Inside Tom's Brain - 3-7-2024

[TOM]

"Have you been to Origins or GenCon lately?
There's the Pittsburgh Comic Con and Mid-Winter in Milwaukee in January, MotorCity Comic Con, just to name a few.
The game sold sets when it was doing the convention booth scene, and there's promoters scattered all across the country that could help run booths at a plethora of different events.."

I agree, and these are good ideas, but it was much easier when I lived on the East Coast and went to three or four of those conventions every year on my own. What fun it was as well as spreading the word! It's a lot harder when promoters themselves do it. I had all the stock at my fingertips in Jamestown and I just packed it in the car and was on my merry way. For big shows like GenCon, it is cost prohibitive to work with our loyal fan base that way. It involves shipping enough game stuff to man a table via boxes by mail, to say nothing of signage and the sundry other items needed to run a big show properly. So overall the costs run high and it winds up losing money.

I will work on a model the rest of this year and perhaps there is still a way to do big shows without the logistics and costs issues, but it was a lot easier when I was doing them myself along with the assistance of promoters in the local areas that would always show up and assist, like Jim Miller and many others. A lot of promoters have assisted at FG tables over the years. They are heroes all.

[~KB~]

GENCON 2010


jmello - myself - TOM - Ashley - Neil - ?? - Alex

[TTX]

good old Reverend Donkey...I've long forgotten his name but I remember him at the Gen Con booth.

[~KB~]

Aug 29, 2024 11:35:33 GMT -5 TTX said:

good old Reverend Donkey...I've long forgotten his name but I remember him at the Gen Con booth.

I don't remember you there, was you there that year?

[TTX]

I was.....been every year since they moved to Indy but I move around a lot. Also back then I did more off site gaming.

[on_the_edge]

Just a thought, while trying to grow the players it might be an idea to target the parents of kids. Something along the line of "Do you want your kid to use their imagination? Do they enjoy professional wrestling? Would they enjoy running their own fed and setting up matches in a tabletop game format?" Something like that. My thought was some parents are starting to worry about the amount of screen time their kids have each day. It could be angled as an alternative. A fun game for their kids that lets them use and stretch their imagination. Something along those lines.

[TOM]

Thanks again for all the thoughtful replies.

I want to proudly mention that a new artist is working with me and Mike on the new Early Classics expansion. His name is Nate Watson and I will share more info about Nate when I get a chance. We met a few months ago and hit it off and now he's working with us.

This is important for us so that we don't stretch our artists, and particularly the incredibly talented Werner, too thin. Adding Tom Richert to our staff has helped considerably. He is multi-talented and assists with card art, coloring, and handbook layouts.

We have been in business for going on 40 years (I'm proud of that and thrilled to share that enjoyment with our loyal promoters) and adding new faces to the mix is always invigorating and exciting.

I hope you will enjoy Nate's card art as much as he enjoys participating in our games.

[throwingtoasters]

I mentioned this on the discord but I'll mention here as well..

Recently several gaming companies that produce tabletop baseball and football games had mini-conventions at the Baseball and Football hall(s) of fame. Both events had multiple games from multiple companies represented. (example - plaay.com/blog/plaay-games-at-the-pro-football-hall-of-fame)

I think an event like this would be a great way to bring people who already like tabletop wrestling games together and let them try Filsinger Games first hand, if they haven't already. Working together with Go. Fight Pow!, Squared Circle, Face To The Mat, Super Show, Superstar Pro fans, etc would be a great way to introduce the game to an audience already wide open to playing it. And if it was hosted at the Waterloo Hall of Fame even better. Chad said he'd love to host it but wasn't going to plan it, so we'd need someone to step up on that front.

In my opinion, this might do better than to have a booth at a general gaming convention because attendees to this one would already have a interest in wrestling games.

Just an idea.

[Travis605]

Aug 31, 2024 16:05:12 GMT -5 throwingtoasters said:

I mentioned this on the discord but I'll mention here as well..

Recently several gaming companies that produce tabletop baseball and football games had mini-conventions at the Baseball and Football hall(s) of fame. Both events had multiple games from multiple companies represented. (example - plaay.com/blog/plaay-games-at-the-pro-football-hall-of-fame)

I think an event like this would be a great way to bring people who already like tabletop wrestling games together and let them try Filsinger Games first hand, if they haven't already. Working together with Go. Fight Pow!, Squared Circle, Face To The Mat, Super Show, Superstar Pro fans, etc would be a great way to introduce the game to an audience already wide open to playing it. And if it was hosted at the Waterloo Hall of Fame even better. Chad said he'd love to host it but wasn't going to plan it, so we'd need someone to step up on that front.

In my opinion, this might do better than to have a booth at a general gaming convention because attendees to this one would already have a interest in wrestling games.

Just an idea.




l went to Bobby Fulton's show last year, the Jerry Lawler Evansville appearance a couple months ago with Michael Bratta and theres a Memphis Hall of Fame show convention in a few weeks in Jackson...these are the conventions to hit to be honest with the game

[TOM]

"these are the conventions to hit to be honest with the game"

Conventions are always great because the people that attend share the same interests (presumably related to our games in some way) and we can show them how to play in a fun environment.

The flip side is the costs can be high depending on the price of the table, travel costs, food, staying at a hotel (if need be), and shipping enough product and display to show at a table.

We will look into this as I work on a plan for 2025.