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The
Hammermaid
- naff (naff) adj. 1:
unstylish, clichéd, or outmoded. 2: to fool around or
go about. naff off rude imperative. go away! [British
slang.]
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Ocean's Twelve :|
The laser scene from
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
was done much better.
 
What If...
Casey and
Andy
"The pyramids of the Icehouse set are a great example
of a well-designed game system. They can be physically configured
in any number of ways: stacked on top of each other, aimed at
each other like arrows, organized into patterns, or distributed
randomly -- different Icehouse games take different advantage
of these material affordances. The number of pieces and distribution
among the three sizes and four colors also determines the formal
relationships and logical groupings that can be expressed by
the organization of pieces. The Icehouse Set components elegantly
embody a flexible yet expressive set of potential formal and
experiential relationships." -- Salen and
Zimmerman, Rules
of Play, page 547
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A Radical Decision: No Sales
Booths This Year! |
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 In
the world of birds who live at our house, the big news this week
is a massive upgrade in living quarters! Alison has installed
a long awaited new cage in the kitchen for Green Bean.
In the world of trade show planners who live at our house,
the big news is the decision not to run ANY Looney
Labs sales booths at trade shows in 2005. At first, we all
said the same thing: "What? That's Crazy! We can't do that!"
But gradually, Kristin convinced us.
Since our first big success with a booth at Origins
in 1997, when we first debuted Fluxx,
we've been running bigger and better sales booths at Origins
and an increasing number of other trade shows and events throughout
the year. At these events, our booth becomes our front door to
the public, with a little sales counter where I work the cash
register (a job I never did in "real life" but now
do at my own little store for about 3 weeks total each year).
At first we used to bring in only a few hundred dollars in sales
in our little sales booth, but in recent years, at least at the
big shows, we've come in well over $10,000 in sales. Which is
awesome - but it also is a great deal of work. Setting up a tiny
but fully functional store and tearing it down again 4 days later
ain't easy, and rent ain't cheap, either. When you add up all
the expenses, and put it up against the profits, we usually come
out a tiny bit ahead, but not always. So we're always asking
ourselves: is it really worth all the work?
The logic of the Exhibit Hall is that you buy demo space by
the square foot and you pay for it with the money you make by
selling the products you have on display. But the Exhibit Hall
is not the only way to run events for our games, nor even the
best environment in which to enjoy them. The events we do, like
the Big
Experiment and the Pop-Tart
Cafe are really the most fun, and do a much better job of
conveying the fun of Looney gaming than does our sales booth
in the Exhibit Hall, even when we pay extra for more space in
which to run in-booth gaming. (Last
year at Origins we built a 400 square foot giant Icehouse
arena next to our booth inside the Exhibit Hall, and it was very
cool, but sales were about the same as the previous year.)
This year finds us particularly dreading the upcoming task
of building and running a series of sales booths. As regular
readers know, we are preparing to uproot
ourselves and move, and as we pack up our lives it will be
an even greater challenge than usual to run booths at all the
big trade shows. We also haven't replaced our
van yet, and not having a van makes a trade show much harder.
And the thing is, there are lots of vendors who already sell
our products at trade shows. All game convention Exhibit Halls
(and most sci-fi con Huckster's Rooms as well) have at least
one (if not several) booths that are just like hobby game stores
which sell a little bit of every type of game from all sorts
of different manufacturers. At the three big consumer shows we
do each year (Origins,
GenCon,
and Dragon*Con)
these folks normally can't sell our games, since we are there
selling them and convention contracts routinely include an "exclusivity
clause" that bars retail vendors from selling a product
in their booth if the manufacturer of that product is also exhibiting.
So this year we are going to continue focusing our energy
on convention support, and on building better relationships with
vendors who sell games at conventions. We ourselves will still
be running events at the big shows, and we will be working with
our rabbits to run a Looney Labs Little
Experiment at as many conventions as they can find to run
them at. We plan to give away a TON of cute little game stickers
and Happy
Flowers all over the place this summer - if you sell games
at conventions, please let us know which conventions you will
be attending this year, and we'll see if we have rabbits in the
area that might want to come demo our games and help you sell
them!
So it's still going to be a busy summer, but nothing near
as busy as it would be if we were setting up sales booths at
conventions all summer like we normally do. We'll go to a few
conventions and promote our games - but in-between shows, we'll
be packing.
What will we do in 2006? Who knows. This is yet another experiment
for us. But I have a feeling we're going to enjoy letting anyone
else who wants to sell our games for us, letting the sales work
be handled that way, and focus instead just on demoing and promoting
the games.
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Have a Great Week! And Don't Forget to Play!
PS: If you haven't signed up for your Holiday
Gift yet, there's still time! We haven't sent them out yet!
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"Game system design is a kind of meta-game
design. A game system designer designs the structure within which
other game designers will create games. The 'rules' of the system
are the physical qualities of the game system components; the
'play' that takes place is game design itself, resulting in sets
of rules that make use of the game system. This kind of process
requires that the game system designer give up a significant
degree of control, as other player-designers decide how the game
system will be used in actual games. But this loss of control
is ultimately what is so satisfying about designing game systems:
as a platform for player-driven creativity, a game system is
a catalyst for truly transformative and emergent play." -- Salen and Zimmerman, Rules
of Play, page 547 |
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I am amazed to find myself listed in the index
of a
textbook published by MIT about Game Design. I am amazed
that a textbook about Game Design even exists. Back when I actually
used textbooks, the idea of Game Design, as a field of serious
study or career planning, was quite unheard of. I myself stumbled
into becoming a game designer, having planned instead on become
a writer. Now I find myself being held up for example in a textbook
as a success in a field even more obscure and unimaginable than
I had previously figured myself out to be: I'm not just a Game
Designer, I'm a Game System Designer! I didn't know I could say
that about myself until I read about my own works in a textbook
which created a separate category for Icehouse games in its definition
of types of games. I find all these things truly amazing. |
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I have long been a believer in the future reality
of marijuana legalization, but always it has been a theoretical
someday sort of belief. I have also long been saying that the
best chance for rapid change is in a Roe v. Wade-style landmark
ruling by the Supreme Court, but even so, it's still always been
a vague future hope. Usually they refuse to take cases that would
force them to consider the issue. So now, as
we wait for the ruling on the Raich v. Ashcroft case, it
becomes possible to imagine that The Day When Everything Changes
is actually drawing near, that it literally could happen any
day now. Each day I wake up wondering, 'Will it happen today?
Is this The Day?' For pot-smokers everywhere, it's like waiting
for Christmas. Of course, what's different is we don't know exactly
when it will happen, and what's worse, we're all worried that
Santa Claus will have nothing for us but yet another lump of
coal. But imagine the joy that will be felt by stoners everywhere
if S.C. gives us all the gift of Freedom. |
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