The Gathering of Friends 2005

Ok, here are some thoughts from Alan R. Moon's Gathering of Friends 2005, as relate to the BGDF.

Every year the Gathering sees the new crop of Nuremburg games before they reach most of the US. Publishers bring them, mostly, for folks to play. Generally the word-of-mouth generated is good for the game, even if the reception if middling, as the name gets mentioned a lot in various reports and such.

This year was no exception, with new games from many publishers. You can read other Gathering reports for details about which games were played, etc.

Of more interest to this group, I think, is the fact that Stefan Brueck (sp) of Alea games intentionally didn't bring his new big-box game. Last year he brought Fifth Avenue and the reviews from the Gathering were quite negative (in part due to a lack of complete English rules, in part due to it being, imo, not that great of a game) and he said that he didn't want to risk that this year.

I mention this because I find the process of promoting hobby games very interesting, different from many products due to the small community that shares a lot over the internet. I think there's little question that if you're a small publisher and the early word on your game isn't pretty glowing, the shared noise can considerably hurt your sales. It's not just that "in the know" gamers won't buy it (because if it was, the effect wouldn't be that great), but that "in the know" stores might not order it, thus reducing sales from those not "in the know" as well.

Just as last year, the number of publishers there was utterly stunning. From the German world there were reps from Alea, Ravensburger, Abacus, Hans im Glueck, and more. On the American side there was Rio Grande Games, Face 2 Face, Days of Wonder, Mattel, Hasbro, and quite a few more. Whether you get a chance to show your protos or not, it's really fantastic to get to just play games with these guys, networking for future discussions. Absent this year was Jeremy Young from Uberplay and his other projects, though as I understand it, it was a last-minute conflict.

In addition to the publishers are quite a lot of designers. It's great fun to play their prototypes, especially when it's clear that the game is going to be published within the next year or so.

I also saw more prototypes this year than last, and several folks who've been there a lot said that they'd never seen so many protos out. I played quite a few.

Personally I got some really awesome feedback on a couple of my games, mostly from other designers (I was very late in arriving this year and didn't get to play my protos with some publishers prior to the conference, as I'd scheduled). I received such excellent input and praise of Elvencraft (two different designers said that they found it to be the best new game they'd played at the Gathering this year, and that included the Nuremburg releases) that I'm really psyched about it. It was particularly rewarding to hear "this is an Alea game -- polish it up a bit and you've got the next big box." Not that I actually believe that's the case, but it was great egoboo and put me back on the design track again in a big way. I do, of course, want to make it true. :)

One interesting trend I saw was, mostly, games with fewer/cheaper components. Germany is going through very hard economic times right now, and I think that's reflected in the publishers' output. A great example was Louis XVI (or was it XIV -- I never remember) -- the game has no board, though it certainly could have had one and was, I'd guess, designed with one originally. Not only that, but the cardboard is quite thin in comparison to normal German standards -- so thin, in fact, that they had to die cut it to leave little "sprues" on the cardboard bits so they wouldn't fall out in packing. Meanwhile American publishers -- Days of Wonder and Uberplay in particular -- seem to still be sticking with good quality.

One thing I saw this year that I didn't last year was publishers playtesting games together. Multiple times I saw Stefan Brueck of Alea, Frank Weiss of Ravensburger, and Jay Tummelson of Rio Grande playtesting games together (though, admittedly, they are somewhat related). The very bored and casual way they were playtesting was disheartening, but I understand that at a certain point most games probably seem pretty dull.

As I mentioned in another thread, I was able to confirm with a few American publishers their general interest in participating in the American Hippodice-style competition. More on that in that thread, shortly.

The main deal with the Gathering is that it's a tremendous amount of fun. I've got to meet all these people that I've only "met" online, and many others to boot. My personal best time was game after game of Werewolf every night. The gang that plays there is very good and it, making it a ton of fun. You can hear me as an innocent villager getting nailed early on in the one session recorded and put up on BoardGameGeek. In most other games I lasted until the end, but I was knocked out early this time because I was considered to be too good a player to be left alive by the werewolves. A compliment, I suppose, but I'll have to fake lameness in the future to help preserve my play. :)

What would y'all like to know about it?

-- Matthew