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 shares his first impressions of GAMA Trade Show.
Pulled in from driving halfway across the country after this year's GAMA Trade Show (I have done this for the past three or four years; it's part of the fun of the show) and have a pile of digital notes on my tablet through which to look. Here are the things that come to mind as I sit here:
The Year of Shadowrun: If last year was The Year of Leviathan at Catalyst Game Labs, this year is The Year of Shadowrun, with Leviathan relegated to a secondary or even tertiary position. Catalyst Game Labs gave out more info regarding 5th edition (Spoiler Alert: the Shadowrun internet rules are getting reworked yet again), with a deck-building game, skirmish miniatures rules and a boardgame similar to Wizards of the Coast's Lords of Waterdeep in the works for later this year or first quarter of 2014 (see "Catalyst's Ambitious Plans for 'The Year of Shadowrun'"). The lads at Catalyst are planning somewhat ahead. We can also expect to see a flurry of Shadowrun novels, both new work and omnibus collections of material printed back in the 1990s. Game stores, according to Catalyst, should get these two to four weeks ahead of the book trade or mass market. Here's hoping so.
Games Workshop: Remember that big kerfluffle about the change in trade terms that was announced a week or so ago (see "Games Workshop Tweaks North American Trade Policy")? Apparently there were some things left out, like the fact that your stockist agreement (assuming you are a brick and mortar Games Workshop Stockist Level 1 store) supersedes terms of the agreement. So stockist stores still get their same shipping deals and access to items from the direct line without a freight charge. From what I was told, stockist stores may still deal in used GW products and break open and paint GW figures with no penalty. I was also told that GW had been calling a number of stores after the you know what hit the fan to clarify the agreement, and I suggested that GW send out an email to all stores clarifying what stores can do. GW also ought to hire someone, like a retailer, to vet their retailer agreements before sending them out as the company could have avoided a lot of negative PR. We will see what we hear from GW now that GTS has ended.
Kickstarter Panel: Moderated by Michael Stackpole and featuring Bryan Dalrymple of the Adventure Games Store; Richard Bliss, who blogs a lot about Kickstarter; and Ed Pugh of Reaper, which ran a massively successful Kickstarter campaign last fall. Needless to say, the panel discussion pretty much leaned towards why Kickstarter is good for the industry and why retail stores should not fear it and indeed embrace it. Most of the people at our table were waiting to hear someone point out the problems with Kickstarter from a retailer's point of view but 'twas not to be. At least GAMA has created a committee to write a white paper on "best practices" for Kickstarter for those people who want to run a campaign that is attractive to retailers. The aforementioned Stackpole, Dalrymple and yours truly (don't complain if you are not willing to take a stab at doing something about it says I) are among those on said committee. Hopefully we will see said committee report by the third quarter of this year.
More to come once I get some rest.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
