Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University.  This week, Thorne takes a look at Game Preview Events as a source for getting demo products into the hands of retailers.

Demo games are something most stores are always looking for.  Unfortunately, only a few companies have developed demo programs to which stores have ready access.  Mayfair Games' "Demo to Demo" program, which I've mentioned in other columns, comes to mind, as do the deep discounts offered on demo games by Fantasy Flight Games and Days of Wonder (75% off MSRP if I recall correctly).  Other companies, such as Looney Labs, have a demo program for new products: pre-order a display and get a demo copy along with it, and probably have a program in play allowing stores to buy deeply discounted demo copies.  Unfortunately, few companies publicize their programs to stores and the demo programs only deal with games made by the company limiting stores to the selection of only a certain set of games.  This makes sense, of course.  Why run a demo program for products you don't make?  It also makes it harder for smaller companies without the capital to invest in a demo program to get their products into the hands of retailers.

The latest program to get demo products into the hands of retailers comes from Aldo Ghiozzi, owner of Impressions Advertising and Marketing and the moving force behind Free RPG Day each June.  Ghiozzi has launched Game Preview Events, a program designed to get demo games from smaller companies into the hands of stores interested in demonstrating them.  The program works similarly to Free RPG Day:  Ghiozzi works with interested publishers to find upcoming games the publisher is interested in having previewed in stores.  The publisher provides materials for a maximum of 50 preview kits, said kits to contain a copy of the item previewed, an exclusive giveaway for participants in the preview, a sign up sheet for pre-orders, a bonus item to go to the in-store demo person or store owner and a link from the publisher's website to the Game Preview Event website.  The publisher may opt to include other items such as promotional flyers, posters etc.  Retailers can then order the kit through gamepreviewevents.com, with a limited number of kits available.

Pelgrane Press first took advantage of the program, offering a demo kit for their soon releasing Ashen Stars game, a science fiction RPG using the company's house Gumshoe system, which powers the Trail of Cthulhu, Mutant City Blues and Esoterrorists RPGs, among others.  Pelgrane's offering for Game Preview Events includes a copy of the rulebook (MSRP $45), a limited edition version (not available through distribution, for sale through Pelgrane's website for $75), promotional material and a sign up sheet, as well as twenty exclusive ship tokens for participants.  Game Preview Events also has a retailer locater on the site, showing places within 100 miles that have signed up to run demos.  The cost of all this to the retailer: 50 bucks.  

From the retailer's point of view, if you just want a demo copy of the game, this is not a particularly good deal.  If a store wants to run demos of Ashen Stars, it can pick up a copy of the rulebook through distribution when it releases for $24 to $27.  Granted, you get the game before it releases to the market, the ship tokens and the limited edition, which the store could sell to cover the cost of the kit, but that depends on your store’s market for limited edition copies of rulebooks.

We plan on bringing in the kit but only halfheartedly.  The price is off-putting for the contents and the Gumshoe system doesn't have many fans in our area.  However, our store also wants to support Ghiozzi's Game Preview Events initiative as we think it has potential and the next couple of events he has listed look promising (the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG from Goodman Games and a new dice game from Smirk and Dagger), so figure it's worth the $50 investment to encourage other publishers to sign on.  If GPE had offered either of those first, we would have signed up without a second thought.  If future offers, however, are priced at $50 without a significant increase in contents of the kit, we will pass on them.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely  those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect th views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.