Hello Antje! Hello Fabian! Lovely to have you guys here.
Oh hell, let's make a reunion out of this thread then... I am so gonna repeat what was already said, though, because I agree with my fellow Essenees up there.
Board/Cardgaming is not an exclusive geek sport over here. I actually know a bunch of shockingly boring Germans who play boardgames and who can't tell Star Trek from Star Wars, Marvel from DC and Starbuck from Starbucks. They are normal people who usually happen not to go for anything besides Eurogames. If it doesn't have small wooden blocks, they don't wanna play.
As for the location of the booth... okay, that really wasn't that great. I once left the booth for 5 minutes to go and look for someone, and actually got lost on my way back. I think nobody knew where anything was this year, and facing a side aisle with a misleading banner peeking over the top of the booth was probably not helping with the visibility. But seriously, I saw the booth at Essen last year, and that was in an even more remote place and soooo tiny! As Antje said, if the organisers need kicking so you guys get a better location next year, put a German on it. We are as stubborn as... very stubborn things.
Sales not being good is a bad thing, but I have seen stallowners putting their products in the trash during clean up because they couldn't get rid of it and they couldn't transport it back. And that is even worse. Plus I would have bought something, but I already had everything and I sent you all the friends I had!
I wouldn't complain about lack of traffic though, I played well over 40 games over the 4 days, and I was the one who was always hanging back in case there was an English group coming up, so that wasn't even a lot. And at some point on the Sunday (reportedly the slowest day, but Hall 2 was still very busy when the other Halls had already cleared out), I had people queuing for a demo more than once. So I think we couldn't have handeled much more, demo-wise.
This has only been the second year. And Essen is kind of lazy that way. You don't necessarily buy a game, just because you have seen it at Essen once. There are some games that have been sold at Essen for 5 years, and I still think, nah, I'll buy a copy next year. And sometimes then the companies don't come back, and that makes me feel really bad.
So I can't compare it to anywhere else, because I have never been to any convention or simlar event outside Europe (I'd probably go mad if I did!). But you always get sentimental about what you grow up with, so yeah, I like Essen. It's really all that Germany has to offer.
That's not true ... as Andy pointed out there's also schnitzel. And beer! (the last one gets a really sentimental value when you're not living in Germany anymore. The Swiss have damn fine cheese and the best choclolate in the world, but beer ... and they don't have any big gaming conventions. Yet)
I think Andy feels about Essen like this quote from Hot Shots Part Deux
What are you reading Topper?
- "Great Expectations".
Was it any good?
- It's not what I hoped for.
I think it was a (please insert xx positive/negative superlatives here) experience for everyone. and a good laugh at more than one time.
Fruit flies like banana. Won-der-ful
By the way: if any of you feels the need to explore Switzerland or just to play Sentinels in a foreign country, you can drop by any time you want. Antonia and I live neart Zurich and about an hour away from the (or some) mountains.
I think next year we all have to do Essen in costume. Then we stage a show heroes/villain confrontation for the waiting people outside before the Halls open and when they come in, they know where to go ;P
I definitely understand where Andy is coming from the perspective of an American running game demos - Essen is a different kind of show than US (more like a flea market than a geek convention), and language and cultural barriers can be an issue for many attendees (especially since Sentinels is a game with tons of English text and tons of cards rather than wooden cubes :) ). However, lest anyone worry about us or our support for the European market, here are some business infos:
1) We are seriously exploring options for translating the game into French and German, and have a few less developed leads on a few other languages.
2) Going forward, our booth will be *much* fancier and attention-grabbing (this is true of all of our booths, actually, including our Gen Con booth).
3) We have already been exploring our options in terms of getting a better booth location, and I definitely agree that getting a German to talk to Merz Verlag will be the way to go!.
4) We are also looking into lowering our attendance costs (shipping in particular).
5) In spite of our suboptimal booth location, sales this year were perfectly acceptable (and we were completely sold out by the end of the show).
6) One day, we will publish more than just one game, which will also help sales and booth traffic. Who knows, we might even have a game with little wooden shapes one day!
Julia! Welcome, welcome, welcome. So glad to see you here, too.
One point about Essen that it occurs to me that I may not have properly paid homage to is that it has GAMES. Lots and lots and lots of board games of various stripes. The only real comment I made about this above is that I found it overwhelming, but as I think more about how Essen compares to GenCon, PAX(s), and Origins, anyone who is used to Essen is going to find these other conventions scandilously devoid of board games. Yes they have them, but they are not the focus. At PAX, the focus is video games. At GenCon, the focus is roleplaying games. At Origins, board games comes a close second, but the major focus is probably tabletop miniatures.
Were I to have been an attendee at Essen, while I might have missed the party atmosphere of everyone being into geek culture, and while I might have been overwhelmed by the immensity of SO MANY CHOICES, including a ton of Euro-games that are too similar to each other and not interesting enough to me to hold my attention, I could have easily spent the entire four days doing nothing but trying cool new game after cool new game. It really is an incredible bonanza. All I did was attempt to walk around enough of it to feel like I'd seen most parts, even from afar, without stopping at any booths, and just that took me an hour.
By the way, I partially botched this joke, leaving out the first half:
Come now Paul, do not say such things. Stay positive! 
I just assumed each one would have a little cape.
Nothing says the miniatures for Tactics have to be made of plastic...
you can look for wooden peg superhero dolls on Etsy and see some silly examples
Nothing...
The miniatures for Tactics have to be made of plastic.
I've got some playdough they can use in a pinch.
Sentimeeples? Shut up and take my money!!
Greetings, everyone!
Loved to see GtG again on the SPIEL, me and my fellow comrades were really excitied to see that you've expanded the play area since 2012 and wish you so much luck for the oncoming years! Since I discovered Sentinels on the Dicetower last year I was so pumped to get my hands on the game and it surpassed all of my expectations! I played with pretty much all of my friends and co-workers who enjoy card games and it has always made a huge impact. Now after getting about all the expansions and promos, I think I'm set for the next holiday season in December when I'm again visiting some of my friends up in the north in Germany - they have a really big itch for superhero card games and I think you really deliver on that part more then any other game we played so far.
I would be happy to hear if you decide to visit the Spiel '14, cuz I would be happy to volunteer to help you out if you need somebody who's fluent in english, german and polish!
"Noted game creators of the popular 'Sentinels of the Multiverse' were involved in an altercation today. A woman identified as a Brittish citizen was seem pelting them with money while demanding something called 'Sentimeeples.' While being transferred to an ambulance for precautionary check up they were further harrassed by several men demanding 'official rulings.' While none of their injuries were serious they were shaken up by the ordeal. The Kickstarter Campaign to help fund their recovery has already shattered several records."
Hello and welcome!
Guys, GUYS, GUYS – Do you see Vegas' icon? See that mask? He and four of his friends showed up in the booth similarly costumed and played a rousing game of Sentinels. It took longer than it might have since they had to stop every few minutes to let someone take their picture. I didn't recognize where the costumes were from (a computer game, I gather), but they were great.
Thank you for your kind words!
We actually enjoyed playing a round in a full getup, we had a very tight schedule. We had friends over from across the country, they arrived on friday to visit the SPIEL, we took a day off on Saturday and finally on Sunday we dressed up and enjoyed the fair as a group of bank robbers. We only played one session of SotM on Saturday against the dreadful La Capitan while she was held up in "the Block". Well, she escaped. But on the next day we conquered the Plague Rat which we followed threw some time rifts - hooray!
The idea for the costumes sprang to our mind after some really tense sessions of Shadowrun - a roleplaying game some might be familiar with. Two of us, that is a friend of mine and myself, have played a game called Payday for a longer time and I do love heist movies - Heat and Boondock Saints in particular. We always wanted to make something ourselves, representing some of our beloved characters from our countless roleplaying games.
On the subject of your booth, if I can find the right local person, who on your end do I talk to about seeing if there's space for y'all to come to a local con just a few hours away from you?
You'd talk to me. Unfortunately, the time we can spend going to conventions, even conventions that are nearby, is very limited. We went to too many this year and spread ourselves too thin, and some product production deadlines suffered in part as a result of that.