OgreCave lackey Steve Kani got himself out to GTS ’07… for one day. What jumped out at him while doing his rounds as a retailer? Listen to our GTS post-show show and find out. Also, a question for roleplayers: how has party unity been a factor (or not) in your games? Let us know in the comments, folks.
Gentlemen, first thanks for the shout out. It’s much appreciated. As always, I and my business partners are always happy to benefit the Ogre Cave. We think it’s a truly great industry podcast.
Mike, I’ve got “OMG”, but what’s “FNW”?
I’m really glad that Steve got some GTS interviews recorded on the floor. That’s very cool. I’m glad you guys got both a retailer and publisher reporting from the floor. Steve, thanks for sitting in and giving us your views on GTS. I think you saw some things I didn’t at the show, so I liked hearing your perspectives and news. I think I focused more on card and board games, and Steve did a great job of covering RPGs.
Regarding GTS attendance, we actually saw a lot of people who visited us at Games Expo wandering around at GTS, so I think from this survey of one company we saw folks attending both shows. The people who tended to show up at one show or the other seemed mostly to be foreign distributors and foreign stores.
To Allan, while GTS seminars are technically not during the actual exhibition hours, because some run up until the very minute the halls open some publishers (at least small publishers) may have to skip any seminar that runs during the hour before the hall opens if they have any booth preparation.
Steve mentioned Mimic. Tom Vasel’s review of the game echoed Steve’s comments that the rules had some problems but that the game was quite good. Funmaker games, one of the members of the Games Publishers Association produces Mimic. It took me a few minutes to grasp the game, but it looked very cool. I got a demo of it at GTS. You sort of paint trails of animal cards eminating out from a hub, and when you get a chain of matching cards that’s sufficiently long then you score and seem to put down some obstacle counter or something that cause future chains to be rerouted. The chains are also deflected/rerouted by an invisible barrier a specific radius around the center of the play space. It’s like a cross between the light cycle races in Tron and Connect Four done with animal playing cards. And, no that’s not the wine talking, that’s what it actually plays like.
While listening to the podcast I was drinking a wine called “Jake’s Fault”, a California Shiraz. The wine’s not bad for the price and it has a great name.
Thanks again for another fine podcast.
Aw, shucks. Thanks!
Yeah, I’ve observed seminars at GTS in the past that suffered from being too close to opening time for the exhibit hall. I was on the panel for one, actually. Still felt worthwhile, but with only 20 or so attendees, a better timeslot might have been helpful.
Yes, big thanks to Steve for multitasking as much as his cramped schedule would allow, and delivering a pair of cool interviews for the show.
All the great reports and a beverage recommendation! Another point for Lee. 🙂
Oh, and I believe it was “NFW”, which may help you decipher things. Use “No” and “way” as two words, and see where your mind wanders toward.
Re: Party Unity, it is critical for our games (we’re primarily (A)D&Ders). Without party unity, the game fails. We’re pretty old school though, and the new “storygames” don’t hold any interest for us. Not enough game there.
Sadly, this website is turning from a place that had stuff I liked to read often to a place that says, “listen to this podcast,” which I’m not going to do. I’d rather skim an article to see what’s interesting than listen to 20 minutes of talking to find the 2 minutes I care about. Writing > talking.
No more podcasts? Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa