A couple of weekends ago was the biggest event of my personal gaming year, UK Games Expo - if you don't know about it, it's held at the Birmingham NEC venue plus a big chunk of the nearby Hilton Metropole hotel at the end of May and beginning of June each year and is one of the biggest (mostly analogue) gaming events in the world. It's not the time or place where I play the most games (I usually play very few), but it's when I see so many gamers, game designers, publishers, and general nerds.
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| The Playtest Zone in full flow, tables loaded and buzzing. |
This time, the halls at the NEC were differently set up to in previous years, meaning that the main event areas were all on the same floor level, which was nice. I haven't checked this, but it also felt like the aisles between stalls were wider than before. This, plus the arrangement of entrances to the halls, accessible from all around the central NEC concourse, and the lack of choke points in the direct connections between halls (which were just open) seemed to contribute to a more relaxed and open feel than I am used to, despite attendance being higher than ever. Sure, it was busy and crowded, and at times it was pretty stressful to get around some areas, but overall it seemed a happier place to be for me.
I spent most of my weekend at the Playtest Zone, which was off in a corner of hall 1, but had good levels of footfall pretty much all weekend. The arrangement is that there are a load of tables (we had 24!) which game designers could book for a period to test one of their prototypes, then regular convention-goers come, play the game, and give feedback. As volunteers in this area, we are basically there to facilitate this, to help things move smoothly, make sure (as far as we can) that designers are matched up with players, and so on. As part of this, I found myself talking a lot, often with people who just wanted to know what was going on and how to get involved, but also, significantly, with new designers who wanted to know how they could get to a state where they were testing their games at Expo next year. I'm planning to write up a summary of some of the advice from those discussions shortly after this post.
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| One of our volunteers with the special sign she had specially made. |
Apart from the volunteering and talking, I did get to run a playtest of The Artifact and got some very useful feedback. A major part of that was comments about the theming of the game not being strong, which I partially agree with; I think, though, that I taught the game largely as an abstract game and things could be improved a lot by changing that as well as some graphical upgrades. We have some good comments to be thinking about though.
I did get to play a few games, of which only two were recently released: Fighting Fantasy Adventures, which was a fun way to spend an evening making some new friends, and Grab Bag Jungle, just because. The rest were a couple of very lightweight, silly games and a prototype a friend had with him.
Which reminds me that I do work on light and quick games occasionally, so I should get some of them out for those situations. Hanging out with game designers at these events does seem to mostly involve playing silly stuff or small prototypes. Also there is often beer. When in those situations and someone says, "So, do you have something?" the answer should always be "Yes!"
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| A playtest of The Artifact drawing close to its end. |
I'm not someone who is particularly good in social situations at the best of times, and spending a lot of time in loud, busy situations, and doing a lot of talking, can wipe me out mentally and emotionally. This can be a problem when the whole point of the event is to meet and interact with people. I've got into the habit of having a quiet hour or so back at the hotel, just having a lie down and a mug of tea, at the end of each day, before attempting to socialise in the evening, and this seems to help a lot.
Oh, and this was my first Expo as an officially published game designer, and it was great to see Gibsons demoing and selling Grab Bag Jungle - as well as giving out lovely Jenny The Jaguar enamel badges.
Overall, this was another amazing event, but it took me most of a week to get my head back into a state where I can be productive again. I am still riding high on the sense of community and the love for playing and designing games shown by the folk I was hanging out with. Now I need to turn that into progress...
