This is part four in a series breaking down our process as first-time exhibitors at PAX. This section addresses what worked really well for us.
What worked
The response was amazing!
We have been working on Aethermon for two and a half years, most of that time in our bedrooms. Being able to show off all that hard work to such an appreciative audience was deeply satisfying, and really reinforces my desire to make this to the best possible standard that we can.
We got more than 500 new email subscribers:
As I mentioned above, our two intentions going into PAX were to get our game in front of players, and to grow our reach. We started with about 100 subscribers to our email newsletters. We now have about 600!
These are premium email addresses – our subscribers are interested in tabletop games, willing to spend money on games, like our visuals, and want to hear from us. These are exactly the kind of people we want to reach.
Of course the big test of the success of our email subscriptions can’t be known until we go to crowdfund and see how many of our subscribers are willing to back us. It is possible that some people only subscribed because they wanted to win some of our merch. But even for those email addresses – they are gamers, willing to spend money on games or they wouldn’t have been at PAX, interested in tabletop games or they wouldn’t have wandered through the tabletop hall, like our visuals or they wouldn’t have wanted merch, and now we have six months to convince them that they want to hear from us. At this stage, we’re feeling pretty good.
Having a sign-up sheet for demos:
Our mechanism here was a pen, a clipboard and a sheet of paper. It worked perfectly. We allowed up to five minutes to wait and then we’d accept whomever was available to fill the seats. Almost everyone remembered their designated time and was really punctual. Thanks, friends!
Having a sign-up sheet meant we could respect our players’ time. We understood they had plans and they could factor us into those. It also meant they respected our time because they could see how busy we were.
In fact, an interesting power dynamic occurred here. Sometimes a small exhibitor at a large convention is in the position of trying to gain the attention of passers-by. Because we were never short of players, we never had to convince anyone to join us (this applied to our merch set-up too), so visitors never got the hard sell from us. As a result, players behaved as though they were fortunate to be able to join us and were all really friendly, patient and polite.
If you were one of our lovely visitors – thank you so much for treating us with such courtesy. It was a long, hectic weekend and you made it so much easier and more fun.
PAX staff at the event:
Trying to get info from PAX’s staff in advance of this year’s event was not the best experience. I’m going to assume that they were very busy. By contrast, all the staff members I had any dealings with at the event were both helpful and lovely. Not sure how this will benefit future exhibitors but there it is anyway.
Acrylic standees:
We had 29 acrylic standees lined up against our poster at the back of our table. This was one of the most commented-on parts of our set-up. They were bright, colourful, and looked fantastic! We had these made at a larger size than we plan to have for our actual game, to make them more noticeable. Many people commented that they would be more willing to buy this game because of the acrylic standees than if it had regular minis or cardboard standees, so this was clearly a win.
Our poster:
Although we didn’t really plan for this, the lower half of our poster was directly behind our acrylic standees and featured a landscape, which gave a surprisingly epic feel to photos of the standees. I would definitely look into designing the poster to interact with whatever will be set in front of it in future.
That said, one other indie’s poster included not only their art but also how-to-play instructions, and another indie’s poster included a QR code to direct people to his mailing list sign-up. Both of these seem like great ideas.
Having giveaways and a prize wheel:
Because our playthroughs were booked out, we had to turn away a lot of interested visitors who would have liked to try our game. This felt really rubbish, and so it was nice to be able to offer people something else instead: “Unfortunately all our demo times are taken, but if you sign up for our mailing list you can spin our prize wheel and win some prizes.”
Furthermore, if a visitor to our stall was only moderately interested, we couldn’t convince them to care about us if all we had to offer was booked-out demo times, whereas now we have the chance to win them over.
The prize wheel itself was quite the attraction. We had plenty of visitors ask how they could spin the wheel, even if they hadn’t seen our merch board. It was just under half a metre in diameter, which meant it was large enough to be seen from far away, and even from a distance most people knew what to expect when they saw it.
The temporary tattoos were a total miss for some people, but a huge hit with others, and as mentioned earlier, they allowed us to extend beyond our section of the convention because people were wearing our designs as they went about the place.
The collector cards unexpectedly gave us some data about which of our characters were the most popular, and based on that information we’ve already made some changes. It also helped with our discount voucher (one of the spin wheel prizes) – by having a discount it encouraged some people to spend money with us who might not have, but by being able to buy an item for the full price of the voucher and not spend money, we weren’t forcing that onto anyone.
The pins were our most admired merchandise, and our best seller…
Getting our pins made in China:
We had two different designs for our pins, which are our two final boss characters (a sun dragon and a moon dragon). We offered them at the price of one for $10 or two for $15. By far the preference was to buy both pins. Of those who bought one, I would estimate half had already won the other design (on the spin wheel, or by daily high score in our tournament).
In terms of manufacturing, both were 4cms long, made from hard enamel, one design featuring gold-coloured metal and the other featuring silver-coloured. We reached out to a number of manufacturers on AliBaba, found a price we liked and a company we felt comfortable with, and they ended up being quite affordable. This was important because we weren’t at all sure in advance that people would want to buy them.
I know AliBaba is sometimes avoided by English-speaking buyers for fear of scams or communication difficulties, but we have found it an excellent tool – vastly more useful than Amazon or Ebay. Regrettably, neither of us has even remotely fluent Chinese language skills, but every company we have interacted with on AliBaba has an English-language staff member. The quality of merchandise delivered to us is generally excellent, and this was no exception – particularly at the price, and AliBaba offers an escrow service so you don’t have to worry about shady dealers. It’s really worth looking into, especially if your alternative is to employ an English-speaking middleman who is just going to do this anyway.
Packing a box-cutter:
As we were packing up and chatting with our fellow showcase winners, we all stared with longing at our giant posters. PAX would just throw them away, but they were far too big to take with us. Then we remembered I had packed a box-cutter in the fix kit, so we pulled all our posters off their frames and got to slicing them into portable chunks. This is a tiny thing, and my PAX experience would still have been amazing without it, but it also counts as one of my favourite moments from the whole weekend – coming together with erstwhile-strangers to mildly deface some property and have a great time. If this is you next year, consider packing a knife.
Things to note:
- Give people a reason to give you their email address.
- Respect your visitors’ time.
- Make your table set-up visually appealing.
- Your poster is a resource you can use, not just a poster.
- Don’t be afraid to try direct communication with manufacturers.
