Sunday, June 3

UK Games Expo A Huge Success!

I've just got back from the UK Games Expo, and here's a very brief run down of what happened.

When we got there (The Wife and Dave came with me) we were shown up to our room to find someone else in our spot. It turned out that things had been re-arrange the day before, we'd moved just round the corner - nearer the bar. It seemed like a quiet out of the way spot, but turned out just fine.

I took the last six copies of Border Reivers, and twenty-one copies of It's Alive!: mine, ten pre-orders, one to give to a publisher who's going to try to raise some interest in the States and nine copies for sale. I hoped to sell out of It's Alive! at some point on Sunday, and sell a copy or two of Border Reivers - I wasn't even taking a demo copy of that, so I didn't expect to sell much.

We set up, and within minutes (before the convention officially opened) we had a bunch of players for It's Alive! The table was never empty after that - there were usually people queuing to play. It seemed to be going really well, I started to sell a few copies. Plus a Border Reivers or two. Then it went insane. There was an hour or two when I was struggling to sort out sales, I had a queue of receipts to write. Border Reivers sold out (the last copy was nearly fought for!), It's Alive! sold out. It just kept coming. We got rid of the last of our stock at 1:30pm on Saturday! Three and a half hours in. All we could do for the rest of the convention was demo the game and take orders (over twenty). An online game store pre-ordered twelve copies for stock. There was interest from the UK's largest games distriutor. A publisher was interested in Border Reivers. It was a fantastic weekend.

Saturday night we celebrated with Cheeky Vimtos :-)

Near the end of Sunday we heard a rumour that It's Alive! and Fagin's Gang were very close for the UK Game of the Year award, and we just missed out! We're awaiting official confirmation of that...

9 comments:

Mal said...

Congratulations! Finally, all the hard work's getting the kind of reward it deserves. :) And congratulations to Yehuda too. Exciting times...

Jackson Pope said...

They certainly are. It was amazing there, so busy and a completely different atmosphere to the previous conventions I've been to.

Cheers,

Jack

Social Work Dad said...

Well done! It feels like Reiver Games is gathering momentum... I look forward to seeing what the future holds! All the best.

Unknown said...

Yeah, congratulations! How many more sales before you get to build your dreamhouse, made entirely out of lego castle bricks and with Carcassonne meeples for roof tiles? :)

-Tim

Jackson Pope said...

It felt like Reiver Games' momentum was steaming along at full speed on the weekend - I kept looking for the brakes!

Tim, I'm still a fair way off unfortunately, but I do have enough yellow wooden discs to build a respectable castle at the moment :-) No meeples though :-(

Cheers,

Jack

Anonymous said...

Great news Jack. Congratulations.

Jackson Pope said...

Thanks Andy, I'm still a bit shell-shocked by it all - hopefully it'll sink in during the next week or so...

Cheers,

Jack

runehardt said...

That's Awesome - Congrats!!!

Jackson Pope said...

Thanks Bobby, Now I just need to catch up on the orders...

Cheers,

Jack