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The Protospiel Online Blog

This is the place to find news, discounts, tips, and advice for getting the most out of your Protospiel experience. We'll give you detailed recaps of our own events as well as event dates and general announcements about the wider Protospiel community.

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By Heather Newton Leave a Comment

Protospiel Online January 2021 Badges On Sale

October 26, 2020 By Heather Newton Leave a Comment (Edit)
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Our next Protospiel Online weekend will be January 8-10, 2021, and badges are now on sale!

Event Starts: Friday, January 8 2021 at noon EST
Event Ends: Sunday, January 10 2021 at midnight EST

Early Bird pricing will be available through Monday, December 21 at midnight EST.

If you are one of our Alumni, be sure to check your email and/or the #badge-discounts channel in Discord to get your fast-action Alumni coupon code. This code takes 25% off the publicly available Early Bird badge prices and expires Monday, November 2 at midnight EST.

Moving Badge Sales Away from Tabletop.Events

While Tabletop.Events has served us well throughout our startup phase, we needed to switch to a system that would allow us to automate more of our workflows in Discord. We also needed more control over how badge sale prices are displayed and more room to write detailed product descriptions for what’s included in each of our badge types.

We are now using WooCommerce to sell our badges, which allows us to keep the entire checkout and registration process on our website. This should make for a smoother, more efficient registration experience for both our attendees and our staff.

If you have purchased a badge for one of our past events, you may be surprised when you’re prompted to create a new account during checkout. Don’t worry. We still have a full history of your past purchases in the system we use for email communications. This new account you’ll be prompted to create is for the payment processing system. (We’re still using Stripe to process credit cards, but now it’s integrated through WooCommerce Payments instead of through Tabletop.Events.)

Buy Badges for the next event

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Event Announcements

By Heather Newton Leave a Comment

Board Game Design Virtual Summit Small Group Discussions

September 9, 2020 By Heather Newton Leave a Comment (Edit)
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Some of the links below are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, Protospiel Online will earn a referral commission at no additional cost to you.

We love it when our community members get creative and find new ways to serve the tabletop industry. That’s why we’ve decided to partner with Protospiel Online Alum and Moderator, Joe Slack, to get the word out about his upcoming Board Game Design Virtual Summit.

What is the Board Game Design Virtual Summit?

The Summit is a week-long online event where Joe will host interviews with some of our industry’s top experts such as Jamey Stegmaier, Sen-Foong Lim, Elizabeth Hargrave, and many more. It runs Monday, Sept 14 at 10am EDT through Sunday, Sept 20 at midnight EDT.

When you sign up, you can choose between 4 Pass levels: All Access, Platinum, Ultimate, and Free. 60% off early bird pricing is available through the start of the Summit on Sept 14 at 10am EDT.

All pass levels will have access to the main content for the Summit: 3 new pre-recorded interviews per day released each day at 10am EDT.

Once each interview is released, it will be available on-demand until the Summit wraps up on Sept 20. The average interview length is 30 minutes.

On the final day, instead of releasing new interviews, Joe will host a live Q&A at 1pm EDT with a selection of the interviewees.

Free Pass holders will lose access to the content at the end of the Summit on Sept 20 at midnight EDT. All other Pass holders will have lifetime access to this content.

Platinum and Ultimate Pass holders will also receive 9 bonus interviews after the Summit with a selection of the interviewees.

Ultimate Pass holders will get lifetime access to Joe’s Board Game Design Course and a 6 month membership in his community with 2 live group calls per month.

The Board Game Design Virtual Summit presented by Joe Slack

Who’s presenting at the Summit?

One of our key values at Protospiel Online is working towards more diversity and representation in the tabletop industry. Joe’s list of presenters is an awesome example of how to do this well.

Here’s the full list of topics and presenters included in the Free Pass:

  • Peter C. Hayward – Why Playtesting is So Crucial
  • Daryl Andrews – How to Design an IP Game
  • Eric Slauson – Making Party Games That Get Published
  • Gabe Barrett – Building an Amazing Community
  • Brandon Rollins – Growing Your Following From Zero to Over 2,000
  • Nalin Chuapetcharasopon – How to Market Your Board Game and Get Results
  • Victoria Cana – Using Conventions to Help You Find Success on Kickstarter
  • Jay Cormier – Transitioning From Designing to Publishing
  • Jamey Stegmaier – How to Run a Successful Publishing Business
  • Elizabeth Hargrave – How to Develop a Great Relationship With a Publisher
  • Curt Covert – Understanding What Publishers Really Want
  • Jeff Fraser – How to Create a Rule Book that Players Will Actually Understand
  • Brittany & Mark Maia – Partnering with Influencers
  • Tristam Rossin – Working With Artists and Graphic Designers
  • Sarah Graybill & Kerry Rundle – Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Manufacturing But Were Too Afraid to Ask
  • Kathleen Mercury – Combining Teaching and Board Games
  • AJ Brandon – What Customers Are Looking For: A Retailer’s Perspective
  • Sen-Foong Lim – Understanding Game Contracts
[Read more…] about Board Game Design Virtual Summit Small Group Discussions

Filed Under: Blog

By Heather Newton Leave a Comment

Protospiel Online July 2020 Recap

August 19, 2020 By Heather Newton Leave a Comment (Edit)
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Protospiel Online July 2020 was our first open-to-the-public event. This brand new online format for playtesting conventions gave us the chance to try several new ideas. We aimed to create an event that would bring the Protospiel community together while reaching out to a wider audience. In this article, we’ll take a look behind the scenes at how we planned the convention and see how each of our ideas worked out.

A New Way to Protospiel

One of our favorite things about Protospiel is its low barrier to entry. Prototypes with any level of polish are welcome. There are always plenty of seasoned designers ready to playtest for others and offer advice. It’s common to hear someone ask “What game did you bring? Can we play it?” All of these things add up to make Protospiel a great place for new designers to take their first steps in the tabletop industry.

We’ll be the first to admit that online conventions can’t completely replace in-person playtesting. We can’t observe players’ body language or feel the satisfaction of looking around the room to find ourselves surrounded by like-minded people. At the same time, the online format can be a powerful way to bring Protospiel to a wider and more diverse audience.

For those who want to see more diversity and representation in tabletop gaming, supporting diversity among designers is an important piece of the puzzle. In recent years, we as a Protospiel community have tried with limited success to increase diversity at our in-person events. We believe this shift to online events could be the perfect opportunity to broaden our horizons — as long as we’re willing to lean in and accept the challenge.

Protospiel Online July 2020 Charity Fundraiser

For our test event in April 2020, we ran a fundraiser for Tabletop.Events (TTE), the online registration platform many Protospiels use to manage their ticket sales. By the time we were ready to open ticket sales for Protospiel Online July 2020, TTE had successfully raised funds to keep running through the end of the year. Shortly after that, they sold the business to Board Game Geek to ensure more long-term financial stability. Since TTE no longer needed help raising funds, we decided to turn our attention to a different cause that more urgently needed support.

Taking a Stand for Equality

After listening to stories and perspectives of our BIPOC friends in the tabletop games industry, we decided to put our money where our mouth is in our commitment to be better allies in their fight for equality and representation — within the tabletop industry and beyond. Special thanks to Eric Slauson for his referrals to the following established organizations fighting for equality in the United States:

  • National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
  • American Civil Liberties Union
  • The Equal Justice Initiative
  • The Innocence Project
  • The National Police Accountability Project

You can read more about each of these organizations on our charities page.

We gave each attendee the opportunity to give 10% of their badge cost to one organization, an equal split to all five, or none. We also offered all badge holders the option to donate an extra $5, $10, $20, or $50 to one organization or an equal split to all five (less TTE transaction fees).

We are pleased to announce that the Protospiel Online July 2020 crew raised a total of $479.70 for these five charities! Here’s how the giving broke out:

Protospiel Online July 2020 Recap -- Donut chart showing the breakdown of charity funds raised: ACLU 22.8%, NAACP 21.5%, EJI 21.3%, IP 17.9%, NPAP 16.5%
ACLU – $109.24, NAACP – $103.24, EJI – $102.24, IP – $85.74, NPAP – $79.24
[Read more…] about Protospiel Online July 2020 Recap

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Event Recaps

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