Protospiel South 2011 - Full of Win

I just got back from a fun (but exhausting) weekend at Protospiel South 2011.  Once again, Jonathan Leistiko and Sharon Cichelli have done a fantastic job putting together a great event!  We played some outstanding prototypes by Andy Van Zandt, Drey Monserrat, Justin De Witt, and many others.  We were also surprised by diamond barely in the rough called Hidden Empires by Greg Turner.  CW Karsten's Dragon Valley seemed to be crowd favorites, as well as Shawn Storie's Quintesential.  It was good times all around.

Saturday night Goblin Workshop hosted an 'after party' in our room (conveniently right next door to the meeting room) and we gave a brief presentation about what we're trying to do and how we'll be doing it.  Overall we received a fantastic reception and the most common response was an eager "So when do you open?"

Eric Dow from Wonko's Toys and Games hosted an 'Ask a Retailer' session that was most enlightening.  He had some great ways for us to help get independent designers in front of retailers that we'll be working into our process.  Our goal would be to give Certified Fun print on-demand games a place in game stores that is separate but comparable to full print-run games.  We have a good idea on how to do this, and we'll have more details about that as we get a bit further into the process.

Overall Protospiel South was fantastic and we highly recommend it to any game designer who wants to receive some quality, thoughtful feedback on their prototype.

- Anthony