Recap: Game Kastle Location and Thanks

The Raffle Prizes table on Friday.

First of all, I want to thank Game Kastle for being a fantastic and supportive host.  They made the event possible. All the hotels I talked to wanted $1000 a day (for less space) and the schools I contacted wanted $40+ per hour to rent their cafeteria.

Initially my agreement with the store had three rules:
1. I could provide meals, but snacks should be purchased through the store.
2. I would not provide drinks.  Drinks should be purchased from the store.
3. Friday Night Magic could not be bumped.  We need to clear out by 6 PM Friday.

This contract was based on that I thinking I could get 10-20 designers and 40-80 people over the weekend.  The store was rightly concerned that the revenue they would lose by booting out Pokemon/Net Runner/Minis/RPGs/Etc.  I thought $20 per designer plus these three rules was more than fair.  

Any concerns about the store losing money compared to a normal weekend went away when we had 37 paid designers and 200+ people.  

Game Kastle has been encouraging and flexible through the entire process.  After talking to them, they are willing to host Unpub Protospiel again.   Next time I have no obligation do food or drinks through the store.  We also get to bump Magic out on Friday.  

I had at least a dozen people ask me if I was providing drinks.  I explained that there were not drinks provided but the store sells a variety of beverages.  It surprised me how many people were unwilling to pay for a cheap drink at a free event.  Next time, I plan to have jugs of filtered drinking water in an ice chest. 

Thanks to Tiffany Ralph for bringing a big container of coffee to share.

The plan is to keep the rule that cards against humanity style adult games are not allowed.  I want the event to be family friendly to maximize player attendance.  Restricting adult games is also in line with Game Kastle’s game room policies. 

Lessons Learned:
There is enough demand for Unpub Protospiel to warrant taking over Game Kastle for three full days.

Provide some form of water.

Continue the family friendly restriction to maximize attendance. 

Thanks to:

Franklin Kenter for providing $100 to subsidize the game design kits.
Ted and Toni of Bezier Games for funding Pizza Saturday night.
Seth Jaffe and Tasty Minstrel Games for funding Lunch Saturday and Sunday.
Thanks to Pizza My Heart for brining Pizzas on Saturday.
Aldo Ghiozzi and Impressions Distribution for providing the raffle prizes.

Herman Chan and Richard New for driving guests, manning the check in table, helping with Costco runs and a lot more.

Ting Chow and Joy Wright for helping with manning the front desk and Costco runs.

Payton Lee for helping get industry guests to the airport on time.

Grant Rodiek for being the first designer to sign up, for contributing to the industry guest panel and for making great efforts to promote the event and recruit more players.

Tiffany Ralph for helping to promote the event, for bringing coffee and for committing a great deal of her time playing prototype games.

Thank you to the industry guests:
Josh Neiman, Victory Point Games
Barry Pike III, Victory Point Games
Jeff Cornelius, Cosmic Wombat Games
Sam Waller, SlugFest Games
Seth Jaffe, Tasty Minstrel Games
Eric Vogel, representing Evil Hat

Aldo Ghiozzi, Impressions Distribution
Richard Bliss, Funding the Dream Podcast

Kevin G Nunn
Grant Rodiek
David Sirlin, Sirlin Games
Ted and Toni Alspach, Bezier Games

Thank you the people who took an hour out of their busy day to serve as judges for the game design contest:
Aldo Ghiozzi, Jeff Cornelius, Kevin G Nunn, Franklin Kenter, Seth Jaffe, Rob Daviau, Josh Neiman and Barry Pike III of Victory Point Games.

Thank you to the players who paid $1 in advance and let me know they were coming.  It may not seem like a big deal, but it helped me out a lot.  
Aaron Arutunian, Amy Hernandez, Andrew Hoskins, Callan McNamara, Charles Pearson, Christopher Fraasch, Eric Felice, Imran Pirani, Jodi Soares, Ken Tidwell, Lauren Hanf, Michael “Firefly” Perry, Nathaniel Chambers, Roy Zemlicka, Sean Washington, Steve Caires, Tiffany Ralph

Recap: Attendance Numbers

Originally, I told Game Kastle that based on the local prototype nights that I run, I thought I could get 40-80 people over the course of a weekend to attend Unpub Protospiel San Jose.

We wound up clearing 200+ unique people.  I had intended to try and register each and every person as they came in to make sure they all got a raffle entry and name tag.  However, I was overwhelmed with the amount of things people were asking me for, the food runs and trying to man the registration table.  Saturday night, I counted 177 unique raffle tickets (each ticket has the person’s name on it) + 9 people still in the building that slipped past me without a name tag or raffle ticket.  Keep in mind that designers also got a raffle ticket.  On Sunday, I got 20+ more unique players who had not attended Friday or Saturday.

Many people told me that they had taken their raffle ticket home after winning something, and thus they were not in my count.  I can’t estimate how many people I missed counting, so I’m going to stick with unique names that I have documented on paper. 

That puts our total count at:
38 Designers (not counting myself)
8 Industry Guests not counted as designers
167+ Counted Play Testers
___________________
213+ Documented Unique People

For comparison, here are some Protospiel 2013 Attendance Numbers: 
30-40 people - Protospiel South - Austin, Texas 
15 people - Unpub Sacramento, CA.
50-75 people - Protospiel Milwaukee 
80 people - Protospiel - Ann Arbor, Michigan
52 Designers, 253 Play Testers - Unpub 4 (2014) 

That makes Unpub Protospiel San Jose the second largest prototype event in history.  Only Unpub 4 was bigger.

Attendance lessons learned:
I definitely need more volunteer help to keep a more accurate count next time.  Volunteers Herman Chan and Richard New were fantastic help, but the three of us were not enough to cleanly manage 200+ people, panels, registration, the raffle and food.

One of the two rooms on Saturday.

Please don't post prototype photos without permission.

Greetings,

Some of the designers and game companies attending Unpub Protospiel asked what the policy is regarding taking and posting photos online.

Please do NOT post any photos of prototype games online without the permission of the designer.  Many of the games we will be hosting reflect licensees, expansions and artwork that is not yet public knowledge.  Games changes during the prototype process, and there are trolls on the internet that love to criticize prototype photos versus final production copies. 

We get a special privileges of seeing this stuff first.  Please be respectful and ask before you post any photos online.

Unpub Feedback Form

Are you busy designing your game?  Don't have time to design a feedback form as well?  No sweat, just use the excellent feedback form provided by Unpub.net

Find the PDF version by clicking on this sentence.

OR

Use the electronic version on a tablet or laptop here:

http://unpub.net/feedback/

Updated Raffle Method

I received an email with an alternate suggestion on how to work the raffle.  I found the logic sound and intend to use the method suggested instead.

"Quick piece of feedback for the raffle.

Since, as you mentioned, some people will be playing large 3 hour euros and others 30 minute casual games. Would it be more fare to just put each person's name in the bucket when they arrive and then when you do the drawing you draw x names and then they get a prize but need to be present to win. Then you put them back into the bucket.

That way the longer you stay and participate the more raffles you are in, instead of who can marathon the most games?

Just a thought to make it even for everyone and encourage people to play what ever they want and not feel like they need to optimize their play time for the most drawings.

It's also easier for you and the staff because you don't have to worry about people forgetting to put their name in or cheating and putting in to many or more importantly managing every game's players as each game ends.

It's a simple drawing and you need to be present to win and after each drawing the pot resets and everyone is back in the drawing."

This seems fair, better for the deep euro games and easier to implement.  This is now how we will implement the raffle.  

When you register at the registration or pick up your badge, we will drop a slip with your name on it in the raffle bucket.  Throughout the day we will pull winners out and tape them to the side of the bucket.  Stop by and point out your ticket to claim a raffle prize of your choosing from those available.