Scott Tepper: You’re Not In Kansas Anymore…

I just flew in from Germany a few hours ago(insert bad joke here).  I’ve got a lot to tell you about my experience of demoing this year for Rio Grande Games at the Spiel Messe at Essen, but there’s no way for me to get it all down in time today.  Next week, I’ll give you a more detailed look at the behind the scenes at Essen.  This week, I thought I’d give you a little taste of some of the interesting things that could be seen at the Essen show that you probably wouldn’t see at a game show in the US. 

- A giant, working game of Loopin’ Louie.

- Several stands selling (oh look, the jet lag is forcing me to make accidental alliterations!) intricate wooden puzzles.

- A booth with game piece themed pottery.  They had mugs and dishes with multi-colored ceramic pawns molded into the design.

- Out of print, and hard to find games for sale at several booths.

- The furniture available for rental at the convention hall is much nicer than what is usually available at US trade shows.  The tables at Essen were clean, sturdy, and came in a variety of sizes.

- The few people you would see in costumes at Essen were part of a themed booth (ie. the guys from Repos Production were all wearing sombreros).  Attendees, at least from what I saw, did not dress in costumes.

- There was a booth where you could buy miscellaneous wooden game pieces(disks, cylinders, cubes, etc...) by the piece or by the cupful in a large variety of colors.

- Contests where competitors were pitted against each other to solve preset Rubik’s Cubes.

- If your booth has tables to learn/play games at for the attendees, people will sit down, play a game, and then stay to learn more games.  You don’t have to beg people to try your games, as you usually do in the US. 

- Unlike most US convention halls, which tend to have large traffic jams in the singular food court area, the Messe has one or more food stands in and in between the halls.  There there is never a long line for something to eat or drink.

- A game magazine, Fairplay, not only has a booth, but compiles results of attendees ratings and posts a ranking of the most popular games at the show.

- Manufacturer(s) giving away nice, large, canvas bags with purchase.  Actually, it was Queen Games who was doing this.  As an aside, I have to say that Queen Games is an extremely classy company.  Not only does Queen produce beautiful, good games, but Rajive Gupta, the head of Queen Games is a very considerate, kind gentleman.

- The ratio of women to men at the Essen Spiel is very different than in the US.  In the US, attendees at game shows are predominantly male.  At Essen, the ratio is much closer to 1:1.  A lot of couples and families attend Essen, far more than those that attend US shows.

- The size of the show is much larger than any single show in the US.  A German newspaper today said that this year’s show beat all prevous attendance records, with an estimated 151,000 people attending.

Tune in next week, when I’ll give you more than a peek at what it’s like to be a demoer at Essen.  I hope you can hold out till then!

Scott

© 2006 Scott Tepper

---

Comments:

You must register with BGN in order to comment. Registration is free, but if you appreciate the news, previews, reviews and other material posted on Boardgame News, please consider becoming a member to keep the info flowing to your screen!

Scott, a few comments… I actually own some of the pottery (I assume you mean the booth just next the entrance of Hall 5)—I’ve got little meeple salt and pepper shakers.  They’re quite attractive.  And they match my wife’s color scheme for the kitchen, no less. I find that the Queen staff only give out the cloth bags if you ask.  If they assume/know that you speak English, you generally get the default plastic bag (which happened to me twice) I find that I actually enjoy those little sausages at the snack stands in the fair.  And at 1,50 Euro, they’re actually not a complete ripoff like most other convention food Posted by Dale Yu on Oct 24, 2006 at 07:02 AM | #

Dale, I’m a little jealous of you.  I really wanted to pick up some of that pottery, but because I hadn’t yet played the packing game, and I didn’t know if I would have enough space to transport them back without them breaking. As it turns out, I did have a little space left over, so I’m kicking myself for not having picked any of the pottery up.  They would have made great gifts for friends.  I agree with you about the food.  I bought some of the sandwiches on set up days.  They tasted great and weren’t unreasonably priced. Posted by Scott Tepper on Oct 24, 2006 at 08:50 AM | #

If it’s any consolation, you can order them online as well http://www.farbton-keramik.de/ Or just wait until next year. Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Oct 24, 2006 at 08:56 AM | #

Scott did an awesome job at the Rio Grande booth at Essen...the three times we sat down for teaching games we ended up specifically asking for him...this seemed to be pretty common, ‘cause he had a panicked “uh-oh, too many games to teach all at the same time” look on Saturday as he was giving us an overview of Imperial. But he did a great job explaining a fairly complex game in less than 10 minutes. Scott, I would pester Jay for a raise for next year… =D Posted by Ted Alspach on Oct 24, 2006 at 06:50 PM | #

< Back Home