Design Day 2022 Recap

This weekend, Stonemaier Games hosted its ninth annual Design Day. On Sunday, the Design Day itself featured designers, playtesters, and gamers from St. Louis and around the country for 12+ hours of playtesting and gaming at Pieces Board Game Bar and Cafe.

The purpose of Design Day is to bring together designers, playtesters, and content creators to give and receive feedback on game prototypes, expand their network within the gaming community, and learn from clever mechanisms in published games. If you’d like to know details about how the day is structured, you can read about previous Design Days here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Why We Run This Event

On paper, the event doesn’t make all that much sense. We’re not promoting anything. There’s really no focus on Stonemaier Games at all. Attendees pay a fee to cover the 3 meals provided by Pieces, but we lose money on the event. And we’re really not a convention- or event-driven company.

To put it simply, Design Day is just something we like doing. We like doing it for the designers, the playtesters and gamers, and the content creators. The creative energy is palpable and inspiring, and it seems to be a worthwhile, joyous experience for attendees. I’m also on the lookout for future Stonemaier products, but I’m mostly just trying to be helpful to other creators and maybe help them find the right publisher.

How Does Design Day Work?

• We opened ticket sales in the spring to past attendees, then any remaining tickets went to e-newsletter subscribers who signed up before they sold out (space is limited at Pieces to around 100 people). We charged $40-45 per ticket, which covers about 40% of the total food/beverage/space cost for the day (Stonemaier subsidized the rest).
• We sent a email each month each containing new information and an actionable step for attendees. Probably the most complicated step is creating the calendar of events, which requires us to consider game length, player count, table size, etc.
• Pieces Board Game Bar and Cafe provided the space, food, and drinks (and access to their huge game collection). We have Pieces serve their delicious homemade cookies throughout the day (though they’re so big–we might ask for smaller versions next year), and attendees enjoyed their delicious gaming-themed alcoholic beverages. Pieces has its busiest day on Saturday (and Saturday is just a busy day in that area of St. Louis), hence why Design Day is on Sunday.
• The schedule of the day is preset. People sign up for tables in advance (we guarantee that each designer who signs up in advance will get to playtest their game at least twice). It’s very structured. Past attendees know this system really well, so we never had to interrupt the day with a single announcement, yet every game ran on schedule. Attendees were also flexible for games that ended early or when the designers didn’t show up–they simply picked another game to play.
• A mix of unpublished prototypes and published games were played, with the intent being that each can inform the experiences of the other. There’s this great mindset of talking about game design from all angles throughout the day.
• I spent most of the day observing various games, asking leading questions to designers, and trying to have a few minutes of quality time with each attendee.
• COVID safety: We are responsible for the safety and well-being of our guests, so we (a) admitted only vaccinated attendees, (b) incentivized that people get the most recent booster in advance by raffling a Nesting Box to boosted participants, (c) asked attendees to avoid any possible COVID exposures leading up to the event, and (d) required masking throughout the day. Last year these methods resulted in zero attendees getting sick, and so far that seems to be the case again this year.
• Content creators: Like last year, we invited a few content creators to join us for the day. A few couldn’t make it due to flight issues, but it was great to meet Jazz (The Lobby of Hobbies) in person for the first time and it was great to see Roberto (Shear Boardom), Rob (Beans & Dice), and Dusty (The Mill) again.

What Was Different About This Year?

• Disc golf: We like to give people–particularly those who travel–some options of things to do on Saturday. One local attendee, Melissa, is always very kind to open up her home for a gaming evening, and some attendees visit friends or sightsee in St. Louis. Given my newfound love of disc golf, this year I thought it would be fun to teach/play a round with any interested attendees, so a little over a dozen of us gathered at Willmore Park on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. We split up into three groups and had a great time.
• Food: We went full buffet this year, and the flexibility of it was great. Bagels and muffins in the morning, dips at lunch, and taco bar in the evening. There were options for a variety of diets, though next year we need to offer a substantial, well-labeled gluten-free option at every meal, along with more fruits and veggies.
• Design notes: Instead of just watching playtest sessions, this year I tried to asking the designer leading questions about their game, what they’re learning from playtesters, and what they’re trying to accomplish with their game. I’m not sure if that was helpful, but I tried!
• Rating system: Since Design Day isn’t a competition, this year we revised the rating system to the following:

Based on this new rating scale–basically, how close to a successful publishable game are they–here are the top-rated games of Design Day 2022.

1. Stamp Swap by Paul Salomon (5.94)
2. Biologique by Michelle Jones (5.60)
3. Shape Up! by Charles Strehlow (5.37)
4. Spindle by Brian Beal (5.30)
5. Clandestine by Jason Brooks (5.20)
6. Redwood by Mondo Davis (5.14)
7. LAIRZ: Lifestyles of the Vile & Villainous by Tom Ackerman (5.06)
8. Moons of Eridani by Caner Cooperrider (5.00)
9. Motifs by Nathan Neumann (5.00)
10. WIZ U (working title) by Pete Wissinger and Matt Essner (4.89)

If publishers are curious to learn more about some of these games, I’m happy to talk to you about them and connect you to the designers (if they’re looking for a publisher)!

Next Year

I think we’ve found a good groove for Design Day, so other than the gluten-free options (and more fruits and veggies) and probably shifting back to September so visitors can attend a Cardinals game, next year will probably look very similar to this year. We always send out a survey to attendees after the event, so we’ll see if there’s anything else we need to adjust. The event is all about the guests, and we want them to have a positive experience.

Have you found value in running or attending events related to your industry? If you want to attend Design Day next year, we’ll likely announce any available slots in our April e-newsletter.

***

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

• Tweet