GAMA Trade Show

The GAMA Trade Show moved to Reno this year and people are pretty happy with the new location. This week's Rolling for Initiative column looks at a couple of hot topics at the show.

GAMA

This week's Rolling for Initiative column looks at some of the activities the Game Manufacturer's Association performs 

GAMA Trade Show

This week's ICV2 column looks at some things of note about this year's GAMA Trade Show as well as some marketing thoughts on Route 66.

Four Thoughts on the GTS

This week's ICV2 column covers some follow up thoughts from the recent GAMA Trade Show.

3 and a Half Questions Answered

Well, I got three and a half questions answered of the 5 I wanted to get answered at the GAMA Trade Show.  WOTC not having much presence there made it hard to ask questions about Magic pricing and their boardgame catalog.

5 Questions for GTS

I headed out to the annual GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas this week and coincidentally, this week's ICV2 column focused on 5 questions I hope to get answered

Why I Went to the GTS and What I Found There

Just flew in from Vegas and boy, are my arms tired!  Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week, try the special.  Every year, when time for the GAMA Trade Show rolls around, I, along with many other retailers, ask myself if it is worth the money and the time away from the store. Making the decision this year was especially hard since, as I noted last week, with National Pi Day and the Dragons of Tarkir bracketing the event, I had to fly out instead of taking my usual road trip and I HATE to fly.

So was it worth it? A resounding “Yes”. Not for the seminars or the manufacturer presentations or even the Big Box (and I really hate to break it to GAMA but some of the stuff in there just ain’t gonna sell), though. As a friend pointed out, I can find out most of that information through the Interwebs, if I spend enough time.

 Nope, what makes it worth my time is the opportunity to hang out, talk with and (especially) listen to, the smartest people in the industry.  At meal times or just in the hall way or wandering around the exhibit hall, I will bump into someone who says something that gets me to view a game or product line differently or gives me an idea on how to improve the store. However, most people go there to look at new stuff, which is why the lines get so long outside the exhibit hall before it opens. I really didn’t see anything product wise that knocked my socks off (You may have found otherwise. Please send an email to ICV2 if you did), though I did notice the Donkey game people had moved to a less visible section of the exhibit hall and I never did spot Privateer Press. Oh, and WOTC really wants stores to up their look.  There were, however, two programs that interested me and one trend that has me a bit worried. This week, the two programs, later in the week,  the worrisome trend.

Program #1—Bits & Mortar.  Although this one has been around for a couple of years, I was glad to see publishers still supporting it. For those not familiar with B&M, it allows retailers to give their customer a free PDF of a participating RPG when the customer purchases a print copy. The customer buys the hard copy, gives the staff their email, and staff emails a link to the PDF. Pretty simple and I have lost track of the number of RPGs we have sold as a result of this program. The big drawback is that the participants are all small press publishers but it does not cost anything for stores to sign up and it can help sell RPGs from companies such as Cubicle 7, Evil Hat and Arc Dream. 

Program #2—Envoy Program. This program , on the other hand, debuted at the GTS. The program plans to provide stores with trained Heralds to demonstrate products from a large number of small press game companies.  Demonstrations are generally considered the best way to sell games but most small press companies do not have the resources to mount a viable demo program and most retailers have neither the time or staff to adequately demo the hundreds of games a store might carry.  The Envoy Program proposes to deal with these problems by providing Heralds (at no cost to retailers, I imagine there is some charge to the publishers) to visit stores to demo games from publishers participating in the program. The idea sounds great in theory but I would like more detail on the training the Heralds get, as I have seen some really good demo people over the years as well as some downright horrible demo people ( A really bad demonstration years ago is the reason I never played the Legend of the Five Rings TCG). I have high hopes for this and saw lots of signs at the GTS indicating smaller publishers had signed on with the program. On the company’s website, it shows over 40 companies have already signed up and just over 50 stores.  More information is available at www.dexposure.com/envoy.

Notes from the Game Trade Show

I am sitting in room 111 of the Sands Motel in Grants, New Mexico as I write this, having just driven twelve hour along Route 66 from Las Vegas after the 2014 GAMA Trade Show and wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on what I took away from the show. In no particular order:

RPG companies are back, at least at GTS—This is the strongest showing of RPG companies I remember at GTS in several years.  Besides perennials Paizo and WOTC (who for the second or third year did not have any products displayed at their booth in the exhibit hall), I saw displays from Pelgrane Press, Green Ronin, Palladium, Eden Studios (which looks to have a really hot property with its new Adventure Maximus game. After seeing it, I immediately doubled my pre-order), Flying Buffalo (which had some promotional material for the new edition of Tunnels and Trolls but, sadly, no mockups), Catalyst Game Design (with a new RPG based on the Valiant Comics universe), Atlas Press, AEG and Chaosium. I probably missed one or two, but for a show that has heavily shifted to boardgames in recent years, the number of RPG companies there made an old roleplayer like me happy.

Adventure Time and Bravest Warriors are a thing—Admittedly, I am not a big fan of either show, but a lot of people are, it appears, at least based on the number of licensed properties I saw shown there.  Both Steve Jackson Games and Cryptozoic had Adventure Time card games,while Catalyst showed off a new Bravest Warriors card/dice game.  A couple of other companies had licensed the properties as well, so expect to see more games playing off both in the next year.

International TableTop Day gets an upgrade—Still no word on Season 3 of TableTop, as Geek & Sundry will neither confirm nor deny the status of production on season 3.  However, the rumored premium package did get announced. It costs quite a bit more than the basic package does, approximately $750 compared to $50 for the basic, but does come with many more promo items as well as full copies of several games such as Roll for It, Smash Up and Munchkin. I did get the answer to something that has bugged me since last year’s International TableTop Day, namely, why did the kit include promotional items for games that did not appear on the show?  It turns out those games are ones Wil Wheaton really likes, but for one reason or another, do not work well in the TableTop format (Wheaton discusses what a game has to have in a Not the Vlog post on Geek & Sundry). He thinks them worthy of greater attention though, hence the promotional items. I have heard some stores already complaining about the cost of the kits, however, since part of the money spent goes to help fund TableTop, and considering how much money I have made as a result of TableTop, I figure buying the kits a good investment.

Questions for Companies at the GAMA Trade Show

Gale Force 9-Has your company completely dropped the miniatures accessories that it started out with.  Yes, you have a couple of great boardgames.  Both Spartacus and Firefly have done gangbusters, but you started off with stuff like flock, sculpting tools, files and other accessories. Restocks of these have been non-existent. Are you planning to continue with these lines or are boardgames your future?

WOTC-So far, you have done a really good job building interest in D&D 5^th/Next, but I haven’t heard a whisper about any organized play program. You’ve seen how Pazio has leveraged Pathfinder Society to drive sales of the Pathfinder line. Will you have something ready to go when the new Player’s Handbook releases at GenCon?

Also, it would be really nice if you would modify your store locator so it sends out an annual reminder to check the locator and update store information. If a store doesn’t click on the link within a reasonable amount of time, delete the store from the locator and get rid of the zombie stores in your system.  If Steve Jackson Games can do it, you certainly  should be able to do so.

Konami-Could you modify your tournament software so that we can create and sanction tournaments the day of the event? It would sure be nice to be able to sanction a tournament on the spur of the moments and give the players their Dualist points. By the way, did you ever decide what you were going to do with those Dualist Points, because if you have, I certainly haven’t heard about it.

Geek & Sundry/TableTop Did you ever come up with any sort of make-good for the stores that were supposed to appear in the live streaming during last year’s International TableTop Day? Yes, they got a line listing at the end of the event but that’s not the same as their five minutes of “fame”. Also, I saw mention of a “premium package” for this year’s event but since ITTD is only two weeks away, I assume that’s not gonna happen?

Games Workshop-I gotta admit, the weekly version of White Dwarf has done much better than I thought. However, could you PLEASE start putting paper invoices/packing lists with the shipments again? It would make my life so much easier.

WizKids-Are we done with the announcements of delays in shipping just days before the release of the product? And could you please cut back on the number of releases? I swear, I thought Konami overdid it with their release schedule for Yu Gi Oh but you are coming out with a new set every month. Slow it down before your customer base suffers burnout. And could you go over the War of the Light OP program again? I’m still not clear on how it will work.

The Future of Kaijudo (at least for the next year).

WOTC really put a push on Kaijudo at the show, much as the company has since announcing the (re) launch of the game with announcements of PTQ style events, a Duel Day in May or June and (non-specific) programs reaching out to Boy and Girl Scouts as well as boy’s and girl’s clubs.  It does concern me somewhat, when I asked about the release schedule for expansions, WOTC only has them on the schedule through the second quarter of 2014, since I was rather expecting to hear, based on the announced commitment to the game, a release schedule extending 2-3 years out.  Here’s hoping we are discussing a release schedule for Kaijudo for 2015 and 2016 at the 2014 GTS.

Evil Baby Orphanage

I wasn’t expecting much when I sat in on Wyrd Miniatures presentation.  Puppet Wars seems a bit pricy to me and their Malifaux line had sold quite poorly here since the initial run of interest after it first arrived.  However, once again I found you can always learn something interesting or useful in every presentation.  This time ‘twas Evil Baby Orphanage, a card game in which players attempt to score points by capturing history’s greatest villains while they are still in their diapers and sending them off to an orphanage where they can be monitored.  I did not lay hands on a demo copy of this but was intrigued enough to bring it into the store when I returned and have it racked near Cards Against Humanity.  I’m always looking for a new twist on a quick card game and this one certainly qualifies.

Pazio at the GAMA Trade Show

Paizo had a pretty comprehensive presentation with a couple of announcements that made my customers quite happy.  First the announced gravity feed of goblins just in time for the release of “We Be Goblins Too” at Free RPG Day had more than one customers commenting that “you can never have too many goblins” and considering the purchase of a complete display to get a full set of the 13 figures.  Secondly, and this rather surprised me, they were quite happy about the planned reprinting of the Combat Pad.  This is a GM aid that we have had a number of customers asking for over the past few months and there was even applause when I announced this during a Pathfinder Society session.

Fear Itself

Still catching up on my notes from this year’s GAMA Trade Show.  The most popular seminar/presentation of the show had to be the WizKids’ session, likely because at each presentation, attendees received a highly desirable HeroClix Convention Only figure.  However, Wk also gave out a lot of information about the next Organized Play campaign, Fear Itself.  I won’t go into detail about the Fear Itself OP program, as you have likely read about it elsewhere.  One thing I did take away from it was the increased importance WizKids has put upon online registration of both events and players.  In fact, in order to order the Fear Itself OP kit through Alliances, a store has to both purchase a certain number of boosters over the preceding period and register events on the WizKids’ website (which is still a work in progress and somewhat clunky, i.e. there is no indication on the site when you request a password reset that it goes through until the email shows up in your mailbox).  The limited edition Fear Itself booster set of 40 figures and the Blitzkrieg packs are nice add ons that will drive customers to participate in the Fear Itself event, though I would not take any bets on how long it takes before the FI boosters wind up for sale on eBay or other online locations.

Random Thoughts on the GAMA Trade Show

Before closing the books on this year’s GAMA Trade show, I wanted to touch on a few more topics and things that caught my interest, in no particular order.

1)       Organization.  Aside from the very first day, when early arrives didn’t realize the show checkin was at a different location in the Bally’s from previous years, the show was very well organized.  Kudos to GAMA ED John Ward and the rest of the GAMA staff and volunteers.  I heard no complaints from retail attendees about lost registrations and people moved through lines pretty quickly.

2)      Donkey.  Once again, the Donkey game (which I have yet to try) attracted a loud and raucous crowd in both the exhibit hall and evening gaming with players climbing on top of the game table at one point.  There always looked like a full table of players, but it was hard to tell how many of them were staffing the booth and how many were show attendees.  For all the enthusiasm shown for the game both this year and 2011, I have never had anyone come into the store asking for it and do not recall any of my distributors soliciting it.  As a side note, I see the manufacturer (Cleveland Kids) has signed up to participate in Wal-mart’s get on our shelves program.

3)      Programming.  Once again, going to blocks of manufacturer programming appears to have worked as every slot of their programming I attended had a full house.  Unfortunately, it did relegate a lot of the programming provided by the GAMA Retail Division to the evenings and later in the week, when a lot of attendees had already left. Still, most had standing room only, especially Dave Wallace’s seminars on employee maintenance filled many seats and Lynn Potyen’s education certification program.

Pirates of the Spanish Main

At this year's GAMA Trade Show, Wizkids announced a makeover of their Pirates of the Spanish Main collectible ship game.  However, much as they did with Mage Knight last year, they are keeping the name but changing the game significantly. From what they told us at the show, this version will not have the cool minature pirate ships but will instead be a card game.  No indication as to how play works but, from what I saw, it looks as if each ship will have its own deck and you will be able to customize your own ship by mixing and matching cards from various decks.

No indication as to release date but I'd bet on later this year as the game apparently has been in development for some time.  Probably a GENCON or Origins release.

Tentacle Bento

Got a look at a new game from Soda Pop Miniatures titled Tentacle Bento.  It's an anime themed trick taking card game with more than a touch of hentai to it.  Each player is a monster tasked with capturing Japanese school girls, the more girls the better.  After the 4th event card in the deck turns up, the game ends and the player with the most girls wins.  The art and flavor text are all PG but the flavor text is suggestive enough that I'm rather uncertain about stocking it when it releases.  The game plays well and all the people who tried it out at the GAMA Trade Show liked it a lot, so it certainly has that in favor of it.

Scheduled for release later this summer, probably at Origins or GENCON.  Expected price point is $19.99.  If we bring it it, it would likely go behind the counter along with the Club card game. 

What Would You Ask?

Heading out to the GAMA Trade Show this week and will have the opportunity to speak to a lot of publishers and manufacturers.  What would you like me to ask them?  So far, I have questions about the next release for the One Ring RPG, when will the next edition of Warhammer 40,000 release and when will the next Fast Forces set for HeroClix arrive.  Post your questions in the comments and I'll ask them.