Expo-sure

 Another in my series of long-after-the-fact blog posts... 

So the weekend straddling the end of July and beginning of August was UK Games Expo, for the first time since 2019 and two months after the date it would normally have been held. A few months earlier, around the time when the new dates were announced, information was also circulated about how Covid-19 control measures would be in place and details would be announced nearer the date. Then, some time later, the UKGE website was updated to suggest that the controls would be essentially optional, and then over the following couple of weeks there were further updates that brought us to a state that more-or-less reflected the original "play with confidence" position, having passed through various states of confusion en route.

For the last few years, I have focused my visits to the Expo around Playtest UK and the playtesting area that is organised each year by the awesome Rob Harris, who has claim to being the primary Rob for these events, with me just slotting in as a backup. This year I went a little further and was one of the core team for the playtest zone, meaning I was essentially working there full time. I wasn't planning on any formal meetings with publishers this time, so this worked well for me overall.

The preview event in progress.
The yellow mats in the foreground are for the open play area
to encourage social distancing.

After setting up the playtest area on Thursday, I went to the "press preview" event, something I had not done before. Basically this is open to anyone with a press or exhibitor pass (I had the latter as a playtest volunteer), and is an area of tables where exhibitors can show their latest releases, etc., and have a couple of hours where they can chat with folk in a quieter and less cluttered environment than the trade hall. I'm not a press person in any sense, but it was nice to meet and chat with a few people about their games.

UKGE as a whole was significantly smaller than usual, with less trade hall space, bigger spaces between stands, and more unused spaces (though there was a nice area of picnic benches near the food stands in the main hall, which I appreciated), but the Friday at the playtest area felt as busy as usual. We did have fewer tables than usual and those we had were spaced out more, so clearly we weren't as busy, but there was a steady flow of players turning up and for most of the day, the game designers were not having to wait long to fill a game. This more or less continued for the weekend, but I think was particularly noticeable on the Friday.  We discussed this a bit and a few folk had the impression that a lot of people felt that there was less pressure to see everything in the trade hall (there was less, after all) and so were more available for playtesting. I don't know how true that was, but it was the subject of some pondering in general.

Not as packed as usual, but still a very big event by any other standard.

On Friday evening was the publisher-designer speed dating event, which I took part in a few years ago. This time I was dragooned in on behalf of Playtest UK to provide a little extra stewarding and general dogsbody effort. As it turned out, apart from helping to arrange tables there wasn't much I needed to do, so I was able to tour the room and have chats with most of the designers during down time - there were more designers than publishers in the room, so there were a few periods for each designer when they were just waiting for something to happen. It was interesting to see the variety of games being pitched, varying from a very toylike game that was really aimed at families with youngish kids (I think this was somewhat out of place given the publishers present) up to a fairly heavy thematic Euro. Hats off to all those presenting their pitches -- I hope at least some of them had some luck from their efforts.

After the speed dating I met up with some friends in the open play area, which was of a similar size to the trade hall and, somewhat unusually for my experience of these events, every time I went through there was plenty of space for anyone who wanted to play, even though there was always a good buzz of people there. Let's just say, I am glad to have finally been introduced to the epic trading game, Sidereal Confluence, but by that time of night my brain was struggling to keep up.

The Playtest Zone in full flow.
Note the pretty universal mask use and spacing between tables.

Saturday was pretty much more of the same during the day, but I did have the opportunity to do some of my own playtesting. Actually, one of my co-designers, Chris O'Regan, spent the morning running through several tests of our game, The Village on the River, and got some really useful feedback which we discussed a week or so later. Then in the afternoon I had a slot with a family (with adult kids) playing Grab Bag Zoo, the game I am working on with Mike Harrison-Wood. GBZ is a short, real-time cooperative game that went down really well with this family (they ended up playing the game TEN TIMES in a row!) but it was apparent that it is just too difficult and intense for the playing-with-younger-kids audience we would like it to work for.

Grab Bag Zoo - you can't tell from a still photo, but this 
got really quite loud and excited during play.

That evening was pretty chilled, going out for burgers with Rob Prime and then playing a couple of lightweight games that I had bought that day.

Finally on Sunday, after working at the playtest area for the morning, I met up with my family, who had come up for the final day as we have been doing for the last few years. This was the point that I actually had a chance to play a couple of demo games on trade stands with my daughter, buy a few extra things, and then go home, exhausted.

Of course, COVID-19 provided one final little game to play: on the way home, I got "pinged" by the official COVID app, telling me that I had been in close contact with someone who had tested positive for the virus and that I had to self-isolate for the next nine days. Fortunately I was able to work from home for that time, as was my wife, so it had little impact other than making me a bit stir-crazy and prompting me to learn how to make and drink the South American drink, mate, but that is another story. None of us tested positive or developed symptoms ourselves, and I haven't heard of anyone getting ill who I was knowingly in contact with, although I do a number of them were also required to self-isolate.

So, all in all, I am very glad to have gone to UK Games Expo. I admit I was a bit nervous beforehand, but it all turned out well, and in particular I got a lot out of the opportunity to see and catch up with a load of old friends and meet a few people who I have met online over the last year or so and had never met in person. It's sad that a lot of people didn't go, but given the coronavirus issues, I can't fault anyone for their decisions. Hopefully next year will be closer to normal, but for this year, a huge thanks to the organising team and volunteers for making the event probably as good as it could have been.