Thoughts from a First Time Self Publisher Part 32: PAX Unplugged Part 1.
Hello again! I appreciate everyone following along with this blog series. Today I will mostly be talking about my experiences attending PAX Unplugged. If you are interested, you can sign up to receive these blog entries in your mailbox. I also have started a monthly newsletter that you can sign up for here.
Best Part of my week (so far): Well, it’s been more than a week since the last blog so I will say: PAX UNPLUGGED! I had an amazing time.
Most stressful part: I’ve been very busy and very low energy since returning from PAX and that culminated in waking up sick this morning. Whee.
PAX UNPLUGGED:
I came as an attendee this year. I didn’t realize how early you had to sign up to run events so I didn’t run any at PAX. I did sign up and run playtests in the UnPub room on Sunday. My goals for PAX Unplugged were:
Network
Meet up with friends
Playtest Dog Days
Playtest Mint Tin Series Games
Play Games
So how’d I do?
Networking:
At CuseCon, I made a new friend who was kind enough to take me through the Pax Unplugged Vendor Hall and show me the ropes of how to properly network at a Convention. Thank you, Whitney!
I found the experience enlightening but thoroughly exhausting. I met dozens of new people and got to check out some of the post-convention going-ons. Here are a few networking highlights:
I stopped by Breeze Grigas’ booth (AEGIS: Combining Robots) and had a great chat. I happened to mention that I was dismayed to have learned that I missed the window for getting a GenCon booth and he offered to split his booth with me next year!
I assisted my friend and fellow Syracuse designer, Phil Gross, with doing a demo for Plaid Hat. Summoner Wars is one of my all time favorite games and it was incredibly cool to be able to meet Colby, play a game, and talk games and publishing with him.
My first day, I got street directions from Eric Lang. Not really networking, but it was very cool to meet him and have the opportunity to introduce myself.
Met and played Super Snipers with Matt Healey. Matt is a very interesting guy who is a whiz at creating inserts. He’s created major high profile ones (like for Frosthaven) and also does designs for smaller Indy Games (like Super Snipers). He picks projects he likes and offers to do the inserts on a sliding scale (only costing me the game and add-ons!). It was fascinating talking with him and he really enjoyed his play of Super Snipers!
Hung out at a whiskey after party with Whitney, Steven Buonocore, and a number of designers and industry peeps playing FTW. Met a lot of folks involved in all different parts of the industry there.
And, on the floor, I met a bunch of publishers and some connections I will be following up with around manufacturing and shipping stuff for my upcoming Mint Tin Games.
Meeting up with Friends:
I got to finally meet a number of folks in person, as well as make some new friends:Issac Hirschfield of Montage End Games. Issac and I have traded playtests and it was awesome to meet him and see Arbor Falls IRL! He was one of several indy publishers with a booth for exposure (nothing to sell), and I’ll have to follow up with him to see what his thoughts on that are post-PAX.
John DeCampos of Terrible Games. John is responsible for my first published game: First Hunt and he’s doing the art for my upcoming Mint Tin Monster Mash-Up game. The booth looked amazing, John is an amazing and talented dude, and I was really happy with my Token Terrors blind bag purchases!
Matthue Ryan of Envy Born Games. Matt and I have talked mini/ micro games a bunch and done some playtesting. I met him briefly at GenCon. All the games looked great and it was cool to see the Sirens app in action!
Dave Beck of Paverson Games. Dave has been a great friend and resource to me. No matter how busy the man is (and he is busy!), he always takes the time to say hello, have a chat, or answer questions. Distilled continues to be an amazing runaway success and Luthier is looking really good!
Breeze Grigas of Zephyr Workshop. As previously mentioned, he is the designer of AEGIS Combing Robots and a very high energy, fun person!
Catherine Drayer of Drayer Ink. In an industry full of people hustling, few are hustling as hard as Cat. She is involved in so many aspects of the world of Game Design, that it makes my head spin a little. Finally got to meet her and her partner, George and say hello and get a hug. Unfortunately, no time for games.
William Angus of Kitten Kaiju Games. William and his fellow NJ based designers were some of the first people that I met online when starting into game design. I watched and learned a lot from his foray into Kickstarter with 30 Seconds to Live (great 2 player game btw). I got a chance to play a couple games with William at the con and it was great to finally meet in person.
Patrick Goepfort of Golden Raptor Games. Patrick is another of the NJ designers I met early on and one of my most valuable playtesters (seriously, introduce yourself to Patrick and have him play your game!). He’s also the guy who created the PnP for Super Snipers. I had a blast meeting him in person and having him (unsurprisingly) destroy me at Robo Rally.
Brian Shoemaker of Glass Shoe Games. Brian is another one who I met early on when I volunteered to print out and test the game that would eventually become Roll for Lasers. I played his comic book collecting game in UnPub and thought it was great!
Sam Stockton of BA Games. Sam’s design partner Ed introduced himself in the open play area and I came over and met Sam. Forges of Ravenshire looked awesome on the table! We talked a bit and made plans to playtest down the road.
Marceline Leiman a NY City based designer who had an amazing Subway themed Trick Taker at UnPub. I was really impressed by this game and have no doubt it will get picked up.
Whitney Lorraine most recently, one of the designers of Charcuterie. I got to meet Whitney at CuseCon earlier this year and we became fast friends. She’s a great designer with a TON of industry knowledge that she was super gracious to share with me. We got to hang out for a good chunk of time Saturday and tour the hall as well as eat some incredible Gator Gumbo and play a game of Verdant Arizona (even if it had to be on the floor).
Apologies if I left anyone out!
I’ll continue my PAX retrospective soon (next week?). Thanks so much for following along.
Galen
