Hi there, folks.
I'm a new game designer, receiving my first game back from the printer about a week ago, just in time for GenCon. (This was a good thing, since I didn't want to waste my prepaid GenCon booth money!) I wanted to write down something in this forum about my experiences, so when you try the "GenCon Game," you will be less blind than I was. ;-)
Being an Indiana resident, and an amateur game designer wannabe, seeing the GenCon game convention coming to Indianapolis was like Destiny to me. I'd always wanted to be the guy behind the games. So I knew I had to go as an exhibitor, or be disappointed.
I shared the booth with Jim Doherty from Eight Foot Llama (maker of "Who Stole Ed's Pants" and "Monkeys on the Moon") splitting the $1000 booth fee among the two of us. We registered pretty early, hoping to get an ideal location in the Exhibitor Room. We got back the news that we were smack-dab in the middle of the convention hall in what seemed like a nice location. It was near the middle refreshment stand, a nice central booth.
Signing up for the booth was putting the cart somewhat ahead of the horse. I didn't actually have a published game yet when I sent Jim the money. I had about 10 prototypes for games, with one or two of them really well polished. I decided to take one of those polished ones ("Mother Lode") and try to get it published, while the date of the con got closer.
I sent some emails to various publishers and settled on Delano Services out of Michigan. I chose them because they seemed to be really nice folks, they had the best prices of the companies I polled, and they were somewhat close to me geographically.
I dusted off a copy of CorelSuite which I won in a contest a couple of years ago. Most printers only accept certain file types, and my Microsoft Word prototype was not going to do the trick. I also had to upgrade all of my graphics, which were 60dpi black and white drawings. I went to town converting all of the files.
Not knowing what to expect at a con, I signed myself up to run several events at the con, hoping my card game would be done by then. I signed up for 4 events of "Mother Lode" and 4 events of Super Human High School (my free RPG). I set them up so that if necessary, I could run the events... but I was hoping to hand some of them off to some of my friends around Indiana who might come to help.
The conversion went pretty well, and a "very last prototype" was created and given to a friend for final playtesting. I also created a "very, very last prototype" for myself, to iron out some last minute rules. I also had to do a little bit of "creative financing" to cover half of the project. This was early June, and Delano takes "four to six weeks". Yes, I was cutting it close.
I sent the final version in mid-June, and Delano assured me they could get the project done in time. I hoped there wouldn't be a snag, holding up the project.
There was a snag. In early July, I received a good-news/bad-news email from Delano. The cards were printed, but they found an error on one of the cards. (The text was truncated on one of the cards... mostly my fault from a format translation.) Delano offered to fix it for $100, which seemed like a pretty good deal to me.
More delays kept me sweating until the Monday before GenCon when I received my shipment. Woo-hoo! Just in time!
I got to the event and set up, met Jim for the first time, etc. Wednesday was pretty uneventful, but it was fun sneaking into the Exhibitor area on Wednesday to see some of the folks set up.
Thursday was a difficult day at GenCon. It became obvious that I overcommitted myself to events. I had 6 hours of events, most of that time my booth helpers (cheifly my wife and sister-in-law) ran the booth. Sales didn't really go as well as had planned. The only sales I made were folks that already new me.
I approached Friday (and the rest of the week) with a new goal, and a new strategy. My goal was, "To sell my game to people that I didn't know." :-) I wanted to set my goal as reachable. :-) My strategy was "Peace and Aggression." I wanted to go after customers aggressively, but do so with a Zen-like calm. Well, it seemed to work... I got about one sale an hour that way for the rest of the con. Also, some of my friends volunteered to take at least some of the events I signed out for, bailing me out.
Also, I'm happy to note, that most of the people who played a demo said, "Hey, that's pretty good." It was rare that a demo-player did not walk away with at least one copy of the game. Trouble was, demos were time consuming, and oddly enough, it was difficult to get someone to try it! (Come on! How weird! You're at GC and you don't want to play?)
Effectively, if you were to play the numbers game, I lost quite a bit of dough on the event. However, I made several good contacts with retailers and distributers, as well as nice folks that are mostly in the same situation I'm in. (To namedrop: Like the nice folks at "Diet Evil Games" and "Blood and Cardstock".) Also, I don't feel too bad. Award-winning Jim Doherty also had a pretty slow time. If he was lucky, he made back his booth deposit and some of his plane ticket.
So, the myth that folks make money at GenCon are a bit exaggerated. I think it's possible, and I think some folks indeed made money. But the "Con Game" is a tricky one indeed, and I haven't figured out the secret way to make it work yet. Maybe it's the right combination of (good game + gamer notoriety + interesting product) * GenConHype to make it work right. Days of Wonder (right next door to our booth) seemed to be doing great, selling out of Mystery of the Abbey right at the end of the con.
The moral of the story: I'll probably try it again sometime. I'm not sure if it will be next year or not, but I'll be back.
I'd be happy to answer any more questions you may have about the GenCon experience, or what the roller-coaster ride of self-publishing is like. I hope this helps someone out there! Best of luck to you! ;-)
-- Scott S.
Delano did a good job. They were very "customer-friendly" throughout the process, and made things much easier for me. The cards ended up having a nice feel to them. I have no complaints about the production quality. In fact, I said to myself, "Wow, I did this?"
Just cards, tuckbox, and a rules-sheet. I tried to keep it simple with my first game. I ordered a quantity of 1000 (well... 1100. Back to that in a bit.)
It seems that there is a "possibility" of a 10% over-run when doing a production run. In talking with other folks in the game-design biz, that possibility is about 99%. In fact, printers want you to pay for that 10% in advance. The cynic in me says it's a gimmick for them to sell more, but those machines go awfully fast, and it's hard for them to stop a print run on a dime.
EDITED TO CLARIFY: I didn't mean to imply that your game isn't good, just that it's unknown. At an event like Gencon you've got, say, 30 games you would like to play where you know they're good. Weighing that against an unknown might be tough.
Good point. And I agree with you. I mean, I would never buy a game I haven't played before! ;-)