In September Pegasus Spiele held a 3-day pitching session, called Designer Days. They welcomed game designers from all over the world to do online pitching sessions with them. You are given 10 minutes to pitch a game. This was my first time participating in an activity like this. Applications opened about a month before the event, and about one week before the event they notified everyone their allocated slots. I pitched Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Although I am already self-publishing it, I am only able to market it in Malaysia and I do want to look for an international publisher for it.
It was a great learning experience! That means I didn't get past the selection process. But truly it was a good experience seeing how the professionals worked. My slot was 3:10pm Malaysia time or 9:10am in Germany. I went online about 15 minutes early. There were two Pegasus representatives in the waiting room. There were already two other designers in the room when I got in. I assume they were coming for the 9am slot. The reps were friendly and professional. They joked that we could relax and not feel too nervous because the guys in the pitching rooms were friendly.
I think there were two pitching rooms. I got Room 2. There were two assessors in my room. After I got in, we just did short greetings and I started immediately. We only had 10 minutes so every second counted. I had prepared slides beforehand. In fact I spent quite a lot of time on them, mainly to do a semi-automated demo of a round of play. I used slides to show game setup and some game components. I explained the core gameplay verbally with the support of photos of the game in play. I think the assessors were pretty happy with my presentation, because it was clear and concise. I spoke for about 7 minutes, and we moved on to questions. Their questions went straight to very specific details about the game. They only needed 2 or 3 questions. Then they could already tell me they would not proceed further. They explained why too. They thought the player might feel helpless due to a lack of options. They where quite humble and quickly added that this was their view based on the quick introduction I gave. I would know my game better and I should assess their feedback carefully to decide whether it made sense to incorporate it. I thanked them and said goodbye. All this done within 10 minutes.
It was great to be able to practise pitching to an established publisher and to experience working with professionals. Pegasus seems to be this twice a year. I certainly plan to try again when I have other suitable games.
I met online with my Hong Kong friend Jetta and we played on BoardGameArena.com. We were originally planning to play some premium games, but we only reactivated our subscription that day, and the reactivation was not immediate. So we ended up playing some free games. I taught him some games I knew. I don't play on BGA very regularly. They now have a ton of games. Not all the popular games are premium games. There are several which are free, which surprise me. This is really a public service. The BGA subscription is not expensive either. It's great value for money.
I had not played Hive for years. I used to have a physical copy, but since I rarely played it, I had given it away. This is a good 2-player abstract game.
I still have a copy of DVONN at home. I bought it many years ago when I was still building up my game collection. At the time I thought a proper gamer's collection should have at least one abstract game, so I wanted to pick one game from the YINSH series. 20 years ago this series was well known and highly respected. They are still good games.
I taught Jetta Regicide. This is one of my favourite games in recent years. It is a cooperative card game from New Zealand. Only after playing on BGA I realised I had played one rule wrong. While fighting a boss, the cards used to attack the boss remain in the play area until the boss is defeated. Previously I played those cards directly to the discard pile. I think there is some impact but it's not too big.
If you have not tried Regicide there is no reason not to give it a go. It's free on BGA.
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