I really enjoyed my weekend despite being a bit ill. Sales of MJ were good and I got to run a game, more on that in another thread.

Highlight had to be seeing Luke and Jared again, gave them some of my copies of MJ, and the fantastic dinner and accomodation provided by Mr. Walmsley. I was just sorry I didn't get to hang around for games.

Now the con itself:

Attendance was definitely down on last year.

Scheduling was really odd, seminars and games clashed way too much. I learnt later that the hall is hired till 11pm which means there is a lot more room to mess around with the scheduling.

We were let down a bit with the amount we paid and what we got for it but I am sure that can be resolved for next year.

We really should have got in on more of the seminars, something for next year. Maybe a seminar of our own and how we are getting on with growing the indie scene in the Uk?

It was nice to see some really high profile announcements at the con, and the stateside folks. It would be great if Angus can secure that kind of calibre of guest for next year.

More as it comes to me.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

...as long as the con gets more money in than it costs to buy into the con then it's a success. But this works on two levels...

(i) The booth as a whole. We're partially successful if the booth as a whole makes more than the booth cost.
(ii) Individual members. We're fully successful if every booth member makes more than the booth cost for them to buy into it.

So, Dragonmeet, was in the camp of (i) but not (ii).

Contested Ground Studios, Prince of Darkness Games, Lord of the Pies and BoxNinja got more than they paid in.

Steampower Publishing, Silver Branch Games and Realms Publishing paid more than they made back.

Now, this is down to a few things I think.
* The three companies that didn't sell as well had a lower profile on the booth; it doesn't hurt to step up and really engage customers, but that's not some people's style.
* The companies which didn't have any newer product to really push found it tough going.
* Even those that did do OK found it was really just the newer stuff that moved. I thought there was a lack of people eager to buy in the trade hall (there were many familiar faces, sure, but they have the books already) -- this was reinforced by a comment on a forum by someone buying Indie Games at Leisure Games on Monday, they hadn't realised Dragonmeet was on.
* We didn't get much uptake on demos and it showed in sales. Those that got demos got sales. There was a good comment online that at times there were more vendors than buyers in the hall though.

So I think there is a market for us. Dragonmeet's lack of advertising hurt us reaching as many people as possible that don't already know about us. Yes, this is frustrating. It was also a bit disappointing that our scheduled games didn't go as smoothly as they could have. The timing of the slots was poor (I'm sure they'll fix it for next year) and the sign up was haphazard, which resulted in Joe's game getting nixed in the confusion.

For us... we need to reflect on how we can be more welcoming of passing customers and get them involved in talking to us about games and trying them out. How can we better present the booth too? This time we had black books on red and other books on the black, so that was good. But at times the booth was cluttered and messy to look at. At others times we were tripping over each other and all our crap behind the tables. I'm not super-keen on us pushing games that are in development over books that are here right now that you can buy, y'know?

I spent the morning pitching and helping, but the booth felt crowded, so I made a conscious decision to step away in the PM. Largely as I felt those who were left could sell well enough. I got to play Donut, so that was cool. But it meant I was relying on other folks pitching my game.

Booth setup vs sales is interesting. From memory, most of what sold was the Jonny Nexus side of the booth, what didn't was cornerwards. I wonder if the corner is a bottleneck? Or just harder to pull people to.

Signup sheet for pre-booked games was really badly handled. Donut (a guest run event) didn't have one until the last minute. Timing is a big problem with DM.

Lack of advanced advertising will have hit on people who don't normally go. Hence why I suspect only newer product sold.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

I'm going to try to hook you guys up with Steve Emmott, a very good friend of mine who used to manage Travelling Man Leeds (where I used to work years back), and more importantly who did much of the organisation for the mighty Travelling Man Gencon UK stand. He can undoubtedly give you concrete information about some of the stuff you're talking about Gregor - a well presented, welcoming, tidy stand netted those guys extra thousands in sales a few years back.

Steve is a great guy and I'm sure he'd be happy to help with advice if he can.

Jon Hodgson
www.jonhodgson.com

I think it would help if the demo area was closer to the booth. If you could have something like the Ashcan Front had at Gen Con last year, with small coffee bar tables at which you stand to play, I think that would be great.

The demos need to be going on near and at the same time as the sales. You need the buzz.

Some people don't need the buzz. Leisure Games, Chessex, the pure retailers need a different set-up and I think it would be as well to ask Angus about a different arrangement of tables to better serve your needs.

The demo tables couldn't really have been much closer to be honest. If we could secure a stand where chessex where then the tables would be directly in front of us.

On reflection I agree with Gregor on the in development stuff. If people, including me here, want to have that stuff with them to show interested punters, then fair enough. However it should not be on the stall itself. I don't even think we should have it on the flyers, as it really makes the bottom half look crowded. Direct them to the site where they can link to the other sites and talk to the designers directly.

Talking about traffic to the site, Matt can you give us an idea in about a weeks time of how much of a spike we got post Dragonmeet.

Setup wise, I believe Claire said she may have more stands we could have. It would be interesting to here from Steve as to how he set things up on his stall. This is going to become more of an issue as we expand and take on more Con attending members.

A thought occurs. Maybe we should have some people on the stall, and some permanantly on the demo stalls. inviting people to sit down for a quick game if they have the time. A more relaxed environment provided against the selling environment of the stall.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

Firstly, I seem to have actually sold 23 copies of Umlaut. I went with 25, gave three away and managed to sell one copy twice (to Scott Dorward* and Someone Else) by freak accident.

I think this is probably my fault for crappy book keeping. Although I was pretty certain I'd done everything right, I'm happy to accept that I might have cocked it up somewhere or otherwise be wrong.

Secondly, we need to ownzor those demo tables. We need to really be running stuff all the time. People were using them as general seating areas, and understandably so. So I think, in retrospect, we should be running a minimum of one game at a time. If that means running games for 15, 30, 60 minutes just to keep the tables full, that's how we should do things.

Thirdly, when you pitch a demo, 10 minutes sounds a lot shorter than 15 for some reason. Maybe that needs thinking about too. Nobody ever seems upset when a demo takes a bit longer that you say.

Having the stall tucked away in the corner doesn't help. Much as I love the Pelgrane guys, their stall makes ours harder to see and get too. Perhaps this would be something we would like to get changed as a "favour" for the dropped balls from this year?

Branding. It occurs to me that far more people have heard of the games themselves than have heard of the Collective Endeavour. A|State in particular comes to mind, it's probably the best known and most widely distributed of the games on offer at the stall. I for one think we would benefit from extra traffic if we had a banners featuring game logos either side of the main CE one. I'll happily print these and bring them on the day. Thing to remember is that you benefit most from other people's games being spotted and attracting punters. People who recognise my game's logo are already my customers, I want to sell copies to the guy who recognises the Dead Of Night or Mob Justice logo and buys Umlaut too.

Of course, I might be talking utter shite again...

* I am sorting this out with Scott, no problems!

Someone else was talking about the branding and I think we would benefit from more game posters behind the stall as oppose to just the CE banner. We should focus maybe on the ones with the best exposure: Best friends, cold city, a-state and the ones that are new, Piledrivers and Umlaut. Obviously this would change from con to con as new games came out.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

This is what the Ashcan booth looked like at Gen Con:

Demo tables were very small and above waist height but would take about 4 people standing. You were drawn right in when you looked at games and there was always someone around to give you info about the games.

It's probably best not to say "Would you like to know some more about that" but rather "That's a great game because X, Y,Z". It's not very English to do so but probably better for sales.

...on the flyer was the perfect place for that list of games in developoment.

Though your point about it being pretty full is noted. (As an aside I'm really gald we went for A5 now, and the quality of the cover image and print/finish are both outstanding.)

(1) It gives the games in development some visibility, and I think this has been proved by Neil and his being quizzed on D&H at the weekend online.
(2) It links these enigmatic titles with the designer, in some cases known designers like Malcolm.
(3) It kicks the designer a bit since, well, it's now out in the open that they're working on these games. So, I'm hoping that it pushes them to actually develop these titles (especially me).
(4) It shows that we're not just about already published games, but we're about developing games too. And not just one or two games either.

A big issue will be the split between our literature of listing games for sale (or demo as a menu), and as promotion of our games in development and what we bring to the community (e.g. focus on stories of how this site helped someone develop a game or whatever, and maybe having spotlights on games in developmenmt).

In future, at some point, I see us needing two different leaflets to hit those two different needs.

...we wait and see if they turn up, register and start to be part of the community.

I enjoyed myself at Dragonmeet. I will certainly try and make a weekend of it next year.

We could do with better positioning though, we were hemmed in a bit and when people were chatting in front of the stall it quickly clogged up traffic.

A more permanent presence on the demo tables is definately something we should go for. The flyer was ace, I like the games in development section - it's what the CE is about after all!

+++
JoE
+++

Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....

Its something I'm going to do for Conpulsion, but posters are obviously a good idea. Im going to do A2 strip posters for all our games from now on. For Conpulsion there will probably be one for MJ and the Companion aswell as the new release. We should try and have a stock of posters that can be wheeled out whenever we have a con presence.

Well if we have two or three sets of posters about the country we can take them to any con pretty much.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

Howdy

I thought CE was quite visible, but then I was looking for the stall on purpose. I don't know what effect the "Down with Indie" stunt outside had, but it made me smile and certainly raised awareness. If nothing else it had people asking "who are Collective Endeavour?". A comment by one of my crew though, was that the placards were a bit last-minute looking (maybe they were?) - if you crazy guys are doing something similar again, I'd suggest printing off some clear posters. Arguably it might be worth having counter-group promoting CE and pimping demo games? Something to think about.

I'd have one or two people round the sign up desks for the morning and afternoon "announcement" slots. My gang elbowed our way through the great unwashed and found that there was nothing we cared about in the initial batch of sign-up sheets. One or two CE monkeys stood about offering games could easily mine-sweep up some gamers looking for Hot Game Action. With the potential that these are customers who wouldn't normally buy your products and hence help you tap into fresh ground when you dazzle them with your left-field RPs, and the scales fall from their eyes. Or not. But its got to be worth a go. If someone had offered a punchy two-hour slot of something good at 10:10 we'd have snapped their hand off.

I wasn't aware you had a demo area - if you can get this better marked up for next time, that'd help your profile. Even if its meter squares of material with a logo printed on by a "print your own T-shirt" place or something. It didn't necessarily seem clear that someone could approach and get demos. It was in the program sure, but having someone pimp for players (heading out into the crowds and asking people) might work. Care needs to be taken not to do it and annoy people, but there were plenty of gamers idle-ing about not sure of what to do. Go get 'em.

Punchy two hour games work for me and my lot if we're trying something new. Much more than games dragged out for four hours because of some arbitrary standard length, and more so than 15 minutes of getting talked at - we still want a game. This is how I got conned into "playing" a two-hour punchy* Starblazer scenario. I say playing...

As a result I didn't get chance to play in Ian's Mob Justice and then presumably find it ace and buy it on the spot. I didn't know if there was anyone else who could run it for me in the morning slot, but if CE has got this kind of flexibilty in running each others games etc., then it wants pimping like a bee-atch. Again, if someone had shouted up that they could do the Mob Justice shuffle while I was loiterring around the stall, I'd have had their hand off. Arguably, some silver tongued devil could have blagged me into playing their masterpiece instead too...

It seemed to me that when the initial game sign-up-on-entry riot was over, there was a lot of milling about from people wondering what to do. If you've got people to spare like at DM where you're mob handed, its well worth walking up with a sign up sheet and asking "who wants some?".

The way to get people to buy your games, is get them playing them. Word.

Hope that view from outside the box is of some use.

Take it easy

Gaz

*If by "punchy", he meant I'd want to punch him, then he was entirely correct.

As a note about breakeven money, I think there is an important diminishing returns element with cons like Dragonmeet, unless you have new product it is difficult to realise new sales as the core attendees would probably have bought your stuff last year.

The only way to counter that is to have a steady infusion of new attendees and that didn't happen this year due to the poor visibility of the event.

I don't think the demo area in front of the stall was bad but I didn't have a clue when things were running. That could have been answered by a signup sheet on the stall itself or using the PA to announce the start of demo. Demos equal sales in my view because the pitch for a lot of games is pretty weird and often the games are quite bad about clearly explaining key concepts about the game, you really need to see the designer or experienced player run the game to what it is about.

One thing that I think might generate interest are "quickstart" or "mini" rules. Kind of like WW does for the WoD books. A scenario, a set of pre-gene'd characters and the core rules. People might get the chance to read it during the con but more likely they will come across it when sorting out their goody bag after the event and then if interested follow it up.

I have never really understood who would be interested in pre-pub material, whenever I have seen it at a con it seems to be a stand-in because something wasn't completed on time. I would rather see a flyer with the actual release date because then I am aware of something impending but I do not need to try and relate a folder of plastic pockets to the final product. Last time I ordered something from Key 20 it came with a load of postcards, not everything clicked but I did make the connection when Fae Noir was released and I was certainly more ready to have a look at it than I otherwise would have been. After all how many faerie games do you need?

The "long tail" in Indie sales is through increased exposure, which is not something that Dragonmeet keyed in on this year, disappointingly.