profile

Hi! We're your Protospiel Online Content Team

Board Game Design Virtual Summit 2024 -- Community Newsletter Issue 24

Published 3 months ago • 3 min read

Hey Reader!

Some links in the below message are affiliate links. If you choose to make a purchase after clicking one of these links, Protospiel Online will earn a commission at no additional cost to you

David Kessler here.

The 2024 Board Game Design Virtual Summit is coming soon! The Summit is a week-long game design event, featuring interviews with industry experts, live Q&A panels, and more!

HERE'S WHAT YOU'LL GET

  • A week-long free event for board game designers
  • In-depth interviews with board game industry experts
  • Live Q&A panels with speakers from the Summit (paid passes)
  • Lifetime access to all the content (paid passes)

Three new interviews will be released every day at 10am EST for each of the first 4 days. You can watch them any time after release during the week of the Summit.
Day 1: Launching your game with success
Day 2: Getting your games out into the world
Day 3: Expanding your reach in the board game industry
Day 4: Supports for creators

Among other awesome interviews this year, Protospiel Online’s very own Lead Organizer, Heather Newton, will be speaking about hosting online gaming events. Her interview will be released on Day 4, Feb 23 and her live Q&A session, available only to paid pass holders, will be Feb 25 at 1pm EST.

The Board Game Design Virtual Summit Discord server will open up on February 20th at 10am EST and will be available for the duration of the event so that you can connect with other game designers, and even playtest your games.

The Summit is brought to you by Joe Slack, one of PO's longest-standing moderators. Heather's main interview topic is How to Organize an Online Gaming Event and her bonus interview topic is Discord Tips & Tricks. She's on the live Q&A panel on Crowdfunding and More with Amy & Dusty Droz and David Diaz.

The Summit runs Feb 20-26, 2024. Early Bird pricing ends Feb 6.

Count down to 2024-02-07T02:00:00.000Z

Here are your options for joining the Board Game Design Virtual Summit:

📣Announcements Announcements Annooouuuncements!

GAMA has some exciting news to share about GAMA EXPO in March:

Designer Day will be held on Sunday, March 3, 2024 as a GAMA EXPO pre-conference for game designers and publishers, with the intent to move all designers at all levels forward in their careers. All voting members of GAMA attending the EXPO are welcome to attend, especially designers and publishers.


Not a GAMA member? Great news!


GAMA is providing Designer Day as a service to the industry to connect designers with publisher members, and as such, Designer Day will be free for non-GAMA and non-voting GAMA member game designers. In addition, admission to GAMA EXPO will be granted to Designer Day attendees,

Designer Day will include 10 sessions lead by a variety of speakers:

  1. How to Find, Pitch, and Negotiate with Publishers with Tam Myaing and David Gordon (Freelance Designers)
  2. Working with a Developer with John Brieger (Brieger Creative)
  3. Spend Your Money Effectively with Jon Ritter-Roderick (Kickstarter) and Maggie Clayton (Exploding Kittens)
  4. Solo Design with Carla Kopp (Weird Giraffe)
  5. Post-Mortem: Lessons Learned with Luke Peterschmidt (Asmodee NA) and Chris O'Neill (9th Level Games)
  6. Designing Your Game with a Business Mindset: Pat Marino (The Op)
  7. Self-Publishing Roadmap with Gwen Ruelle (Runaway Parade Games)
  8. Crossover Between RPGs and Tabletop with Heather O'Neill (9th Level Games) and Matt Orr (Wet Ink Games)
  9. Waking Up Your Designer Brain with Matt Fantastic (Forever Stoked Creative) and Kathleen Mercury (Game Designer/Educator)
  10. Cult Generation (Building a Community) with Jennifer Graham-Macht (Keymaster) and Dannie Loe (Flat River Group)

Other Designer Day opportunities include Playtesting, Game Scouting, and a structured networking event Sunday evening for all Designer Day attendees and GAMA members. If you have any questions, please email designer.day@gama.org.

To register, submit this Google form.

When GAMA receives your form submission, they’ll send you a discount code to allow you to register your Designer badge free of cost through Tabletop.Events.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for more awesome events, community opportunities, and updates about games tested at Protospiel!

~David

P.S. If you have something you'd like to see featured in our Community Newsletter, you have 3 options -- either submit an official feature request, reply to this message, or, if you're a current attendee or alumni, post in the #🙌share-your-wins channel in the Protospiel Online Discord server to let us know the details. We'd love to celebrate you!

Hi! We're your Protospiel Online Content Team

We love helping our community of game designers and playtesters find encouragement and connection through our virtual conventions and the supporting content like our Twitch streams, YouTube channel, and Community Newsletter. It lights us up to see all the amazing milestones Protospiel community members are reaching with their game designs.

Read more from Hi! We're your Protospiel Online Content Team

Hey Reader! Heather Newton here. When Protospiel Online attendees playtest with me and find out I'm the main person organizing the event, they sometimes ask me what prototypes I brought to test for the weekend. My response is that they've been playtesting my game the whole time they've been engaging with the convention. I suspect plenty of people think I'm kidding when I say this. While I might say it with a bit of a chuckle, I do mean what I say. This session, I made the prototype listing...

3 days ago • 5 min read

Hey Reader! David Kessler here. Congratulations to Leonie Grundler and the team at Lioness games who launched their new game Biome on Kickstarter, and it funded in just nine minutes! Biome combines strategic card placements and engine building in a nature themed tableau builder. You’ll raise baby animals, feed and protect them, achieve biodiversity, and activate unique flora and fauna abilities to create the best Biome and win the game! Biome comes with real straw nests. And yes, you get to...

about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Ironwood: A Protospiel Success Story

Hey Reader! Emily Vincent here. Our Protospiel Community is incredibly inspiring and we love to celebrate each others' wins! Today is one of those stories, of playtesting that led to dreams coming true. Ironwood In 2022, at the summer Protospiel Online, Maël Brunet and Julien Chaput playtested their game "Black Flag." A few months later, after pitching it all around, they received 3 offers to sign the game! Mindclash Games was more than they could dream of and after one year of very dedicated...

2 months ago • 1 min read
Share this post