Nate Scheidler
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Hello folks,
Its my pleasure to announce that Jay Tummelson has committed to publishing 4 of the finalists from the 2009 Design contest held in conjunction with the Chicago Toy and Game Fair. While the contest terms dictated that he would publish one, he was so pleased with the caliber of the entries that he elected to publish several additional designs.
In addition, he has committed to letting the Chicago Toy and Game Fair conduct the design contest again in 2010.
The designs selected for publication were:
Cavemen, Quest for Fire by Daniel Cassar
Judy Martin's Quilt Show by Steve Bennett and Judy Martin
Oktoberfest by Joshua Balvin
Spin-monkeys by Mark Sellmeyer
Thanks to all who participated. This was a truly great opportunity that Jay extended to the community, and we look forward to hosting the event again next year.
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Jim Patterson
United States
Iowa City
Iowa
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Wowie. Congrats to everyone, but I'll single out Steve and Judy because I know them!! And I will use multiple exclamation points!!
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Norv Brooks
United States
PASADENA
California
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Congratulations from So. Calif. to all four of the finalists who Jay has decided to publish. All so, congratulations to all the finalists for bringing to Jay outstanding designs so that he's commiting to repeating next year.
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James Perry
United States
Oakland
Tennessee
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Wow! 4 of them! Congratulations to all of you.
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Lance
United States
Moorhead
Minnesota
The coolest best thing I have ever done in my life is being a father
The coolest big sister in the world, my daughter, Rilyn
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Oktoberfest! Yes! More Drinking games!
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Rob Mixemong
United States
Cedar Rapids
Iowa
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Nice. Way to go Judy and Steve
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Chris Shaffer
United States
Portland
Oregon
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Congratulations to all!
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Scott Petersen
United States
St. Louis Park
Minnesota
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Awesome! I can't wait to see the published games.
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Jonathan Degann
United States
Westlake Village
California
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Four is a lot. It really shows a change for RGG, from a company whose entire strategy has been geared to republishing games developed in Germany to one that actively develops its own games. After a few missteps, like "If Wishes Were Fishes", it has broken away with a couple of blockbusters, Race for the Galaxy and especially Dominion, and I'm sure that has been the motivation to go further with these new discoveries. Good luck to the designers and to RGG.
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Scott Petersen
United States
St. Louis Park
Minnesota
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Especially important for RGG too as European publishers are increasingly bypassing a US publisher (see Lookout and Queen).
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Nate Scheidler
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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ChiTag is an inventor fair. From the TAGIE Inventor's Expo that preceeds it, to the TAGIE inventor of the year awards, to the Rio Grande Design contest and Young Inventor's Challenge. The amount of talent and ingenuity being focused on this show is simply incredible.
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Mark Salzwedel
United States
New York
New York
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Thanks, Nate, for organizing this, and thanks to Jay for being so generous with his time and resources.
And special congrats to Dan Cassar, our finalist from New York City. May Cavemen become the new Dominion in 2011! It is a fantastic game, and I look forward to the expansion to Quest for Fire: "Hunt for T-Rex"
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Steve Bennett
United States
Grinnell
Iowa
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Let me offer some comments from the perspective of a participant. I have a lot to say. I hope you'll find it worth reading.
First off, all credit to Jay for agreeing to do this contest. It was a shot in the arm to the entire American designing community. He took it on faith that the process would yield something. What if he had seen 12 games that were all okay but nothing to get excited about? He was still committed to investing his own money in one of them. It was an incredible commitment on his part, and we’re all indebted to him for making it. Thank you, Jay.
Nate Scheidler organized the contest, creating a structure out of nothing. He created the guidelines; he found the local organizers to coordinate and administer the playtesting events in each city. He cheerfully fielded a lot of questions from me and probably many more people just like me. He never once raised his voice or used ALL CAPS. Once we got to Chicago Nate was everywhere, making sure the design contest went smoothly, even as he had other responsibilities within the show. He was tireless. Without his efforts, the contest would not have happened. Thank you, Nate.
Judy and I drove to Chicago on Friday. We got to our hotel at about 3 and then walked over to Navy Pier to get the lay of the land. From there was walked to Michigan Avenue and then cruised the Magnificent Mile, doing some Christmas shopping and getting a great dinner. All of that might have been a mistake because by the time we got back to our hotel, we were dog tired. With our pitch session coming up the next day, we probably should have gotten more sleep. (That’s my advice to next year’s finalists: Get plenty of sleep the night before.)
The next morning the Fair opened at 10. At 10:15 Jay gave an engaging talk about the industry and his company. He talked about how he almost passed on Carcassonne. He answered questions from the audience. One of the things he said was if he saw 12 games he wanted, he would publish all 12. I think that helped set the mood for everyone. It took away the competitive aspect. If you won, it didn’t mean I automatically lost. We could both win. Instead of being competitors, we felt more like brothers (and sisters) in arms. We were sharing a common experience and could participate in each other’s elation and dismay. It was a good way to get started.
After Jay’s talk, Nate met with all the designers and we picked our time slots for our pitch sessions. Judy and I decided to go first so we could then go hunt up a great lunch without any time constraints, needing to get back for our session.
If you’ve ever watched Olympic figure skating, you never want to be the first skater. Even if the judges love you, they tend to hold back the score a little in case there’s someone whose program they love more. So going first is usually not an advantage. Of course, Jay wasn’t scoring anything; he was gathering information and getting impressions.
The pitch was set up in this large convention hall meeting room. It was stripped bare of everything except a table and two chairs. The stark sterility of the room made me think of a police interview room set up at a crime scene. I had to go hunt up a third chair because there were two of us plus Jay.
We explained our game, which is at its core is a set-collection game built around a quilting theme: players are creating the best quilts to grab the top prizes at a quilt show. Overall, the theme is pretty well integrated into the game play, but within minutes Jay is asking questions and making suggestions to tighten up that integration. It was as unnerving as it was breathtaking. We spent a long time refining this game, and he comes in with no prior knowledge of it and is instantly finding little improvements we can make. That’s what he does for a living, but to see it in action was impressive. Within seconds our 30 minutes was up, or so it seemed. We left him a copy of the rules and a sell sheet we had created.
Judy and I left the Pier and took a taxi to Clark Street where had an incredible lunch at Xoco. Even if we didn’t win this contest, we were determined to eat some outstanding meals, unlike what we can get in our small burg! At lunch we were deflated. We were sure that Jay’s takeaway was, “If I can make all these improvements in 30 minutes, these yahoos must not be very well prepared. I’ll pass.” We trudged back to the Fair determined to just play some games and enjoy ourselves. We had convinced ourselves that we weren’t going to get published.
When we got to the game library room, we saw some other designers and started talking to them about how their pitch sessions went. Invariably they all walked away with the same feeling that we had: Jay had a lot of good suggestions, and they couldn’t tell what his overall impression had been. It was a great afternoon, getting to know the other designers, seeing and playing their prototypes, talking about the design process, talking about the contest. The camaraderie among the designers was wonderful. We exchanged email addresses. I’m going to enjoy following the careers of these people.
In the course of looking at a lot of the other prototypes, we realized we had one of the more primitive ones. That’s funny because we felt we had gone the extra mile in our presentation. While cosmetics are irrelevant to the game play, looking good is better than looking bad. We weren’t even in the upper half of the class in terms of slickness. There were a lot of well-presented games.
Another thing that happened as we were schmoozing in the game library was I decided to go set up an appointment to show one of my other games. In his opening talk Jay talked about the accessibility of the game publishers at Essen. He said they’ll gladly look at your games if you set up an appointment on the first day. So with those words ringing in my ears, left the play area and went and scheduled an appointment for the next day with Max Osterhaus of Out of the Box. I had a party game I thought would be a good fit for his line.
As the first day of ChiTAG ended, the game playing was just shifting into overdrive. Nate organized an event called One Night in Essen. He had brought back 2 suitcases of new releases from Essen. People could play these games or anything else from the library. The Essen games were being raffled off for charity. Judy and I played Assyria with Josh DeBonis, the finalist from Connecticut. I bought a bunch of raffle tickets, but didn’t win any of the new games. We left at 9:30, but some people literally played all night. By the time we left, we weren’t worried about winning the contest. Judy and I got to meet so many people whose company we enjoyed. We had learned a lot and felt we had benefited from the experience.
As we walked back to our hotel, though, I began to put together scenarios where we could win. As I started to think about the suggestions Jay had made, I realized they weren’t structural. The bones of the game were good, and he was merely finding ways to make the game play better fit the theme. These were changes that could be easily implemented. So maybe, just maybe, he’d give us a shot. But probably not. We knew there were some outstanding games there.
Sunday was decision day. We all met with Jay just outside the hall. He said he was blown away by the caliber of the games he saw. He looks at prototypes at every convention he attends, and he might commit to 2 of them in a year. Jay said after a lot of deliberation he wanted to publish 4 (!!!) of these games, and there were 5 more that he thought he might be interested in with a little bit of further development. Even the games he didn’t see as ultimately fitting Rio Grande, he felt were well-structured games that would find a publisher. It was a level of quality he hadn’t anticipated.
Jay announced the winners. Needless to say, Judy and I were shocked and awed. I believe we all genuinely shared in the elation for the winners and the disappointment for the others. I won’t use the word loser here because I don’t think any of us felt that the experience was anything but worthwhile.
Each of the contest cities prepared their local event in their own way. Whatever the differences in staging the events and choosing a representative, each of these local organizers deserves a boatload of credit. However they did it, they picked good games to go to Chicago. And because of their efforts, this contest has gotten off to a good start and will continue in the future. On the local level, be sure you all thank your local organizer.
Jay treated all the participants to lunch at Riva’s. It was an excellent meal and a fun time listening to Jay tell more stories.
After lunch I got my sit down with Max from Out of the Box. In part because of my experience pitching a game to Jay, I felt very comfortable. Max was gracious and easy to talk to. In the end my game wasn’t the right fit for Out of the Box. Even in not getting to the next stage with Out of the Box, I felt good about the process and the experience.
That was it. We walked to our car and drove home. It was one of the best 5-1/2 hour drives we’ve ever had. We talked about mechanics and themes for our next game the entire way home.
My post here is long. I hope it doesn’t crash the BGG server! I just wanted to thank some people and provide an insider look for those of you who might think about entering next year.
Finally, a big thank you to Jim (jpat) for using multiple exclamation points. He’s normally very stingy with his punctuation.
Steve Bennett
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Ray
United States
Carpentersville
Illinois
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What i liked about the entries I got to play was that of late Euros have had a certain amount of sameness to them (as elements from the most successful games like role selection or worker placement are being incorporated into the next release). As this design contest had at its root game groups outside of the traditional places I hang out for news on Euros you see games from entirely different inspirations in the mix. So although many of the entrants were in need of refinement, there was no lack of original or novel ideas. Also contradictory to stereotypes of first time designers without Euro playing roots these were not monopoly and scrabble clones at all.
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Nick Silhacek
United States
Iowa City
Iowa
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Thanks for the inside look, and congratulations to all of the Finalists for a job well done!!!
It was exciting to be a part of the process. I can't wait to see these games in the stores. 
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Nate Scheidler
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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NA47 wrote: Thanks for the inside look, and congratulations to all of the Finalists for a job well done!!! It was exciting to be a part of the process. I can't wait to see these games in the stores.
And thank you, Nick, for entering the contest and then taking the time to come to the fair and volunteer to help. Our volunteer team was the subject of LOADS of positive feedback from the exhibitors, and does a lot to encourage their return in 2010.
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Mark Salzwedel
United States
New York
New York
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Steve, your graphics in your prototype were fine. Thanks for the lengthy report. As I was telling Josh and Dan, questions and suggestions from Jay are more likely to be indications of interest. If he didn't like those elements or thought them unworkable, he probably wouldn't have made the effort to talk about them. A game publisher, as you suggest, wants to feel like he or she is adding value to the product beyond financing its production. We have worked on and played so many games that we have a vast library in our heads of mechanics and themes and components we can bring out for comparison, and we have run enough play tests to know what sorts of elements engage the most gamers.
Your theme, for example, has the interesting value of seeming sincere and accurate to those who like quilting, and at the same time, it seems campy and silly to those who aren't into quilting, so that anyone can enjoy it. The game play is simple enough to appeal to a wide-ranging audience. And the game publishers I've met (and myself, I guess) are usually looking for something that is missing from their catalog and/or expands a particularly successful line -- either of which may have been the case for Rio Grande Games with your game.
Keep us informed about its progress and release date.
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Craig Zipse
United States
Jasper
Georgia
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Woot! Congratulations to everyone, but especially for so for Mark Sellmeyer of St. Louis. Way to go man!
I hope this is the beginning of an annual contest. I believe it has and will continue to put a fire under the American design community.
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Abe Burson
United States
Rochester
Minnesota
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Steve, it was great to meet you and I'm excited for your game (as well as the others who are getting published)! This was a good read and I think sharing your experience on this forum is cool. You and Judy, along with some of the others that we had a chance to meet and talk with, were down to earth and friendly. The only thing I think would be a great addition for next year is to provide a more formal structure for the contestants to meet each other and see what all the entries are.
Blaine and I also felt super thrilled about the whole experience. I told him, I've never been so excited to not win something Even though we didn't "win", we were one of the sort of "honorable mention" 5 that almost made the cut. We got some good feedback- and similar to you, it was about nitpicky/peripheral/matter of taste stuff that would not alter the game much. We all got to learn a lot just by listening to Jay. He's an unassuming and approachable guy and now that we've had this experience, we feel confident that after all the planning, construction, and finishing, we'll get out our 800 grit sand paper to make our game fit just right with his vision of a Rio Grande game.
I also want to say a huge thanks to Jay for agreeing to do this! And an equally huge thanks to Nate for his obvious dedication to the success of the event and for being the coolest guy with a beanie cap there  Really, though, it was a great time and I'm anxious to see these games on the store shelf!
Abe
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Jason Roth
United States
Texas
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Indeed! Before the final heat in St. Louis, I was looking forward to playing Spin~Monkeys just based on the name alone. It didn't disappoint either. I mean, it has monkeys! That spin! In bumper cars! Who doesn't want to play that game?!?
Also, Nate, will we be allowed to enter the same game in the contest next year? I feel like my game is right there; the feedback I got was more with the presentation of information on the boards and cards than anything to do with the actual gameplay or mechanics. After all, my game did lose to a game that Jay wound up taking. Maybe it could muster enough energy to reach the peak next year?
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Nate Scheidler
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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GeoGuy81 wrote: Also, Nate, will we be allowed to enter the same game in the contest next year? I feel like my game is right there; the feedback I got was more with the presentation of information on the boards and cards than anything to do with the actual gameplay or mechanics. After all, my game did lose to a game that Jay wound up taking. Maybe it could muster enough energy to reach the peak next year?
This question came up during Jay's talk at ChiTag. while I don't want to be deluged with questions right now, I will answer this one.
Yes.
Game design is a living process. I think it would be a discredit to the contest to prohibit designs that didn't make the cut this time from being re-presented. While some designers might be better off scrapping their designs, most had something truly special underlying them that just need more nuturing to bring out the flavor. I'd rather encourage designers to develop and perfect their games rather than knock them back to square one.
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Steve Bennett
United States
Grinnell
Iowa
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ssgames wrote: A game publisher, as you suggest, wants to feel like he or she is adding value to the product beyond financing its production. We have worked on and played so many games that we have a vast library in our heads of mechanics and themes and components we can bring out for comparison, and we have run enough play tests to know what sorts of elements engage the most gamers.
Your theme, for example, has the interesting value of seeming sincere and accurate to those who like quilting, and at the same time, it seems campy and silly to those who aren't into quilting, so that anyone can enjoy it. The game play is simple enough to appeal to a wide-ranging audience. And the game publishers I've met (and myself, I guess) are usually looking for something that is missing from their catalog and/or expands a particularly successful line -- either of which may have been the case for Rio Grande Games with your game. The thing that amazed us was how Jay was able to grasp something and improve it on the fly. There's a scene in Donnie Brasco where Johnny Depp is explaining to Al Pacino all the differences in the meaning of, "Forget about it," depending on the inflection. Then he rattles off a half dozen or more of them and you can hear the subtle differences in each one. You know the speech is being delivered by a master. That's what Jay did. It was just these instant subleties from someone who had never before seen the game. I know he and you are professionals who have this storehouse of knowledge and experience from which to draw, but it was still something to behold.
I think your take on the theme is about right. Our one worry was that it might be viewed as a "women's theme" in a hobby dominated by men. Our take was that it was a unique theme, and men and women in pretty equal numbers appreciate quilts, even though it's mostly women who make them. In a perfect world this will become one of the go-to girlfriend/spouse games (in addition to other niches it can fill), and that trumps the downside of a few men who would rather pound nails into their eyeballs than be subjected to a quilt-themed game. As we all know, however, it's not a perfect world. I'm just grateful to have our game accepted. We'll see how how it all unfolds. For today, though, everything looks perfect to me.
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Nate Scheidler
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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In 2010, we will:
- Launch earlier to prevent last-minute planning by designers.
- Open up the location options. I'll let group organizers submit their locations for the contest (please, not yet, wait for announcements). I will set up a poll, and let people vote up the locations that they want to compete at.
- Change the scheduling of the final event a little, and Jay will be including a nice celebration meal with all the designers as a standard part of the prize.
- Incorporate FAQ items and organizer feedback into the information provided at the outset of the contest.
- Continue to leave control in the hands of the local organizers, but we will provide better suggestions and guidelines on their event format.
- Have a harder time judging the entries because good designs will have gotten better.
I expect we'll be launching the contest again in late February/early March.
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Mark Salzwedel
United States
New York
New York
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Verseboy wrote: I think your take on the theme is about right. Our one worry was that it might be viewed as a "women's theme" in a hobby dominated by men. Our take was that it was a unique theme, and men and women in pretty equal numbers appreciate quilts, even though it's mostly women who make them. In a perfect world this will become one of the go-to girlfriend/spouse games (in addition to other niches it can fill), and that trumps the downside of a few men who would rather pound nails into their eyeballs than be subjected to a quilt-themed game. As we all know, however, it's not a perfect world. I'm just grateful to have our game accepted. We'll see how how it all unfolds. For today, though, everything looks perfect to me.
Games that have been popular in our board game group (about 50/50 men/women these days) include Wasabi (a game about sushi), Reef Encounter (a game about parrotfish eating shrimp), Primordial Soup (amoebae eating poop of other amoebae), Agricola (raising crops and livestock), Coloretto (matching colored cards), and Power Grid (fueling power plants and constructing power lines). If games with those themes can be popular, there is no worry about quilting, if the mechanics are good and the game play is deep enough. When I was at Origins last year, there was a really popular game with a trailer trash theme -- one of the mechanics was seeing how many flamingo statues you could put in your front yard.
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Chris Darden
United States
Lake Saint Louis
Missouri
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I had a great time participating in this, and look forward to next year's competition.
It's also nice to know that I got second in St. Louis, right behind Mark, who's design was chosen. Gives me hope that my game was actually decent. 
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