Joseph Arthur Ellis 🔜 Gen Con '25

Took a picture with a giant golem character at #gencon. Yes there is a person with not enough points of articulation inside there.

Email also has a way to it wrong or right, I suppose!

A cold email is often not even read. A cold pitch face to face is by default more attention, even if it's a little annoying.

Yeah they have worked with us. A great hook and fit helps. Most likely it would lead to an online play session after the con if we're interested. But yeah forming a relationship before the con is more effective.

Alright, for 🎲✂️ folks doing cold pitches at Gen Con booths:
1. be very patient, there's a lot going on.
2. look into the publisher's catalog beforehand and decide if your game is a good fit. if it is, make sure to make that fit part of the pitch. Fit is more important than ever.
3. make it brief.

Very tired from packing #GenCon truck. Uh oh, much manual labor ahead.

Anybody know if there are vendors at #gencon who sell Undertale merchandise? Asking for an offspring.

posted something like this the other day. it's amazing, players don't care about messy, like, at all. what's annoying is, many reviewers do. XD

Anticipation->surprise. There needs to be a target moment you're looking toward with uncertainty that pays off. I think this is more important than choice, as many simple games have very little choice but do get people excited. Although also, a game doesn't NEED excitement to be good, either.

That is a blast. Will be working the booth at that time or I'd be in

yeah i'm thinking it's gonna need to be first stop thursday morning. I feel the buzz building.

That's it! Would love some more hot tips on what to buy from ya'll. Come visit us at Plaid Hat at #2229, we'll have Wandering Galaxy for sale as well as Super Auto Pets demos!

9. Stabbits! MindWare/Peaceable Kingdom #2002. No box image for this, but the description looks fun for a kids' game.

8. Waddle (AllPlay, #1849). Re-theme of an older problematically-named game. I love push-and-pull turn order stuff, and this is basically Turn Order: The Game. Feels like a no-brainer.

7. Wroth (Chip Theory, #2627). One of the VERY FEW new dudes on a map games being sold at the show. Publishers are leaning hard towards non-combat themes right now. This one looks extremely pared back relative to Chip Theory's usual stuff.

6. Lightning Train (Dire Wolf, #2402). Bag building pick up and deliver game by Paul Dennen. His games always get a glance from me just due to Dune Imperium.

5. Gibberers (Hobby Japan, #254). Longer communication game where humans and aliens invent a new language to communicate. Guessing this will be in short supply and a buzzed about hot item due to the intriguing hook.

Propolis board game cover.

4. Propolis (Flatout Games, #403). Looks like a straightforward and contained euro, which is in my euro-zone.

3. Endeavor Deep Sea (Grand Gamers Guild, #2946). Not brand new, but always liked the mechanics of the old version while cringing slightly at the theme. Word is this is best of both worlds.

Squirrel Away box cover.

2. Squirrel Away (Floodgate, booth #439). Makes use of actual slight of hand, take stuff you're not supposed to, try not to get caught.

Joe's #gencon shopping list (or, at least look at these and consider buying).
1. Beer Mug Dice. Older game getting its first English edition. Simple push-your-luck game where you roll actual barrels and see how many land standing up. Booth #2663.

Have an ear infection for the first time in my adult life. Damn it's annoying. Ended up staying home from work to try to recover (along with prescribed antibiotics). But, good to get this stuff outta the way before the Gen Con trip I guess.

Coming soon: Super Auto Pets Card Battle Build a team of cute pets and battle your friends!

hey we just announced our newest game. I'll be demoing it a lot of the week at Gen Con booth 2229. We're all huge fans of Super Auto Pets so this was a dream project.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/pla...

My thoughts: The core of game design 🎲✂️ is that magical mysterious dose of uncertainty in the gameplay. It's hard to find, it almost has to be discovered rather than invented. That's the most important job of the game designer. Everything else overlaps with the developer.

I'm def a fan. It doesn't have as many fancy knobs as the physics engines, but it's also way less buggy.

I have my thoughts, but would be interested in hearing from all the 🎲✂️ peeps here: Besides the obvious, what is the difference between the roles of game designer and game developer? What are the divergences in skill? What are the overlaps?

yeah i guess that's where my thinking goes with it. sometimes you have to be a little messy to create the most fun. especially if the game is doing some new stuff.

Most of my 🎲✂️ time is spent as a developer, so I focus on smoothing out, simplifying, balancing, cutting, cleaning up.

Not sure how to reconcile that with the fact that many of the most loved games - even ones I worked one! - are messy as hell. (Looking at you, Dead of Winter and Forgotten Waters.)

Wouldn't be surprised if Cleveland Browns fans are overrepresented in the game designer population. 🥁

90% of 🎲✂️ that gets to the prototype stage dies after the first play. Because those first plays all suck. The core of successful game design is just the ability to take a couple days off, shake the dust off, then get back on the horse with the next version. (Again and again and again.)