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Posthuman Studios 2011 Gen Con Review

Posted on Mon, 2011-08-22 13:08
in
Gen Con 2011 is in the history books as the Best Four Days of Gaming of the year. With an announced attendance of 36,000 people, it was certainly a successful convention for the organizers -- and for Posthuman Studios!

For Posthuman Studios, Gen Con preparation was a bigger challenge and drain on our resources than we originally anticipated this year, in part due to the dissolution of our partnership with Sandstorm just two months before the show. One of our partners, Brian Cross, also acquired a new job right before the con that required a cross-country move during Gen Con instead of being there. On top of that, he had to defend his thesis in the month leading up to the convention. However, we are thrilled for the newly minted Dr. Brian Cross, and only wished we could have celebrated his new doctorate and job with him. We will get around to that.

We soldiered on, as we always do. Adam flew into Chicago a few days early, and we went on a mega-shopping trip for last-minute booth supplies on Tuesday, picked up very important people at O'Hare on Wednesday morning, and convoyed down to Indianapolis.

Let's run things down, starting with the successes:
  • We made money after all expenses were tallied, even including sunk costs (such as book printing expenses).
  • Panopticon debuted to excellent word-of-mouth and good sales!
  • The Third Printing of Eclipse Phase was available in good quantity, and this was our first chance to watch people flip through it and instantly see the improvements to the physical production quality.
  • We released Degenesis, a translation of a post-apocalyptic German-language roleplaying game that we started work on many years and several companies ago. We printed 100 Primer Edition copies especially for Gen Con, with an electronic release to follow in the near future, as well as some other sort of print availability (still TBD). This was also a success because we worked with an excellent new-to-us short-run printer for the first time! The copies that we had left over from the show are available now from Indie Press Revolution, in limited quantity.
  • Continuity won the Gold ENnie for Best Electronic Product of the year.
  • We ran all of our sales from a single iPad 2 using the Square software and credit card swiper. Adam will be writing a longer blog post about this software/hardware combo, but it was very successful. We had a minor hiccup a few hours into Thursday when the AT&T 3G network was overloaded, but the rest of the convention was smooth sailing. Our cash/credit total was less than 1% off at the end of the show.
  • We presented two seminars: Open Sources: Making Games More Free and What's Up With Eclipse Phase and Posthuman Studios. They both went very well. We had a small but full room for Open Sources, and we had a good back-and-forth discussion with the attendees about the history of open source gaming licenses, how we came to adopt the Creative Commons license for Eclipse Phase, and some challenges and successes we've had with that. The What's Up? seminar was recorded by Ross at Role Playing Public Radio and is available here.
  • We ordered 48 custom dice bags from Dragon Chow Dice Bags; we had commitments from buyers for about 75% of those, plus some extras to sell on top of that. We sold out of every last one, very quickly. We should have ordered more!
  • We had fun. Sprite DJed a great set at the Ugly Monkey on Friday, and we were back there the night afterwards to watch our friends The Gothsicles debut some tracks from their new album Industrialites & Magic. After that over a dozen of our friends retreated to a hotel room to play games and consume beverages until the wee hours.
  • Our friends and loved ones kicked ass helping us at the booth, with logistics, and providing moral and caffeine-based support.
Averages:
  • Our booth was too small. We were going to have a 10x10 foot booth as part of our arrangement with Sandstorm, but we didn't need to do actual sales within it. Without Sandstorm, we had to do actual sales and store more stock in the booth, which made it more crowded than we expected and didn't give us enough room to effectively display all of our merchandise. We have already reserved a 20x10 foot endcap booth for next year!
  • We made some USB drives with all of the available Eclipse Phase PDFs on them and priced them to sell at $30 for the entire catalog. They sold out within the first day; we should have either made more and kept on selling them, or we underpriced them!
  • Our event schedule was not handled by us until the last minute and we had trouble getting the number of GMs we needed. We had 20 games scheduled (which had all sold out early on, showing that people want to play EP!), and luckily several people came through last minute to fill in the gaps in the GM schedule. Some of the adventures that we had planned to write were not properly completed and so a few of our GMs had to default to other scenarios, but our games were well-attended and we did get enthusiastic feedback from many players! We also paid our gamemasters cash money for running games, instead of giving them gamer-swag -- we think this is the best way of compensating them for taking the time to run our games. Several of them ran enough games to get their badges compensated by Gen Con as well.
Failures:
  • Due to Adam's travel schedule, the Panopticon PDF was not available immediately before or after Gen Con. This lowered buzz and sales for the book. It still did well: it could have done better.
  • Before the show, Adam ordered some book display racks that he had been lusting over for years. Unfortunately, our hardcovers didn't actually fit in them properly; we ended up selling them at a loss to another publisher and ordering different racks, which were much more functional but not quite as lusty.
  • Gatecrashing didn't win an ENnies in the four categories it was nominated in; the competition was tough this year, but we can't deny that we weren't disappointed. Looking at the list of nominations in many categories, though, makes one thing very obvious: there is a plethora of great games and support material being released every year. We as gamers are spoiled for choice, and we as publishers need to keep pushing the envelope and paying close attention to the core qualities of a good book (solid rules, writing, editing, etc.)
Special Thanks:
  • Derek Guder and Scott Elliot at Gen Con LLC for their help in organizing our events and our booth space.
  • All of our friends that helped run the booth and run games. You guys have been rocking our world for a long, long time, and we are glad to have you with us.
  • The kind folks at Geek Chic who let us borrow one of their amazing tables. And for the Moustache Monocles, which provide no end of delight.
  • Shane Ivey and the Arc Dream crew for handling transport of our books and booth stuff to and from Gen Con this year.
  • Our fans and friends for showing up, playing our games, buying our books, and occasionally, sometimes, telling us about your character ...
  • To the nice couple who watched a box of books for Adam when he finally admitted that he could not carry two full boxes of Eclipse Phase books from his hotel to the exhibitor's hall. (What was I thinking? Stubborn goat -- Adam.)
Keep Your Eyes Out For:
  • We have some swag -- t-shirts, stickers, posters -- left over from the show in limited quantities. We'll be posting these up for sale soon!

Posthuman Studios Evolves!

Posted on Tue, 2011-07-05 21:08
in
The Posthumans are pleased to announce that after an incubation period of one year, we have burst forth from our partnership with Sandstorm Productions and are assuming full control of our publishing operations!

For gamers, this doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot. You can still buy our books at fine local game stores, the chain stores that carry them, Indie Press Revolution, and Amazon. The third printing of Eclipse Phase is shipping to the PSI warehouse (we'll announce a street release date soon) and Panopticon is also at the printers. We have some electronic-only titles on the near horizon as well, so watch for upcoming street date announcements!

The only downside for gamers: our upcoming releases, such as Rimward, will be pushed back. They are in-progress, but our schedule is already behind. Instead of trying to race forwards and “catch up,” we are keeping a steady pace—and taking the necessary time to square business matters—to maintain the high quality of our games.

Game stores and distributors, our entire stock is again available worldwide through Publisher Services, Inc. We are in the process of updating all of our sell sheets and other product information and will post it online soon. We also have a new announcements mailing list for stores and distributors, please subscribe!

"After knowing Posthuman for many years, PSI is excited to be working directly with Posthuman for the first time. We look forward to supporting their continued growth and continuing to supply all channels with their high quality role playing games," said Fred Yelk Woodruff, Director of Business Development at PSI.

Call to Action!

This is an exciting and long-term positive step foward for Posthuman Studios, but it does mean we need fan support more than ever! Please help us out in the following ways:
  • Visit your local game store and pre-order the third printing of Eclipse Phase and Panopticon.
  • Work with your local store to run Eclipse Phase demos, and tell us about them so we can help you promote them!
  • Visit us at Gen Con: attend our seminars, meet us at the booth, and play Eclipse Phase!

About Posthuman Studios

The publisher of Eclipse Phase, Posthuman Studios LLC (PS+) is the award-winning creator-owned game design collective founded by game industry veterans Rob Boyle, Brian Cross, and Adam Jury. Posthuman Studios believes that the future of hobby gaming is the hybridization of analog and electronic play–whether that be at the augmented tabletop or online play; that gaming has been and always will be a culture of sharing, and that we must build the creative future we want to live in. You’re invited!

About Publisher Services Inc

Publisher Services Inc. (PSI) is a leading North American sales and fulfillment service organization enabling greater sales for small to medium-sized publishers to mass market, book trade, and specialty retail channels. Our objectives are to work with our publishing partners to optimize their presence in the broad marketplace and offer the highest quality products to our retail customers.

Breaking Up Is The Best Thing

Posted on Fri, 2010-10-01 00:56
in
We are changing how we handle one of our electronic releases: The Gamemaster Pack (GM Screen + Glory). Originally, you bought both of these components together, for $10, or $15 for the Hack Pack version. Now, they have been split apart so you can buy just one "half" of the Gamemaster's Pack.

If you have already bought the Gamemaster Pack, you don't have any reason to buy these new versions; this is a packaging change, not a content change. If we update the content in the GM Screen or Glory in the future, you will still get your free updates.

It makes a lot of sense to bundle a GM Screen with an adventure (or other GM-centric material) in print. It's really difficult to sell small adventures (as Glory is, at 24 pages) through retail. The low price point combined with the lack of durability makes these books riskier and less profitable for retailers. Bundling an adventure with a GM Screen is the accepted "sneaky but not really" method of publishing a small adventure in a format that game stores will happily sell.

That sort of bundling isn't necessary in the digital sphere, though. Glory and the GM Screen do work together, but they are perfectly functional as standalone items. And obviously, there are some people who don't need one half of the package -- so they don't buy any of it. It's a toss-up: do we do a bundle and ensure $10 per sale, or unbundle them and hope that additional sales make for similar or greater profits?

We think that gamers will be better served by splitting the Gamemaster's Pack into three electronic offerings: Two bundles are also available, which replicate the way the GM Pack was originally sold:

Links from the FB page

Posted on Sat, 2010-07-10 01:35
in
In case you missed it we've posted a few links people may find interesting on the EP Facebook page:

Part 1 and Part 2 of guest blogging spots on AR and wearables from EP author Jack Graham

And an interview with Troll in the Corner from Origins of Rob Boyle.

The ENnies are coming! The ENnies are coming!

Posted on Sat, 2010-07-10 01:29
in

In case you missed the news Eclipse Phase received 4 ENnie Award nominations. Needless to say, the team is honored times four. :) 

Eclipse Phase on Amazon.com

Posted on Tue, 2010-06-22 08:41
in
Eclipse Phase is in stock on Amazon.com again! -- after less than a day back on the site, our sales rank is looking rather nice: #17,693 in Books and #35 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy (Beyond a ton of D&D and Pathfinder stuff ... not bad company to be in, really!)

Eclipse Phase Reprint Shipping!

Posted on Fri, 2010-06-18 18:02
in

Posthuman Studios is pleased to announce that the reprint of Eclipse Phase is working its way into game stores and chain bookstores. We are working with our new publishing partners, Sandstorm Productions, to get more product to you as soon as possible! We are following up the Eclipse Phase core book reprint with the Eclipse Phase Gamemaster Pack, and later this summer you'll see Sunward: The Inner System, our first sourcebook.

Eclipse Phase has garnered great reviews, critical praise, and fired up the imagination of all who have read it. Demand has been high since it went out of stock earlier this year, and we are very excited to make it available again -- but this is not the "second printing" we thought would happen. Without going into gory details, instead of the second printing with corrections coming off the presses ... an exact duplicate of the first printing was produced by our previous publisher. We didn't learn of this until after all the books were printed and shipping to the USA.

We regret this situation -- we always want to improve our books with each printing -- but we know that Eclipse Phase is a strong game and the first printing of the core rulebook was very solid. Please give your local store a call (or an email, or a facebook message however you talk to your store, do it!) and let them know it's back in stock! Eclipse Phase's stock number is PS+21000, and retailers can order it from Alliance, ACD or other great distributors.

Posthuman Studios and Sandstorm Productions Play Ball!

Posted on Sat, 2010-06-12 21:06
in

Lake Stevens, WA June 12th, 2010

“How’d you like to play dodgeball?”

There’s something to be said about flying into town for negotiations and getting taken directly to a parking lot game of dodgeball at midnight in Wicker Park, Chicago. When you’re in the gaming industry, work and play go hand in hand—you can’t make fun if you aren’t having it!

We’ve been fans of Eclipse Phase since it premiered. And just as big of fans of Rob, Adam, and Brian—the creative masterminds behind the ground-breaking transhumanist game. So when the opportunity came up to partner Sandstorm and Posthuman Studios, we jumped. (And threw down.)

You’ve gotten a taste of what Posthuman can create with Eclipse Phase—and we’re absolutely thrilled to be partnering with them to bring a full lineup of new Eclipse Phase books to fans in the coming year. We’re also very excited to be partnering with Posthuman to bring new games to the gaming market, such as the tongue-in-cheek card game of Celebrity Trash Culture, Paparazzi!

We look forward to our partnership with Posthuman and everything the future holds in store for us–whether that’s resleeving our digital consciousness, using a telephoto lens to snap indiscriminate photographs, or playing another round of street dodgeball.

Posthuman Studios LLC and Sandstorm Productions LLC. The Storm is Building.

****

Posthuman Studios LLC is a creator-owned game design collective founded by game-industry veterans Rob Boyle, Adam Jury, and Brian Cross in 2008. In 2009 they launched the critically-acclaimed Eclipse Phase, which immediately became a hit with its innovative setting, stellar production, and Creative Commons licensing. They currently have several additional projects in development, including the Paparazzi! card game.

Sandstorm Productions LLC is a Kansas based capitalization and production company dedicated to partnering with premium studios to bring the best games to market. In addition to WildFire and Posthuman, their partner studios include Closet Nerd and Glowfly Games. Sandstorm assists with the capitalization and production of a wide range of gaming products, from classic RPGs to family and educational board games.

For more information, contact Sandstorm at Press@Sandstormllc.com or visit the following websites:

www.posthumanstudios.com

www.sandstormllc.com

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