Producing Fun is a podcast about making tabletop games from a product perspective. Duncan Cowan is a convention director of Tabletop Scotland – a mid-size UK tabletop game convention that launched to a hugely successful debut in 2018, garnering more than 1000 unique attendees. In this episode we talk about creating a convention designed to reach out to new audiences, how to best use space to craft the ultimate convention experience, the impacts of Brexit and Covid and what practical things the game community can do to support conventions in a difficult time. Listen on podcasting platforms: https://anchor.fm/naylorgames Listen on Youtube: Website: www.tabletopscotland.co.uk Facebook: https://facebook.com/TabletopScotland/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TabletopScot Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tabletopscot Transcription I'm James, and this is producing fun, a...
Has it really been two months already? Unsurprisingly, there’s lots to catch-up on with progress on playtesting, design and ever increasing public awareness of the game! Building the coverage Over the last few months the amount of coverage Magnate has received in the press has started to swell. Some swift googling revealed a mini post Essen flurry of articles like this, this and this. We even got a mention on the Polyhedron Collider’s most anticipated games of 2019 podcast! Rory Somers, one of the “colliders”(?) had already given us a great little write-up in his review of Dragonmeet, but it was awesome to see Magnate specifically called out as anticipated alongside much more famous names like Wingspan and Munchkin. At...
November was slightly quieter than September or October - it couldn't not be - but, once again, overall progress moved substantially forward; especially in enhancing Magnate's gameplay and recruiting new team members. New boxart sketch This one has been a long time coming. I am glad to say we're finally making good progress on the cover art. I've always liked the placeholder art we have, but there's something a rather old fashioned about it. It's not as dynamic as it needs to be and I don't know it captures the feel of the game sufficiently either. I am very glad to say we finally have a sketch of what the new art will look like. There's still a lot do...
Eight practical tips for first time exhbitiors at Spiel As regular readers will know, I took Magnate to Essen last week. I am glad to say it was an absolute blast; even if it was also so tiring that I needed multiple early nights just to bring myself back to full human functioning. Overall, I think we did a good job. We had a ton of email sign-ups, lots of reviewers visited the stand, and I handed out every flyer we had. But there were some things we could have done better. The following lessons come from my reflections on the most intense show of my life. If you are not already an "old hand" at this and intend to...
October proved to be just as busy as September, not least because of all the prep for Essen, which - at time of posting - had just started. The first big show is under our belt: Tabletop Gaming Live Coming only 4 weeks after Tabletop Scotland there was a frightening amount to be done to get the game from Lego prototype to an attractive looking production game. As I wrote last time, it was all a bit nail-bitingly close but I am glad to say we did it! It was not only a huge success but a very useful learning experience. We knew going into it we were going to make mistakes, but we also knew that this show would...
