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 looks at the Talk Back about his recent pre-release column, and hits some Gen Con high points.

I find I have been remiss in commenting on the "Talk Back" that came a couple of weeks ago from Ian Richards, Organized Play director for Peachstate Hobby Distribution, in regards to the Rolling for Initiative column on discounting of pre-release events (see “Ian Richards of PHD on the Economics of Pre-Releases”).  Richards is correct in that stores can make additional profits by selling peripheral items such as snacks alongside the main event and offered some figures indicating the amount of money that stores could generate by selling these items.

While he does make sense and a good store will have a well-stocked snack area, there is never any guarantee that players will buy snacks as an add-on to the pre-release, especially with the trend among game stores to make pre-releases even more of a special event by providing free food to the players.  A number of stores, besides ours, provide pizza, hot dogs or similar finger foods to players as part of their entry fee and Gnome Games even goes so far as to cook breakfast for them (we tried breakfast cereal once but the players were underwhelmed so we went back to pizza with the next event).  A store cannot rely on the potential from peripheral sales to make profit from a pre-release.

That being said, Richards did offer some other ideas for generating repeat business from pre-release players:

• Have other events going on to generate more cash flow.  0-2 drop.  Get them playing something else and still having fun rather than drifting away.
• Offer incentives for them to return.  Prizing as store credit for example.
• Loyalty based event attendance.  Play in 10 events get the 11th for free.  Attract, grow, retain.
• Always focus on making the events as compelling as possible.  If the players have an awesome time they'll be back but they'll also positively virally market the store and that’s priceless.

Richards also offers to discuss OP programs with any store that would like to contact him, be they a Peachtree customer or not.  I call that a pretty nice offer.

Gen Con, in case you missed it, took place this past weekend.  I did not go. Missed the sign-up date for the Trade Day and had other things to work on but did hear a few interesting tidbits from the show.

Upper Deck's Vs. card game attracted quite a bit of attention.  The game has shifted format from a collectable version to a customizable one, aping Fantasy Flight Games' LCG system, though of course they cannot call it that.  The Cypher System rulebook from Monte Cook Games also had a successful launch as did Titansgate and the Fantasy Age rulebook from Green Ronin, no doubt building on the success of Wil Wheaton's Titansgrave web series.  Looney Labs, meanwhile, sold through 200 hundred copies of Batman Fluxx, nearly all they brought, on day one of the show.  Not too shabby.

Word of the day on the Exhibit Hall floor, though, was “Kickstarter," as many smaller companies were either selling games they had just produced through Kickstarter or talking about upcoming releases they planned to fund through Kickstarter.  Amazon tied into Gen Con with a Daily Deal offering a number of board and card games, including offerings from Steve Jackson Games, Iello, Asmodee, Cool Mini or Not and Days of Wonder, among others, at discounts ranging from 35% to just over 50% off.

More comments likely on the show next week.

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.