In this post, I write about my experiences participating in my first large public event…
This year, the first Board Game Expo was held as a side event of the Budapest Comic Con. When I first saw it in the form of a Facebook ad at the beginning of March, I knew I wanted to be there as an exhibitor. It would be a good opportunity to test prototypes and gather feedback. At that time, my project was still far from being ready, but I also knew that two months would be enough for me to prepare for this event. So I quickly contacted them via email to ensure I wouldn’t miss out and lose my spot. According to the contact person, I was one of the first to register, so the missing out was no problem; I immediately booked two tables with four seats each.
Over the next two months, the game developed nicely, and by the end of April, I managed to produce four beautiful prototypes with the help of the Budapest-based Monobit printing house. The last week was quite hectic as I still had to prepare a batch of questionnaires, small flyers, a large display poster, and a few other items. Fortunately, by Friday, everything was ready. I tried to use all my Adobe skills, but there was still room for improvement in the quality of the final products, but I hoped that people wouldn’t judge a beginner’s project by the quality of the marketing materials. I was very pleased that my wife and two good friends, Marci and Robi, were happy to help teach the game, explain the rules, instruct the visitors to our stand, and promote the game over the weekend.
We were all terribly exhausted by Sunday evening, having talked about the game for nine hours each day with hardly any breaks. However, the experiences, positive feedback, kindness, and love we received over the weekend filled us with so much energy and good spirits that I will never forget this weekend! Seeing people enthusiastically and happily playing the game I had tinkered with for hundreds of hours was an incredibly good feeling and gave me a momentum that I believe will last a long time. I am very grateful to everyone who visited our stand and shared their opinions about the game! I am proud to announce that based on the completed questionnaires, it seems the game absolutely has basis to enter the market. Several people mentioned that they would buy the game if it were available! In the end, we counted about 75 people who tried the game, and 67 filled out short questionnaires with the following average results:
(On a scale from 1 to 5, we asked them to rate based on the following criteria)
The atmosphere of the game: 4.67
The uniqueness of the game: 4.4
The mechanics of the game: 4.19
The clarity of the rules: 4.27
Would they play it again?: 4.58
These results far exceeded my expectations; I didn’t dare to hope that more than 50 people would play, but getting such good feedback was truly dreamlike. More than once, all eight of our chairs were occupied, and more interested people came by, whom we unfortunately had to turn away due to lack of space, but luckily, they came back later. It was an incredible experience to see so many people interested in our stand.
Some players were kind enough to share their detailed opinions about the game. One lovely couple, Dani and Zsófi, if I counted correctly, stayed for more than half an hour talking after playing the game and even came back at the end of the day for another round. A member of the kicktester.com team also visited us and shared his well-founded professional opinion about the game. It was also a pleasure to see a “fan” I met at a small rural (Biatorbágy) exhibition in early April playing the game again this weekend. Greetings to you, Noémi! 🙂 My favorite group of players was Gyuri, Andi, Erzsi, and Zoli, with whom we had the most fun match of the weekend. I am very grateful for all the feedback, and in the coming months, as I delve deeper into fine tuning the game mechanics, balance, characters, and other cards, I will try to incorporate the good advice I received from you all!
We also held a small raffle for those who provided their email addresses and subscribed to the soon-to-launch newsletter, with five free copies of the game to be released next year up for grabs! (Of course, this is still quite far off and not guaranteed, but I will do everything in my power to make it happen!) I will soon inform everyone about the details and the results of the draw in the newsletter!
Special thanks to the Pumi Game YouTube channel for the mention! (From 1:13:39)
At the end of the post, here are some pictures without aiming for completeness; to avoid violating privacy rights, I covered the faces of all players with sandwiches. I hope it’s okay! 🙂
