The Raffle Prizes table on Friday.
First of all, I want to thank Game Kastle for being a fantastic and supportive host. They made the event possible. All the hotels I talked to wanted $1000 a day (for less space) and the schools I contacted wanted $40+ per hour to rent their cafeteria.
Initially my agreement with the store had three rules:
1. I could provide meals, but snacks should be purchased through the store.
2. I would not provide drinks. Drinks should be purchased from the store.
3. Friday Night Magic could not be bumped. We need to clear out by 6 PM Friday.
This contract was based on that I thinking I could get 10-20 designers and 40-80 people over the weekend. The store was rightly concerned that the revenue they would lose by booting out Pokemon/Net Runner/Minis/RPGs/Etc. I thought $20 per designer plus these three rules was more than fair.
Any concerns about the store losing money compared to a normal weekend went away when we had 37 paid designers and 200+ people.
Game Kastle has been encouraging and flexible through the entire process. After talking to them, they are willing to host Unpub Protospiel again. Next time I have no obligation do food or drinks through the store. We also get to bump Magic out on Friday.
I had at least a dozen people ask me if I was providing drinks. I explained that there were not drinks provided but the store sells a variety of beverages. It surprised me how many people were unwilling to pay for a cheap drink at a free event. Next time, I plan to have jugs of filtered drinking water in an ice chest.
Thanks to Tiffany Ralph for bringing a big container of coffee to share.
The plan is to keep the rule that cards against humanity style adult games are not allowed. I want the event to be family friendly to maximize player attendance. Restricting adult games is also in line with Game Kastle’s game room policies.
Lessons Learned:
There is enough demand for Unpub Protospiel to warrant taking over Game Kastle for three full days.
Provide some form of water.
Continue the family friendly restriction to maximize attendance.
Thanks to:
Franklin Kenter for providing $100 to subsidize the game design kits.
Ted and Toni of Bezier Games for funding Pizza Saturday night.
Seth Jaffe and Tasty Minstrel Games for funding Lunch Saturday and Sunday.
Thanks to Pizza My Heart for brining Pizzas on Saturday.
Aldo Ghiozzi and Impressions Distribution for providing the raffle prizes.
Herman Chan and Richard New for driving guests, manning the check in table, helping with Costco runs and a lot more.
Ting Chow and Joy Wright for helping with manning the front desk and Costco runs.
Payton Lee for helping get industry guests to the airport on time.
Grant Rodiek for being the first designer to sign up, for contributing to the industry guest panel and for making great efforts to promote the event and recruit more players.
Tiffany Ralph for helping to promote the event, for bringing coffee and for committing a great deal of her time playing prototype games.
Thank you to the industry guests:
Josh Neiman, Victory Point Games
Barry Pike III, Victory Point Games
Jeff Cornelius, Cosmic Wombat Games
Sam Waller, SlugFest Games
Seth Jaffe, Tasty Minstrel Games
Eric Vogel, representing Evil Hat
Aldo Ghiozzi, Impressions Distribution
Richard Bliss, Funding the Dream Podcast
Kevin G Nunn
Grant Rodiek
David Sirlin, Sirlin Games
Ted and Toni Alspach, Bezier Games
Thank you the people who took an hour out of their busy day to serve as judges for the game design contest:
Aldo Ghiozzi, Jeff Cornelius, Kevin G Nunn, Franklin Kenter, Seth Jaffe, Rob Daviau, Josh Neiman and Barry Pike III of Victory Point Games.
Thank you to the players who paid $1 in advance and let me know they were coming. It may not seem like a big deal, but it helped me out a lot.
Aaron Arutunian, Amy Hernandez, Andrew Hoskins, Callan McNamara, Charles Pearson, Christopher Fraasch, Eric Felice, Imran Pirani, Jodi Soares, Ken Tidwell, Lauren Hanf, Michael “Firefly” Perry, Nathaniel Chambers, Roy Zemlicka, Sean Washington, Steve Caires, Tiffany Ralph