Hi,
Like most of you (I suspect), I've been designing games for fun all my life. I now have a couple of designs which I and the various gaming groups I test them on believe are good enough to try and publish - and we're in the process of blind playtesting and redesign at the moment.
So my question is this. I'm not a businessman, and I'm pretty sure I don't have the skill or the time to try to publish and market a game myself. So I'm most likely to try submitting it to publishers.
Given that's the case, how useful is having a stall at Essen?
On the plus side, it would give us a platform to demo the game, and everyone's there - both the major and minor games manufacturers.
On the downside, that only works if they've got time to see you - and Essen strikes me as a very busy place.
I suppose what I'm trying to ask is whether Essen is a good place to try and pitch a completely new game from an unknown designer. If I wrote to the companies we're targeting and asked for an opportunity to pitch to them there, would I be wasting my time?
And if Essen isn't the right place to go, can anyone suggest which conventions are the most designer-friendly in terms of arranging face-time with potential publishers?
Thanks for any advice you can give to this complete novice,
M<
