The View From The Booth

by Phil Cape

It’s 9:58 AM on Thursday Morning. The Gen Con exhibitor’s hall is about to open, and the air is electric with anticipation. Cory Jones is talking with some members of the press who were granted early access, while William Brinkman, Ben Stoll and myself prepare for the first wave of potential players. This is our first opportunity to show off HEX to the public, and I’m a little nervous. It’s not because I’m worried about the technical issues associated with our endeavor, which would be a realistic concern, and it’s not because I think the public perception will be negative. If there’s one thing I learned from our Kickstarter experience, it’s that there are a LOT of people out there who love HEX and everything it represents.

No, the reason I’m nervous is that this is my first time at Gen Con as a Cryptozoic employee, and I’m about to plunge headlong into demonstrating the game. I’m worried that people won’t understand how things work, that the things I’ve internalized about how the game functions will be misinterpreted. I’m worried that I won’t be able to teach this game to players who have no experience playing card games.

Of course, none of those things I feared would happen. Instead, the whole weekend went so quickly and smoothly that it was all a blur. Over the course of the next couple days, I would show the game off to players of all ages and skill ranges. The youngest player to come through couldn’t have been older than 7 or 8, while the oldest was clearly past retirement age. I demoed for former TCG champions and players who have never played a trading card game before. I demoed for kickstarter backers and people who had never even heard of us before wandering into our booth. One constant across all these people is that they left the booth excited and anticipatory. I was proud to have helped grow our community.

One highlight from the weekend that does stand out was the Dragonlord backer dinner on Friday night. I was among the first Cryptozoic employees there, but my travelling compatriots were occupied. Will had logisitics to handle, and Marcos was preparing his video camera. Cautiously, I approached the small group of players who had already assembled and introduced myself. I had expected conversation to be tough, but instead it flowed easily. I tried to talk to every group as they arrived, but before I knew it the room was completely full. Everyone who was at that dinner was awesome. These are people I would love to hang out with any time. It didn’t feel like I was at work. And it certainly didn’t hurt that they all are so passionate about something that I’ve been pouring time into non-stop, not to mention a touch envious of my position.

There was a moment later in the night, as things were winding down and everyone was milling about chatting and laughing, when I realized that the majority of these people had been strangers a short time ago. I don’t even mean strangers to me, I mean to each other too, and that if it weren’t for HEX, they might still be. And sure, that’s something that I knew on an intellectual level beforehand, but it didn’t have the impact until I met and got to know people. The idea that what we’re actually doing is bringing people together had never really occurred to me and I was struck by the importance of that.

Even more to the point, the people in our community were trying to do the same thing. We gave out some free prize tickets to people at that dinner, because we had extra and we could. You know what those guys did? They’re using them as giveaways for their websites; trying to grow the community. They could easily have put they up on eBay, but they would rather give them to people who didn’t have an opportunity to travel to Indianapolis last weekend. It’s really easy to say our community is awesome, but stories like these really show it.

Before I finish up here, I want to share the story of one of my favorite demos from this weekend. The young player approached me first, he was probably about ten years old and a little shy. He was there with what appeared to be his grandparents, and after a minute Grandma wandered off while Grandpa stayed with us. As I explained the mechanics, I would periodically ask questions about what the player thought we should do in the game and why. As I did this, I noticed that Grandpa, who was standing a few feet back, was not only paying attention, but muttering his own answers to himself. Eventually, he couldn’t help himself, and started suggesting plays to his grandson, complete with explanation. I stepped back a bit and let the two of them play through the rest of the game, and when they emerged victorious you could see their excitement written all over their faces. Grandpa shook my hand vigorously, with a smile on his face, and said “That’s a mighty fine game you’ve got there young man. Mighty fine!” I think his assessment is dead on, and it’s not just because of the work we’re doing over here.

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