Advantages Of Attending Conventions For Publishers

This past weekend we had RinCon here in Tucson. Due to it being in the backyard of Tasty Minstrel Games, we attended. I was only there for Friday, while Seth went on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We did not have a booth, because as of right now we are still waiting on product to be shipped to us. The manufacturing will be done soon, which is incredibly exciting. I did however observe a couple of things.

#1 – There was a significant amount of gaming going on. Of course this should go without saying, as it is a gaming convention, but I was still surprised.

#2 – A decent amount of people come to a convention to not only play the games they like and own, but also to learn and play some games that they have a passing interest in. This was the case for the game of Ad Astra that I played.

#3 – The demographic of those at the convention are the prime target audience to sell games to. They are willing to pay out of pocket for some organized or semi-organized game play. They typically will drive many of the decisions about what games to play in their casual game groups. They typically participate in social sharing revolving around games, such as Board Game Geek.

What Tasty Minstrel Games Did At The Convention

Homesteaders Demo #1 – 4 players – Myself, Misa, Steve, Drew
Terra Prime Demo #1 – 4 players
Homesteaders Demo #2 – 4 players – Michael, Jess, Derek, David? (sorry I forgot your name, despite your crushing handshake)
Terra Prime Demo #2 – 4 players – Brian, Christian, +2
Homesteaders Library Play – 4 unique players – picked up the game off the library shelf and played from rules
Train of Thought – 2010 release demo – Seth + 5 players
Belfort – 2010 release demo / play test – Seth +3 players
Unannounced Prototype Testing – Additional testing and feedback for a game we are looking at for 2010 release

20 unique plays of our published games by serious gamers. Not a bad result. This did however take up much of the gaming time available to either myself or Seth. Clearly you want to attend conventions ad much as possible, but how can you have convention representation without having to physically attend the convention?

Convention Attendance The Tasty Minstrel Games Way

I do not want to physically attend 50+ (or possibly more conventions in a year). As a matter of fact, I have neither the time nor the budget. What I can do is make sure that my games are represented at the convention. Please email me michael [at] tastyminstrelgames.com if you run a convention or demo at conventions, I am considering offering the following:

Low cost (think close to my total costs) copies of published games for demos, game libraries, and prizes

Additionally, I would also be open to considering a sort of advertising swap for conventions that Tasty Minstrel Games is thus supporting. Probably consisting of a notice about the convention on this blog, and also a “conventions we support” page on Tasty Minstrel Games.