Originally, I told Game Kastle that based on the local prototype nights that I run, I thought I could get 40-80 people over the course of a weekend to attend Unpub Protospiel San Jose.
We wound up clearing 200+ unique people. I had intended to try and register each and every person as they came in to make sure they all got a raffle entry and name tag. However, I was overwhelmed with the amount of things people were asking me for, the food runs and trying to man the registration table. Saturday night, I counted 177 unique raffle tickets (each ticket has the person’s name on it) + 9 people still in the building that slipped past me without a name tag or raffle ticket. Keep in mind that designers also got a raffle ticket. On Sunday, I got 20+ more unique players who had not attended Friday or Saturday.
Many people told me that they had taken their raffle ticket home after winning something, and thus they were not in my count. I can’t estimate how many people I missed counting, so I’m going to stick with unique names that I have documented on paper.
That puts our total count at:
38 Designers (not counting myself)
8 Industry Guests not counted as designers
167+ Counted Play Testers
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213+ Documented Unique People
For comparison, here are some Protospiel 2013 Attendance Numbers:
30-40 people - Protospiel South - Austin, Texas
15 people - Unpub Sacramento, CA.
50-75 people - Protospiel Milwaukee
80 people - Protospiel - Ann Arbor, Michigan
52 Designers, 253 Play Testers - Unpub 4 (2014)
That makes Unpub Protospiel San Jose the second largest prototype event in history. Only Unpub 4 was bigger.
Attendance lessons learned:
I definitely need more volunteer help to keep a more accurate count next time. Volunteers Herman Chan and Richard New were fantastic help, but the three of us were not enough to cleanly manage 200+ people, panels, registration, the raffle and food.
One of the two rooms on Saturday.