graphic design us, if not 'hey play me' in feel ;)

CMS shots

these are all shots from the guys at Creatus Maximus . com. They;ve been buying create-a-man figures sans Get bit game for a few weeks and done some fun things with them. enjoy

People

Jesica and Christopher stopped by. They teach game design at the graduate level in NYC. They were very nice and picked up some of our games, and were very interested in having their students talk with us about "that first baby step" into professional game design and publishing

Bad ideas, just so good

Did some browesing this morning and came across an anime fighting game that uses books-as-character sheets. I can't remember the name of the game, but i'd seen some last year. The new addition this year was the straight porn book (all exposed boobs and suchs). It appears to be a best seller at that booth, and this got Satish and I talking about including porn in our rule books from now on. The down side: it will take you longer to find and look up the rules you need....

Day one is OVER!

(getting groceries from Kroger. 33 dollars for 4 meals for 4 people is a big savings over $7 per sandwich in the convention center.)
(Junk on the hotel desk. Day one sees $148 in cash sales. A 40 from Kroger helps get these updates finished, if not reduces the quality of the typing...)

Dinner

Get Bit shots

(crowd playing get bit. Turn out is good. we sold five copies of the game, which is good considering thursday is a slow / low attendance day)
(more get bit demos. mister robot is in the background. i wore him all over the exhibitor hall and in the CCG hall. Several visits to the booth from it. Several photos of mister robot by con goers. I wonder if we will ever see them around the internet...)

Couple of Dave's friends stopped by to say hi (I think these are the friends that hang around his ex girlfriend? I hadn't met them before.) Nice guys (not pictured) and I look forward to getting some demos in with them tomorrow.
(doing our demos on a medium neutral color was a good idea. the colors pop for Get bit, and the Sushi projects are much easier to photograph. got to remember that when we do new photography for Jerry's updated website)

North Star Booth

Wits and wagers new addition got a lot of attention. Dom was kept pretty busy doing demos at the table.

New addition adds:
1) you no longer start with chips, just your two betting cubes. this is a big help because the game starts quicker, and is easier to keep track of (less confusing bidding and tracking)

2) once you earn chips from payouts, you can bet them along with your cubes for even larger payouts. This can get big fast, but again doesn't make you feel as locked in (and pro conservative) as the original version

3) the play matt feels like felt / fabric vs. the rubber /mouse pad original

4) getting the right answer (not betting on the right answer) nets you 3 chips instead of two.

5) it has a shiny game of the sticker on it.

6) you will be able to buy it at Target stores around the USA.



Since North Star was part of the treasure hunt, lots of people were coming up asking to get the holes punched too. Seems like a good marketing tool, which we may use next year.

Satish threatened to take of his shirt towards the end of the day (to attract "the Ladies"). When he does, i'm totally there with the camera...

Met Steven Jackson with Satish (not pictured) and had really wanted to join his poker game tonight, but I have to pass, or i'd be a wreck for the rest of the con.

Also met Uwe, who apparently likes to surprise (read tea bag) designers while they sleep. I don't know what to think about that... he seems like my kind of guy, even if I'm not allowed to act like him anymore for professional sake. His son reminds me of what my son will be like: German, and embarassed to have a crazy ass father with crazy ass friends.

Sushi Stuff

(setting up to Demo JetSetters)

Todd Furler suggested we change the tie break end condition (if only to avoid the logistics of having to track who collected the highest turn order card on the last turn). He suggested whoever has _the_ highest turn order card at the end of the game, regardless of when it was collected, wins the tie.
Shortly after a walk with mister robot, playing a game of jetsetters. Mister robot isn't hard to walk in, though no one can hear what you are saying, and it gets pretty hot inside of him...

Bombshells and DHV both got demos, but only JetSetters got multiple sequential demo requests. Jetsetter's was so popular that we didn't even get to play Inquisition today.

Stephen's game continues its legacy and sells three copies on the first day.

Several friends of Stephen stopped by. I hope several new friends of Stephen left.

morning

First day was awesome, but also very exhausting. I'm just posting photo's here, with short descriptions. More tomorrow, and likely after the con.


(Propaganda table. shared with Northstar. we had to switch it from it's original location, due to a leak in the roof of the convention center...)


(Booth to our right. Nice guys, but haven't tried any of their games)


18.jpg
(Slug fest's booth. I was actually surprised to see them. To be honest, when i first saw their products a few years ago, I thought they were one of those dead in the water game companies that launched 2 products and had expired. Apparently not, as several new products were out, with nice production values if not consistently similar mechanics)

From Ohio

(posted here because I do not have FTP access from the laptop (though we have good web access here in the hotel and on the convention floor)





Didn't have time to take a shot moving the stuff in (it was raining like freaking crazy). Here we are, 9'ish hours later with the booths in place, and Griff barely awake on the couch. Big downside: Dom & Satish's product's haven't arrived from Chicago.













"I'm sleepy... why did I marry a robot?"

Dropped off the UHaul and got to the Hotel. Lucked out, the Holiday Inn Express is freshly renovated, inexpensive, and the staff is pleasant. We went out to get some poppies chicken and quickly fell asleep.