Back From the Expo

So, another year's UK Games Expo has been and gone, and this time I traveled up the day before it started, thanks to a generous lift from a friend (thanks, Matt!), got checked into my hotel, and then wandered over to the NEC where the set-up was under way.

A view of Hall 1, mid-setup, from the Playtest Zone balcony. 

After a little help on the Cubicle 7 stand and then in the Playtest Zone, I headed back to the hotel, where I stumbled across a group of lovely people who let me play a few games with them for the evening. I seem to manage this with a different group each year, somehow finding a really relaxed and friendly group each time, and it is one of the things that makes this event so special for me. It was also lovely to catch up with these folk at breakfast each morning and occasional other times through the weekend.

On Friday I worked as a volunteer in the Playtest Zone for the morning, then had my first ever "formal" pitch meeting with a publisher in the afternoon, which was terrifying but didn't need to be, as the publisher is an absolutely lovely fellow who was easy to talk to, and was very supportive and interested in what I had to say. The outcome of this was that they won't be publishing Invaded, which is the game I was presenting, but I am welcome to pitch other games in the future, which seems a good result, and I got some very helpful suggestions.

Friday evening included the designer-publisher speed-dating event. There were something like fifteen publishers there, but twenty designers, and twelve time slots for pitches, which sounds like a horrendous mismatch, but it worked out that the designers each ended up seeing nine or ten publishers, with a couple of "break" slots in between, and it was organised so that designers mostly saw publishers that were more likely to be interested in their games. For instance, I didn't get to see the publisher of party games, who definitely wouldn't have been interested in Invaded.

By Saturday morning, after a couple of exchanges of emails based on meetings at the speed-dating, one publisher had asked for a copy of the prototype (I had a spare copy so was able to accommodate that) and another had asked for a meeting to try actually playing Invaded.

After my Saturday morning spell of volunteering I was able to quickly eat a sandwich before meeting with the publisher who wanted to play Invaded. We found a table and had a full, three-player game that demonstrated well some of the features of the game, but fell flat overall (quickly make some notes about what went wrong -- mostly that the game went too quickly and was entirely peaceful). This publisher was very interested if the issues that showed up could be addressed, and gave some really useful feedback.

Drafty Valley in play. Hand modelling by Jen.

Continuing another busy day I got back to the Playtest Zone in time for a testing slot of my own, running a play of Drafty Valley. This being something of a prime time, I hadn't even finished setting up when I had two players asking to play, and we were just starting off when another two turned up, so we reset and got going with a four player game.

So the headline news was that the game was horribly broken. One player in particular seemed to be  getting a bit frustrated by the imbalances between the action options and the objectives. I need to do a massive reworking of the game before another playtest, but I have a list of points to address and some ideas on how to progress, so I can work with that over the next week or two.

Alongside the problems that were identified, there was something totally awesome. I managed to explain the game in about five minutes, and then stepped back and managed to watch the players play the game on their own, with only a few clarifications and corrections needed here and there. I don't think I have ever spoken less during a playtest. This was an amazing feeling, and I'm holding onto that bit of win with both hands.

Saturday was rounded off with an actual sit-down dinner with some friends (some old, some new) followed by a great session of gaming (some published games, some prototypes).

On Sunday morning I had another playtesting session booked, which I had been intending to use for Drafty Valley, but given the previous day's test I felt I would not gain very much by playing that again before an overhaul, so on a whim I pulled out Boogie Knights, to take a fresh look at that.

The knights seem quite fighty at the moment, but there's that tutu...

We managed to play three games of Boogie Knights (twice with three players and once with four) in the ninety minute slot, and managed to get a good amount of feedback and insight in that time. The biggest problem at the moment is that the balance of equipment and challenge cards can be uneven, and particularly late in the game in three player games (less so with four, but it's still there) it can be frustrating to have too many equipment cards and not enough challenges.

Based on some of these discussions I am now thinking about ways to change the game to include multi-use cards (cards that work for both equipment and challenges, for instance). This would be a dramatic change to the game, but if I can figure this out it might just work. I have a couple of ideas...

The rest of Sunday was largely spent perusing the stalls around the two enormous convention halls with my wife and daughter, who had come up for the last day of the event, as they have done for the last few years. And then it was all over.

So, I've finally put my toe in the water as far as having meetings with publishers is concerned, and survived the crucible of the speed-dating. I probably wouldn't do the speed-dating again, but it was a valuable experience and helped get some dialogues going. Overall, I now feel a lot more confident about talking with publishers about my games, so will be sure to do more of that in the future. As always, the experience of being involved in the Playtest Zone was really rewarding, being an opportunity to meet and hang out with game designers ranging from first-timers to highly experienced, published veterans, who make up a great community.

Now I need to catch up on sleep, and get to work on implementing the changes I need to make to various games...