Monday, April 27, 2009

Television Appearances

I've been on television a few times in connection with my role as manager of Game Night Games. What follows are two clips from appearances on KJZZ and KUTV here in Utah.

This first clip was back in October as part of KJZZ's "This Morning" show. Tracy Harris (one of our employees at Game Night Games) was there with her two kids who were playing Gulo Gulo as part of the presentation. The anchor mistakenly refers to them as "my family" at the beginning of the piece but, other than that, the interview went very well. Tracy continues to go on the show once a month to do short presentations featuring different games. Here is the clip:




This next clip is from an interview that I did recently in connection with KUTV's "Unplug and Play" week. Instead of being at the studio, this was done at the store.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

GAMA 2009

Well, this year's GAMA experience was very different from the last. Last year I went for the full show. This year, I flew in to Vegas early in the morning on Wednesday and then flew back to Salt Lake later on Wednesday evening. It was quite the whirlwind trip. While there, I met up with Phil who was there on behalf of "Gameology".


We attended a quick workshop on game design by Andrew Looney of Looney Labs (i.e. the company that makes "Fluxx"). While going to the workshop, I met Seth Jaffee with Tasty Minstrel Games. Those who spend time on the BGDF will know Seth as he is a very active member of that forum and his company is publishing Alex Rockwell's game "Homesteaders". After talking about game design for a while, it was off to the booths.


There were some notable differences for GAMA this year versus last year in that it seemed as if this year's convention as a whole was smaller with respect to both attendees and exhibitors. There were some notible absences with respect to exhibitors. However, it was a good convention and I got a chance to meet with the guys at FRED Distribution, Mayfair, Flying Frog Productions, Twilight Creations, TableStar Games, Playroom, etc.
Even though my trip was brief, I got the chance to play a few demo rounds of the new game coming out from Steve Jackson Games called "Revolution" and I got the chance to pose for a quick picture with Mr. Munchkin himself:


All in all, I had a great time.

*One quick note is that, in the dining area last year, there was a bird that had gotten into the building and it was entertaining to watch that bird fly around while having lunch. This year, again, a bird had gotten into the building. I guess some things never change.