Look at all the publishers attending this year.
5th Street Games
Academy Games
Cambridge Games Factory
ElfinWerks
Mayfair games
Minion Games
Tasty Minstrel
Tweedle Tech
Bring your A-Game ;)
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Comments
Nice list! Do you typically
Nice list! Do you typically have a set-aside time for designers to set up appointments to the publishers? (Could make for a fun "speed dating" session, game design style!) Or do you just have the publishers play whatever interests them?
We tell designers that this
We tell designers that this is not a pitch fest. Having dozens of designers ambush them puts off the publishers.
On the other hand our publishers are very forward in asking for submissions of games they are interested in. Here are just a few of many that were picked up in the last couple of years.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/94246
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/94002
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/54433
Publishers are also essential in guiding designers that have little or no experience with being published. Often people operate under assumptions that are wrong and our publishers are happy to bring them up to speed.
I can certainly understand
I can certainly understand that. We don't have too many publishers at Spielbany, although Z-Man used to be a regular, and the "Zev how about taking a look at this?" effect could get rather annoying (although he was always perfectly graceful and gracious about it).
I guess the flip side, as a prospective attendee, is that if there isn't a structured way to interact with the publishers, then the fact that they'll be present isn't much of an enticement to attend, either.
It’s more efficient for
It’s more efficient for publishers to gravitate towards the games they are interested in rather than having the designer seeking out publishers not knowing what they are looking for. No one’s time is wasted listening to or giving a pitch for a game the publisher would never think of publishing.
Even though we now have many publishers attending each year the focus of the event is improving your game design. If a game is finished it doesn’t need what we offer which is expert testing and feedback. That being said many designers submissions to publishers fail because they are not as polished as the designer thinks. I was one of the Mayfair Games testers back when they took submissions. It was not uncommon for our group to find a major problem in the design on the first play or even while reading the rules. The noise to signal ratio was so high that they discontinued open submission because it was so inefficient.