News From the Floor

Sandy Antunes March 30, 2000

The GAMA Trade Show took place March 20-23 in Las Vegas, NV. While I'll have a full analysis of the overall industry pastoral mosaic (and aren't you looking forward to that!), it seemed a good idea to give a timely set of snapshots and news.

Of course, the first bit of news is that Press were not allowed into the Buyers-only food events, typically thrown by Manufacturers who wish to announce cool new things. This oversight was due mostly to the Show being way larger than any previous-- over 250 retailers and over 110 publishers, with over a thousand attendees (or so I vaguely recall... they were adding up the numbers when I left).

So this report may be less than rigorous. Fortunately, the "no Press" policy sort of evaporated for the later Breakfasts, since those were rarely fully attended due to the late night habits of gamers. And Wargames West specifically invited everyone to theirs, which was a nice halfway attempt at being hospitable (alas, few knew they could attend, so it wasn't the open house it could have been).

The good news is that everything was crowded. The exhibit hall was frequently humming, the seminars were crowded (even though the food was miserable, and death to vegetarians).

Ryan Dancey went over the WotC Survey. Among the interesting tidbits were that each customer is worth $60 to WotC (money spent averaged over 10 years), so he's comfortable spending that much to acquire new customers. With an estimated 2.5 million tabletoppers, RPGing has been a two billion dollar industry since 1975, or around $39 million a year.

Neat trend data. Newcomer gamers tend to play more frequently than veterans. And newcomer gamers tend to restart (make new characters) every 8 sessions or so, around every two weeks, compared with veterans who will go months (though recall they aren't gaming as frequently).

And 8% of gamers play Call of Cthulhu, which made this freelancer proud. Now if only all 8% had bought my book, it would have sold 200,000 copies and made my editor rich. Oh well.

Moving to other things, the GPA (Game Publishers Association) leaked that they are doing the GPA awards this year at GenCon, as a way of showcasing good items that didn't happen to necessarily come from the best sellers. Their stylish yet slightly detached Executive Director (err, me, this year) also hit every booth shilling for the GPA.

The most frequent question I received was "if I'm in GAMA, why should I join the GPA?" It's interesting because, though GAMA is called the Game Manufacturers Association, they currently focus on promoting communication between the three tiers (publisher, distributor, retailer), and indeed are having debates on whether to let the hordes of retailer members vote.

So the GPA is like a GAMA for just publishers. It's all about networking. Personally, the best thing about GAMA and the GTS is that you can talk with retailers. As said best by Jim Crocker (of the Underworld, and of Guardians of Order):

You are afraid.

Fear leads to Gaming.

Gaming leads to Retail.

Retail leads to the Dark Side.

Jim also was the wizard who found out the new Jet Li movie (Romeo Must Die) was premiering in the middle of the show. At least three groups of attendees slipped out to see it. Personally, I thought it rocked, and definitely was a way cool Feng Shui sort of event.

Speaking of dark sides, WotC Prez Vince had some interesting arguments during the WotC Seminar to retailers. Besides mentioning that direct internet sales of Pokemon would be "rationed", he did say the 'Team Rocket' expansion will go to game retailers at the same time as everyone else. And that 1st Edition would not be shipped to the mass market. We'll see if that happens.

He also noted that 'speed to market' is why Fossil, etc got to hobby game stores slower than it got to WalMart, 7-11, etc. I remain skeptical on that; that explains delays of days, but not necessarily weeks or months. Given his repeated quote of "Come on guys, this is b u s i n e s s", well, at least I learned that, when talking to retailers, they really like it when you speak slowly, as if they were children.

On Alternity, Jim Butler said that "Alternity is a test" as to whether a stopped brand can keep going on the strength of its backstock. Hmmm...

Anyway, moving along, d20 was often mentioned by folks. As noted in Salon and /., it doesn't really fit the "open source" model it states, though it is an interesting experiment. Mike Stackpole quipped that "d20 is going to be the Esperanto of gaming".

Fantasy Flight Games was a pleasant upstart, with DiskWars selling over 100,000 copies in 3 months. With "Doomtown Rangewars" using their system, with "Star Trek: Red Alert" coming up, and with L5R using a Diskwars license, they're doing rather nicely. Man, if you could use ButtonMen to play Diskwars, we'd have the industry's best seller wrapped up.

Even cooler, they now have Blue Planet and will be releasing new material for it! Not to mention they've supported the Cthulhu Live line with 4 supplements. So there will be CL events at GenCon and (hopefully) Origins.

Dream Pod 9 had some really neat new blister packs. Yeah, they got minis in them... but the cool thing is the packaging looks normal, but can survive an 18 foot fall! Me, I'm impressed they actually tested that.

Green Knight are the Pendragon folks after the Chaosium redesign, and will be introducing "Car Wars on Horseback". Seriously, that's what I was told. Oh, okay, it's technically called "the Book of Knights", but hey, it's finally romp-and-stomp time in Pendragon. Plus they'll have Keith Parkinson art, and they've hired Jim Lowder as a fiction editor.

And if anyone is wondering why I report on some companies and not others, there's a story there, too. It's a mix of randomness and who can tell a good story. PR is a skill that always amazes me; it's what separates the business-saavy from the designers.

Heck, the above is a good sample. Imagine you've had a long day walking the floor of a trade show, hearing about hundreds of marginally different game ideas. Which of these two sentences gets your attention:

A: We're releasing a historical game of mounted knights in combat.

B: Think "Car Wars on Horseback"

I rest my case. Other PR tips include: address folks by name (I always screw up with that one). Know the publication's niche. For example, when I cover for rpg.net I talk about new markets being opened or very cool new cross-marketing. So I am less likely to take note of a game that has 'cool new mechanics' or 'just made new minis!'. However, Rob Allen (our wargaming correspondant) might just leap at those aspects and skip the promo stuff I fall for. So tailoring the pitch helps.

And remember, even if someone seems small potatoes, it always helps to be nice. Actually, there is no such thing as 'small potatoes' in this industry-- just lots of pecking orders. For example, I was standing next to Jared Nielsen (no comments please) when Ryan Dancey lead out a party to go to breakfast. Nicole Lindroos was there, as was Mark MacKinnon, Matt Forbeck, others.

I was not invited. *sniff*. Ryan walks by, and simply says "Hi Sandy", and says something to Jared. So I'm feeling all snubbed, when Jared says, "did he just call me Mark?"

So there's always someone higher or lower than you. I'm sure the Hasbro VPs occassionally munge Peter Adkison's name. More name tidbits, let's see. Marina James of RPGOutpost was listed as possibly being there. I didn't meet her, but I do think her name would be great for a pirate, so it was worth mentioning.

Moving on, I had an interesting lunch with Charles of DragonScroll, an online discounter. I wish I could report on the stuff there; he definitely has his act together in terms of business plans. It should be interesting how things shake out, given the contentious viewpoints about internet discounting (I knew two attempts which failed, none which succeeded long-term).

I got breakfast at the GameCodex seminar, run by a critter named Jared. I was amused by his comment about how game manufacturers had an alternative "rather than spend hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars on their direct internet websites". After years of trying to persuade manufacturers to cough up $400 on a website, I nearly choked on my orange juice at that one. The meat of the seminar actually had some interesting ideas, but since Jared often takes my quotes and comments out of context, I'll refrain from talking more.

Best snippet there was 2/3rd of the retailers at that breakfast, in a show of hands, did not like manufacturers selling direct via the web. I'm most curious, actually, about the opinions of the remaining third. Were they pro for the idea? Or just didn't care? Or did they have good in their hands when the question was asked?

Anyway, Charles and Jared and I had been tapped to co-run some of the web seminars. Those ended up being rather humorous, in a dark sense.

Imagine a retailer, telling his personal experiences at web stuff. Every now and then, a figure from the shadows gets impatient and steps forward to interrupts. They briefly espouse on a matter they feel needs elaboration. Then they must retreat to the darkness.

Sounds like a bad Babylon-5 episode, really, but that's how the two web seminars I was on went. I admit I was pleased when two retailers told me "we just tuned off and just waited until Sandy spoke". I admit, I'm not used to being throttled back, especially since Emma and I ran all the web/net stuff last year.

Mark Matthews-Simmons (ED of GAMA and show maestro) elaborated on an earlier statement of his, when he told the industry "You sell crap". Apparently he meant "The more you judge the product, the less you sell." Subtleties at work there.

Moving to rpg.net specific stuff, retailers in general said they'd prefer reviews not have "Buy Me" tags on them, so they could link to our reviews without feeling like they were promoting another store. That was a darn good idea. Personally, I'd like to shift the post-acquisition Vantage/RPGnet content away from retail, so we're in discussion about some of that now.

Let's see... one retailer (Joanne) used to do the book trade, "selling the potato chips of literature". That was just too good a quote to not mention here. It's also my last quote for this report.

So until next month, enjoy the potato chips of gaming!

Sandy
sandy@rpg.net