SaltCon

I just found out that there will be another game convention (we have the yearly Gathering of Strangers in Salt Lake each summer) in February in Salt Lake City. It's called SaltCon: Bringing flavor back into gaming! (link to the website). It will be held on University of Utah's campus at the Fort Douglas Officer's Club (here) on February 26, 27, & 28 of 2010.

It will cost you $10 for a single day pass or $25 for all three days. They also have family rates set up. They are also offering the option for you to volunteer, which will get you a discount on your registration fees.

For me, one of the most exciting things is that they've set up a game competition! It is called the Ion Award design competition. From the flier for the competition (here): "Judges will be representatives of game publishing companies who produce freelance designer games, qualified game store employees, and/or published authors." It will cost $5 for you to enter your game in the competition and you are able to enter as many games as you would like. I've got to get my games ready!!

Gaming with My Wife

At times my wife and I have a hard time playing games (competitive games that is). We both are quite competitive so when we are not winning we are a bit upset (it's even more difficult to be upset with your spouse). But recently we've been able to get over this a little bit as we've played Missionary Impossible, Warriors of the Promised Land, and Settlers of Zarahemla. My wife won all three games, even though I attempted to slow her up as much as I possibly could. I've decided that I'm not much of a gamer. At least, I'm not a gamer that wins very often. As I've thought about this I reflected on my experience at A Gathering of Strangers (probably the most I've played games in a long time). I only won one game during the two days in Salt Lake! And that was a game of Dominion: Intrigue (I think I played it 3 or 4 times). On that note, my wife enjoys Dominion as it's not for sure who is going to win until the end (unless of course, you can keep track of exactly how many points your opponents have been buying up). Anyway, I think I'm learning to be ok with the fact that I don't win a lot. I think I just need to enjoy playing, regardless of who wins. Besides, I think I prefer designing the games so I get caught up in thinking about the design of the game a lot when I play.

A Gathering of Strangers

That was a whole lot of fun!! I was able to make the trip down to Salt Lake City on both Friday and Saturday. I had never attended A Gathering of Strangers, or any game convention for that matter, before, but I really enjoyed it and can't wait for next year!

Friday I presented my game, the Armor of God, in the guild competition. It went pretty smoothly. There were 2 groups of 5 judges (from places like FRED Distribution, Out of the Box Games, and Games Unplugged), so the game was played twice. Then the judges rated the game following Mike Compton's Evaluation Form (find it on baordgamegeek here). A total of 8 games were entered into the competition. I'm not sure what place I ended up taking, but it wasn't in the top 4. Not really a big deal though. I mean, I didn't really expect to win. There are a whole lot of great games that the members of the guild design. It was just great to be a part of it and I can't wait to get the feedback from the judges. I'm sure it will help me improve the game a lot.

There were a few highlights of the weekend that I wanted to touch on. After the judging on Friday, Carey from FRED Distribution approached me and asked about taking a copy of the prototype to Armor of God home. In other words, he's interested and thinks it's a pretty good game! No guarantees that they will publish it, but success!!! Part of the purpose of the competition was to get publishers to see the games from the guild and hopefully get them interested in the games we had to offer. Carey was also interested in Mike Compton's game Bandits of Persia! It's exciting to see that publishers have an interest in games designed by guild members!

Also on Friday, Seth picked up the finished painting that Scott has been working on for Hagoth!!! Here it is!!!

He brought it to the Gathering. We both had prototypes of the game as well and we got about 10 people to demo it during the weekend. Ryan from The Board Game Guy was very excited! We're getting closer and closer to being ready for production!!

Lastly, I wanted to add that there was a lot of free stuff given away by all the publishers and game stores on hand. On Friday I won a brand new copy of Dominion Intrigue!!! I ended up playing it 3 times that evening (I even won the first of the 3 games, which was pretty big because I don't thing I won anything else during the 2 days). It's a great game!

All in all, I just loved the convention. I got to meet new people (another guy from here in Logan, now we'll have 4 of us here that design games). I got to play a lot of games. And I found someone interested in another one of my designs. Really, what more could I ask for from 2 days?