Industry Guests: Ted Alspach, Grant Rodiek and David Sirlin

Ted Alspach

We are honored to have Ted and Toni Alspach of Bezier games backing the event as our Major Sponsor. I would show you a picture, but since they live in a secret fortress we will have to make do with a cartoon from Ted's Board 2 Pieces comic series.

Ted will be signing copies of his games as part of the event. Bring your favorite Bezier game or pick one up at Game Kastle. 

For a list of games designed by Ted, click see his BGG profile here: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/6046/ted-alspach

Find out more about Bezier games at http://beziergames.com

Grant Rodiek 

In 2015 you can look forward to Grant's new game Hocus Poker with Co-designer Joshua Buergel.  Then in 2016 Grant has as war game coming from Portal games. Until then, feel free bring your copy of Farmageddon for Grant to sign or pick up a copy at Game Kastle.

He is the curator of the always useful Hyperbole game design blog. It is well worth your valuable time to check it out: http://hyperbolegames.com/blog/

You may have heard Grant's infectious energy and enthusiasm on several different board game podcasts or come across his prolific twitter feed.

https://twitter.com/HerrohGrant

Grant will be sharing his insights by hosting one of the panels at the event.

David Sirlin 

David Sirlin is a maverick of indie board game publishing. He acts as game developer, graphic designer, and publisher of Sirlin Games (www.sirlingames.com) and has been working full time on board games since 2009. Before that he was lead designer of Street Fighter HD Remix, Puzzle Fighter HD Remix, and author of the book Playing to Win. He's won notoriety in the game industry for his methods of achieving game balance in major video game franchises as well as his own tabletop games. Sirlin games seeks to create tiles with top notch graphic design that hold up to thousands of plays by expert gamers. Sirlin specializes in competitive multiplayer games with asymmetric player powers. He also somehow managed to ship three out of three Kickstarter projects on-time—not the usual way Kickstarters are done!

David will be joining us for some of the panel discussions.

Prototype Previews

Here is our first batch of prototype previews.  Which games look the most interesting to you? What will you put on your want to play list?

Industry Guests: Aldo Ghiozzi and Brian Henk

I wanted to introduce two of the industry guests attending.

Aldo Ghiozzi

Aldo Ghiozzi of Impressions Game Distribution is attending Protospiel San Jose as both an industry guest and a sponsor.   Aldo co-hosts the Impressions Vidcast with Richard Bliss.  If you want to understand the workings of the board game industry in terms of distribution and retail sales, Aldo is one the best resources you will find.   

Impressions is sponsoring Protospiel San Jose by providing a large array of raffle prizes. 

We thank Impressions for their generosity and support of the board game community. 

Check out the vidcast below. https://www.youtube.com/user/ImpressionsGDS 

Find out more about Impressions here:http://impressionsadv.net

Brian Henk

Brian is a corn-fed native of the Midwest, both Minnesota and South Dakota, but now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the co-founder of Overworld Games, a tabletop game publishing company. Brian has three successful Kickstarter campaigns under his belt and is best known for co-designing the game Good Cop Bad Cop. He primarily designs and publishes very social games that create memorable experiences from very few rules.

He is also a member of The Forbidden Limb podcast and vidcast where he discusses the business side of the tabletop game industry from the publisher perspective. Lastly, he does strategic, statistical, and tactical analyses of your favorite tabletop games to break them down into the easiest paths to victories and discusses them in blog and vlog form on theforbiddenlimb.com.

At the Unpub Protospiel in San Jose, Brian will be excited to answer any questions about being a Kickstarter creator, a designer, or a publisher.

Find out more about Overworld Games here: www.overworldgames.com

Would you also like to have your game tested and/or play games at Fanime?

Jonathan Grothe (Killerjonny14 at gmail dotcom) is organizing an unpublished prototype game zone within Fanime in May.

Here is a message from Jonathan:

"This year for the first time ever, we will be hosting a prototype section at Fanime. This means there will be an area within the gaming hall devoted to demoing and play testing new and in progress games. The best part about all of this, is that it’s free. You heard me right! Once on the list, you can get in the gaming hall to demo your game for free.

But wait, there’s more!!!

We at Fanime know that we will be competing with Kubla Con for your attention. So why not have the best of both worlds?!?! If you send us a copy of your prototype, we will demo it in the down time between in-person demos. That's right, you don't even have to be there for your play-testing. But we love people, and would rather see your eager faces while play-testing your lovely games.

So come on and sign up at the link below. After signing up our representative will get in contact with you to work out the specifics. - Jonathan

http://goo.gl/forms/yMLzSv00JD

Fanime 2015 Memorial Day weekend, May 22–25

San Jose McEnery Convention Center, CA”

www.fanime.com

Nice lanyards from our major sponsor.

Thanks to you we funded in about 6 minutes and sold out of designer badges in under four hours. That was much faster than I expected. Over the weekend all of the sponsor spots sold out.

Several more sponsors have joined us and I want to highlight one here. Bezier Games (www.beziergames.com) bought the major sponsor spot for $500.

Last year, I bought nice badges with lanyards instead of the cheaper pin on kind. That cost $1-2 per badge. This year Bezier will be providing super nice lanyard badge holders for all of the designers, industry guests, and VIP players. Its a small touch, but if I’m going to wear something for three days it feels good to have something nice.

Inexpensive badge (lower right), nice badge (upper right) and super nice Bezier lanyard (left).

Lastly I want to thank the folks who backed at the staff levels.  I'm definitely going to need your help and I'm glad to have you aboard.