Gen Con 2024!
Hi Everyone! Welcome back. Kicking off the new version of the blog which will be less focused on numbers (though there will be numbers!) and more focused on just sharing my experiences as a game designer and publisher. My hope is still that this will be useful for others starting out into this part of the industry or who are curious about it.
Last month I had the opportunity to attend Gen Con as a vendor. This was my first time as a vendor anywhere (what a place to start!). I shared a booth with Breeze, the man behind Zephyr Workshop and the AEGIS Combining Robots games.
Preparation:
Let me do a quick and incomplete checklist of all the things that had to be taken care of prior to getting here:
Design and purchase promotional materials. This included big things like the 10x8 backdrop and smaller things like the X-banners and printed out 8x11’s in stands advertising things like my price list or game information.
Secure booth volunteers. Huge shout out to Tanner, Thyenn, and Matt for helping me out over the weekend. I absolutely couldn’t have done it without you. There’s a wide variety of “norms” around reimbursing volunteers, and they will be different depending on who you work for. For me, I covered their badges, lodging (or a portion of), booth shirts, and $20 a day food stipend.
Secure transportation and lodging. I went by plane and went in on an Air BnB with another publisher. I paid for my two male helpers to stay here as well and reimbursed Thyenn for a commensurate amount of her hotel costs.
Decide how many games and other products for sale to bring to the convention. This is challenging and there is no perfect formula. Ideally, you want to meet the demand exactly so that you sell as many as you can and don’t have to pay to get them back. I ultimately decided to bring 120 games, expansions, and acrylic upgrade packs, as well as stickers.
Figure out how all of your games and promotional materials are getting to (and from) the convention. I ended up shipping mine to the Air BnB and splitting a U-Haul with Chris of Solis Game Studios to get them to the convention. I’ll talk more about getting them back later.
Comb through the press list and send out a press releases to media and reviewers you hope to connect with. I had to do this both for Super Snipers (which was for sale there) as well as for the upcoming Mint Tin Games Series (which I was showing there).
Get on the official BGG list of games premiering at Gen Con.
Keep active on social media.
Set up any official events for Gen Con. This year I only did 6 teach events for Super Snipers.
Coordinate a schedule that includes: Booth coverage, Events coverage, meetings with reviewers, previewers, licensors, distributors, etc, etc.
Be prepared for sales. This included setting up a Square Reader Store with all the prices and stopping by the bank for change for cash sales.
There was much more, I’m sure, but this gives you a flavor of what kinds of things to be thinking about.
Set-Up:
I showed up on Wednesday morning. Looking back, I really should have come Monday or Tuesday. I bought the plane tickets well in advance. But when it came time to arrange for shipping the games, I had to get them there on Monday. Thank goodness Chris was able to receive them and also get them to the convention for me. This is a labor and time intensive part of the process and I was saved by the kindness of others. A friendly reminder that this is a friendly industry where we help each other succeed!
If you’re wondering why I shipped the games to the Air BnB: one thing I heard from Breeze, and will now preach, is that you have to find ways to save money or you will never have any hope of making money at a convention like this (you still might not; but you’ll lose less!). You can save on travel, lodging, shipping of games, food, and many small conveniences. As a one-man operation, I chose to save on lodging and shipping of the games. Other options would have been using FERN (Gen Cons official service for Exhibitors) or having your fulfillment company bring the games with them. Unfortunately, Bridge was not bringing a truck to the convention. FERN is (from all accounts) a fantastic full-service option, but very expensive.
I went to the convention center on Wednesday afternoon and set up. Gen Con gives you a space, a couple of chairs, a cardboard trash basket, a table and…that’s it. Everything else you are responsible for or need to pay for. No electricity, no wi-fi, no table cloths. Here again, I benefitted from the experience and preparedness of my booth mate. It was also very easy to get another table as many exhibitors didn’t need theirs.
They don’t run the air conditioning when the loading dock bays are open. That, of course, coincides with the times you will be physically working the hardest: set-up and tear down. It was stupid hot. I was very glad I had a second shirt with me.
There was an opportunity to walk around and say some hellos while setting up. I also got to meet Tom Vasel who told me in person how much he enjoyed Super Snipers. He made all the same points he did in his review, but it was awesome hearing it in person!
After set-up we grabbed a quick meal at an amazing ramen place and then I rushed over to the Marriot for Trade Day.
Trade Day:
As an exhibitor, you can sign up to participate in this event. You get a couple of tables and a few hours to interact with folks in the publishing, media, and educational realms. I set up Super Snipers and my Mint Tin games, and struggled with my X-banner for about 20 minutes before giving up on it (terrible stand!).
I got to do around 20-25 mini demos / conversations and met some very cool people as well as got to say hello to some friends (other pubs) who were there. I really enjoyed my conversations with some of the educators there as it bridged a few of my worlds (therapy, accessibility, working with kids, and game design).
Looking back on it, I’m happy I did this for a couple of reasons:
I got to practice and develop my pitch in a much less high pressure situation than the show floor. I learned what was grabbing people and adjusted accordingly.
Similar to the above, it was a warm up for the intense non-stop “peopling” I would be subjected to over the next 4 days.
It did convert into several sales (the following days; you can’t sell at Trade Day) and a lot of good connections.
The Show Floor:
There is nothing quite like the vendor hall at Gen Con. It is absolute insanity. We had over 73,000 attendees this year and there is no spot more densely populated than the exhibit hall while it is open.
We had a single long table in front of our booth that we added risers to. There was a table behind us where we stacked up Super Snipers in an appealing mountain. I arranged Super Snipers to have one player’s set-up and the 4 Mint Tin Games each with just enough components out to give game overviews. All demos were done by reaching over the table and manipulating objects from an upside down perspective. My primary goal was to sell as many copies of Super Snipers as possible. My secondary goal was to get folks to sign up for the Mint Tin Games Series.
The floor opens at 10 am and there is a crazy rush of people right away. My booth was in the 2900s and right up the aisle from the folks selling Rock Hard 77. Every morning the rush (that I saw) was to get in line for that game. Once they sold out each day (20 minutes?), the traffic could flow more easily.
Here are some of my takeaways from the show floor experience. Some will be unique to me, others may be more universally helpful:
I very quickly developed an “attention grab”: “Would you like to see a 2 player dueling sniper game using tetris pieces?”. A 10-second pitch: “This is Super Snipers. It is a 1-2 player dueling sniper game. The quickest way I can describe it to you is ‘tetris to the death’” (this would either get a big grin or a “no thanks”. Either was great!). A 90 second overview, and the things I would expand upon if there was continued interest. Typically, I would end the 90 second overview with the sales offer and then expand on other features if I didn’t immediately get a “yes” or “no” from that.
I learned that my best conversions were couples. If even one of them was excited about the game, they would either convince the other or be encouraged by the other. I would talk about how I made this specifically to be a couple’s game and highlight the catch-up mechanics and options for handicapping a more skilled player.
I learned that despite the fact that I am a professional when it comes to empathy and reading people’s cues (I’m a psychotherapist), I was pretty terrible at knowing when I was going to make a sale. Some folks seemed very excited, asked lots of questions, and then walked away without the game. Others would be stone-faced through the whole demo and then buy it right away. I certainly let people opt themselves out as quick as possible if they weren’t interested, but I gave my full attention to everyone no matter how I thought it was going and it paid off.
There were a sizeable number of people who knew they wanted the game coming in and bought it without a pitch.
Far and away, most people opted to buy the bundle package. This may be somewhat Gen Con specific, but the average buyer wanted all the good stuff. This moved my average sale from $45 for just the game to $70 for the game, expansion, and acrylic upgrade pack.
Stickers didn’t sell at all (a couple).
People were excited that I was the designer and that they were talking to me. I don’t think of myself as a big deal, but at that booth, I kind of was. I felt encouraged to share what makes my games special and fun and my words carried weight because I was Galen on Galen’s Games.
Mint Tin Games are HOT. If I had my Mint Tin Games for sale I would have made a killing. There was a ton of interest in them and I picked up a lot of followers. My explanations were about 30 seconds per game (2 minutes for all 4) and it was gratifying to see that each of them generated excitement.
If a family had a kid I would ask them to make my next Monster for my Mint Tin Monster Mash-Up game. This was always fun and would get the parents engaged too.
Accepting cash ended up being a good choice. I was surprised at the number of cash sales.
My teach events converted at a fantastic rate. I ran events to teach up to 4 players at a time. Events were 90 minutes but I was finishing up at the 45-50 minute mark consistently. The majority of the teaches ended with one or more of the players going to buy the game. Many came back to get their copy signed (again: big deal).
The Numbers:
I ended up selling 14-18 games a day with a total of 70 sold by the end of the con. I sold around 50 of both the expansion and the acrylic upgrade pack. I donated 5 games and gave away 8 to reviewers and 4 to folks who helped me out. I also traded 3 at the end of the show. That’s 89 out of 120. Overall, I made about $4,200 (a little over a third in cash).
Just following the show I made an additional $1500 in sales to retailers and a distributor that I met at the show. For those of you who have been following along. You know that all of this means that - at this point at least - I’ve pretty much broken even with my expenses.
Wrapping Up:
When the show floor closes, there is a massive round of applause as all of the exhibitors mark the end of an absolutely exhausting experience. I learned that many vendors (and their volunteers) will walk around near the end of the show to do trades. I traded Super Snipers for a copy of Monster Hunter (crazy deal!) and 1 each for 2 versions of Iconoclash (super cool game).
I realized that I didn’t exactly have a plan for getting my excess games back to my warehouse. In general, I imagined that I could ship them out from a FedEx on Monday before my flight, but there was the matter of getting them out of the convention hall. Ultimately, the experience and kindness of others (thank you again, Chris, Breeze, and Carla!) offered a solution and I ended up going in with some other pubs on a storage locker in Indiana (left my banner there too as it cost $80 to fly it). I’ll have stock for next year or close by if I end up doing Origins.
Sunday night I was deliriously tired (I didn’t sleep well the entire time) and was unsure if I was sick. When the fever kicked in, I knew I was. I ended up with Covid and an extra 3 days in Indianapolis (so much for almost breaking even).
Final Thoughts:
While Gen Con was not a financial “success”, it was an amazing experience that was and will be rewarding for me. For folks reading this and considering doing what I do, I offer the same advice I gave before: If you read all of this and aren’t dissuaded: you’re the right kind of crazy to do it. My biggest positive takeaways are:
Super Snipers is a great, very unique game that a lot more people will be playing now. I’m on track to sell through my stock and think about a reprint sometime in the next 1 or 2 years. That is awesome.
The Mint Tin games are going to be really popular and having them to sell will make a big difference in my future success at cons.
As far as negatives:
I just can’t do people like that. Not without consequences. Even if I didn’t get sick, it was like a month before I even felt like doing anything game related (besides play).
It’s really hard to be financially successful at this. Without expendable income I don’t see how you could do it.
I think that’s good for now. Let me know your thoughts, questions, and experiences!
