Industry Guest: Steve Jones of Blue Panther LLC

Steve Jones, founder of Blue Panther LLC (now celebrating its 10th year in the board game business) has been involved with games for a long time. Starting back when disco was giving way to punk and electronica  Steve was playing D&D (yes, he does have the original rules, no, it is not for sale) and most of Avalon Hill, SPI and SJGames (too bad Steve Jackson got that cool company name first) titles. Soon after, he founded Blue Panther Enterprises, which ran play-by-mail games where a new turn was guaranteed super fast every week - games like The Final Campaign, Empires For Rent and The Boys of Summer.

Many years later, Steve mixed business (lean manufacturing) with boardgames, which resulted in the formation of the first Print-On-Demand boardgame company. Everything is made in USA (except dice). Blue Panther is a game publisher AND manufacturer specializing in small print runs. The first games he designed Central Pacific, Courtyard and Nepal were all wood-games followed soon by other games from many designers (who later on went to great things in the game industry). Blue Panther makes games, dice towers and trays, and custom components. They also do alot of work for other game companies and crowd-funded games. New games include Meeples To The Mothership and Cock & Bull, with an upcoming zombie co-op Dead Things and an election game: Bull Moose: The 1912 Campaign.

Our thanks to Blue Panther for donating the spiffy custom flat dice for the game design contest on Sunday.

Five Things You Must Know before you show your game.

1. Save the Game Kastle parking for players.

Parking is limited in the Game Kastle parking lot.  Please leave that parking for the players coming to play your games.  There is street parking available in the area and a large shopping complex with lots of parking across the street (where McDonalds and Costco are).  My suggestion is to park over by McDonalds in the morning and buy yourself one of their coffees to start your day.

2. Give your game “Curb Appeal"

You will be competing with a lot of other games for player time and attention.  Which would you rather play, a game handwritten on index cards or a game with fun clip art and clear typed text? Take some time to type and print out up to date components for your game.  If you are using old beat up card sleeves, consider replacing them. Re-glue, paint, reprint, and touch up your game so it looks nice. Make a sign for your game that tells players the most important numbers for your game: # of Players, Play Time and Complexity. If you pledged for a prototype preview, you can use that as your game sign. 

Perhaps my favorite game sign from Unpub 5.  The players and pay time text under the title was a bit small.  All the rules to play the game are on the sign!

3. Play other designer’s games if you want people to play yours. 

It is good manners in the world of Protospiel to play other designer’s games.  You are asking for other people’s valuable time, it is only fair that you give of your time as well.  Whenever I go to a Protospiel event I make it a point to play at least two other designer’s games before I bring one of my own to the table.  

4. Record Feedback for later use.

Most designers assume they will remember the feedback they are given.  You won’t. It is not humanly possible given how many conversations you will have over the weekend.  I suggest you record audio feedback using a voice recorder on your smart phone, and/or use the Unpub Feedback form, and/or use the Unpub App. Recorded audio feedback provides emotional context, tone of voice and inflection.  Written feedback will get you more honest objective answers than verbal feedback.

You can find the Unpub Feedback form here:

http://unpub.net/feedback/

PDF - http://unpub.net/wp-content/themes/Nexus/images/feedback_form.pdf

You can download the Unpub  App here:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/unpub/id956386384?mt=8

The Unpub App will allow players to post feedback directly into the Unpub database entry for your game.  You must enter your game in the database first.  The feedback is private and viewable only by you.

5. If your game is secret, please take steps to protect that secrecy.

The volunteer staff can’t police players.  Anybody is allowed to walk in off the street and play games.  They may have never been to an event like this or know how things work.  If your game is secret because of a license or other concern, please tell players before and after every game not to talk about your game online. Place a label on your game board or play area that says “Secret Game, Please do not Photograph.” Last year we only had a few secret games out of almost 100 titles at the event.  I’ll have three secrecy signs at the registration table you can check out and use if needed. 

Game Design Contest

What: 

Teams of 2-4 designers will have an hour to come up with original games using design kits with surprise components! A panel of judges will then hear 3 minute pitches from each team before determining an official winner, who will be rewarded a spectacular certificate and eternal glory!

Everyone is welcome to participate, designers, players, or people who randomly wander in from the street. A sign up sheet will be available at the registration/badge table, where you can sign up as a team or a free agent to be assigned to a team.

When:

Sunday the 26th

2pm - Teams are given a special design kit and have one hour to create an original game

3pm - Teams have 3 minutes to pitch the panel of judges

4pm - Winners are announced!

Special Thanks: 

Teale Fristoe is organizing the game design contest and will serve as the chief judge. Much thanks to Teale.

Special thanks to our game design contest sponsor Franklin Kenter for donating $150 to cover the cost of the kits. 

Additional thanks to Blue Panther (www.bluepantherllc.com) for donating their new product “Flat Dice”, which may or may not be in each design contest kit. "Flat Dice” are 6 sided "constructible" dice that can have any image color printed or engraved on them. The sides are reversible and interchangeable. They will be available this summer from Blue Panther.

Designer Badge Wait List & Tag Table Option

Designer Badge Wait List

This update is aimed at designers. If you are a player, you can skip reading it. However, I wanted to send it to everybody as I know there were designers who backed for $1 to stay in touch.

Last year I had three designers cancel the week of the event. I know this year there are a lot more designers who wanted to get in than we had table space for. I’ve had a couple of cancelations, so I’m going to start a lottery wait list. 

If you would like to be on the wait list for a designer badge, email boardgamebuilders at gmail dot com with the subject Designer Wait List and your full name in the body of the email. I will then randomly select people from the wait list to get designer badges as cancelations happen. If you need to cancel as something has come up, please contact me so we can give another designer your spot.

I want to make it clear that our hard limit for designers is 40. That will not change. 

Would you like a Tag table? 

I has been suggested that I offer designers the option to have a Tag table. Tag tables worked well at Unpub 5.

What is a tag table? A tag table is a fixed table shared by two designers. If you opt in to having a tag table, I will pair you up with another designer and the two of you will have your own dedicated table for the weekend. We will put a sign on the table with the name of the two designers on it and take it out of the open table pool. 

This would give you a place to park your stuff, and leave your game set up while you get lunch, take a break or play another designer’s game. You can take turns with the designer you are sharing with, divide your shared table up into 2/4/6 hour blocks, run to games side by side or whatever else you would like. How you share your table is up to you.

If you have a Designer, or Staff Designer badge and would like to opt in for a dedicated Tag Table email boardgamebuilders at gmail dot com with the subject Tag Table Request by Sunday the 19th at 9 pm. This optional, if you would prefer to just stick with the pool of open tables, you are free to do so.

To be clear, Tag tables have no impact on the dedicated sponsor level tables, and do not change the number of designer badges (still capped at 40). 

Industry Guests: Ted Alspach, Grant Rodiek and David Sirlin

Ted Alspach

We are honored to have Ted and Toni Alspach of Bezier games backing the event as our Major Sponsor. I would show you a picture, but since they live in a secret fortress we will have to make do with a cartoon from Ted's Board 2 Pieces comic series.

Ted will be signing copies of his games as part of the event. Bring your favorite Bezier game or pick one up at Game Kastle. 

For a list of games designed by Ted, click see his BGG profile here: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/6046/ted-alspach

Find out more about Bezier games at http://beziergames.com

Grant Rodiek 

In 2015 you can look forward to Grant's new game Hocus Poker with Co-designer Joshua Buergel.  Then in 2016 Grant has as war game coming from Portal games. Until then, feel free bring your copy of Farmageddon for Grant to sign or pick up a copy at Game Kastle.

He is the curator of the always useful Hyperbole game design blog. It is well worth your valuable time to check it out: http://hyperbolegames.com/blog/

You may have heard Grant's infectious energy and enthusiasm on several different board game podcasts or come across his prolific twitter feed.

https://twitter.com/HerrohGrant

Grant will be sharing his insights by hosting one of the panels at the event.

David Sirlin 

David Sirlin is a maverick of indie board game publishing. He acts as game developer, graphic designer, and publisher of Sirlin Games (www.sirlingames.com) and has been working full time on board games since 2009. Before that he was lead designer of Street Fighter HD Remix, Puzzle Fighter HD Remix, and author of the book Playing to Win. He's won notoriety in the game industry for his methods of achieving game balance in major video game franchises as well as his own tabletop games. Sirlin games seeks to create tiles with top notch graphic design that hold up to thousands of plays by expert gamers. Sirlin specializes in competitive multiplayer games with asymmetric player powers. He also somehow managed to ship three out of three Kickstarter projects on-time—not the usual way Kickstarters are done!

David will be joining us for some of the panel discussions.