Partnerships & CPE
- realitypsi
- Jun 21, 2020
- 6 min read
The WeltenWerker Konvent, Partners, Entrepreneurial Aspects and a Look into the Future
WeltenWerker Konvent – CPE
The WeltenWerker Konvent (World Builder's Convention) is a fair that took place in Gießen on the 7th and 8th of March 2020. It originated from the LARPwerker convention and provided exhibition space for artists, designers, craftspeople and (role-playing) game makers alike, thereby providing excellent context for my project.
As my physical CPE, I had a booth at the fair – kindly sponsered by the WeltenWerker Orga. Special thanks to Ric Sattler for organizing the communication around the event and approving the funding!
"Why WeltenWerker? Because we all have something in common: We create worlds, design them or enter them to play there."
The target groups for my project and the other booths align very well. Role-playing games draw audiences, involve players and span mediums like no other gaming genre. In contrast to casual or family gaming, role-playing usually takes up a lot of the player's time, with many of them investing in gadgets, costumes and merchandise, and developing a character or campaign over years.
The character creation, play-acting, costume design, campaign management and prop making shows how many of these players, who are otherwise considered recipients, are artists, designers and craftspeople of their own. It is their passion, teamplay and creative energy that turns the games into what they are now and makes for such a rich, varied and closely connected scene.
I chose this event because of this crowd: players and fans that have become creators and storytellers themselves, and whose enthusiasm and commitment is needed to bring the idea of the creatoconsumer from the conceptual realm into reality.
Not only the visitors were important for the development of the project, though - the other exhibitors turned out to be a valued ressource, as well, and quite a few of the connections made at the WWK will be ground for coming REALITY PSI projects.
This networking opportunity as well as, of course, the funding provided by the WeltenWerker team, is another reason for why this was a great event to host my exhibition. Connections made here may pose as starting points for future collaboration with, for example, the German Live Role-Playing Association (DLRV) and Waldritter e.V.
I used this platform to create two of my games (of The Turn) together with visitors, play The Conversation and The Instrument, collect more participants for The Hermann Story and The Interactive Story, and, of course, to promote REALITY PSI.
At the WWK, I met Amber and Josef, with whom I created The Clod and te Skull on site. We are planning to get together again next year to refine the prototype and most likely invent another game!
It is also where I initiated The Beermat Game, with its short and inspiring assignment drawing visitors to a booth with no known franchises displayed, and where there was nothing to buy.
Schedule
On my table, I exhibited the materials for the Turn games, the iArts info document, my Position Paper, the first (and at the time only) version of The Conversation cards and sign-up sheets for The Hermann Story and The Interactive Story.
I gave out misprints of the original Conversation cards in plastic card covers as business cards, with my contact information and the invitation to come and connect online on the back.
While events such as talks, raffles and game rounds could be held in the appropriate areas, the walking audience was my main target. I lured them in with empty beermats to design and the free Convo cards – if you don't come home from a fair with a trunk full of takeaway leaflets and prints, were you even really there?
We spent quite a few hours on creating The Clod and te Skull, then playtesting it and immediately promoting the prototype. The DLRV (German Live Role-Playing Association) put my business cards on display and thus created traffic for my booth that led to some promising collaboration opportunities for the future.
The Beermat Game was created in passing, bit by bit.
On the second day, I hosted playtests of The Instrument, creating stories such as the one in which there's a pancake stuck to a ceiling, blind magicians communicate with horses, secret manuscripts are on fire and someone falls out of a window, repeatedly.
That day, I also had some family and friends visiting that relieved me from my position for a while, so that I could take a stroll across the other halls and have a look around the other exhibitor's showings. I saw some familiar faces from other events and from online.
Working with other partners
FiS eV - Förderkreis innovatives Spiel e.V.
For the most part of 2019, I was living in Coburg, Bavaria.
Initially, there didn't seem to be a proper project-related reason for that choice, but then I found out about the FiS eV, a club supporting and entertaining innovative gaming. I got in contact with their LARP representative (my project at the time still being focused on a live event), and after pitching my idea on the forum visited their monthly gathering to get to know some people in person.
The gatherings are fun meetings where members of the club as well as outsiders get together to play and talk about gaming – mainly board or tabletop and pen-and-paper role-playing games. The people there were very welcoming and let me observe and analyze them playing and setting up a new campaign with a system that was unknown to most of the players. Seeing the experienced gamers' take and interpretation of the new rules helped me in my early process development, when what are now the games was mere philosophical pondering in dire need of concrete mechanics and techniques.
Unfortunately, due to Corona and my moving away at a crucial time for playtesting, our collaboration was cut short in the executional stage of my project. I do, however, plan on staying in contact and coming back to Coburg to create and test more pieces together with the experts there.
Board Game Club Goethe University Frankfurt
I met H. and D. in (September) 2019; we visited the SPIEL fair Essen together.
We talked about different types of innovative games, the impact on collaborative mechanics on a group of players and specific aspects we liked about existing board games, clichés that we might want to twist around and beloved concepts that we might want to frame in a new way to use in our own creations.
Frankie, JB Chulio
Credit and a big thank you also goes out to all the people that have supported me in the stages of research and concept development. Two people that deserve a special calling out here are
- Frankie, who has provided me with materials and resources for research regarding game design, serious gaming and the psychology of the gamer, as well as world building and storytelling mechanics in games. We have played many games together and discussed their elements and why they worked (made for a fun session) or didn't work.
- JB Chulio, my tech counselor, video game expert and arch rival in competitive Tetris.
Coaching by these two has helped me tremendously, and I will keep consulting their expertise in the future.
A Look into the Future
Thanks to the collaborative character of most of the games and the partnerships with other institutions, some new opportunities for potential future cooperation have already arisen. At the moment, I am in contact with different people I met through the WWK, an online ressource, or contributors for a game. Some of them already supported me while studying, some I've just talked to a bit, but with all of them I'm looking forward to the things we might create together.
Such contacts include:
Viktoria L.
Christian S.
David S.
Potential future collaborations:
Alea Libris Publishing
Ayreeworks
Fabelrot
Forgotten Creatures
Galactic Developments
Hessen ist sozial
Magister Schauenburg
storylike
Die Weltenbastler
Seeing the perspectives of expert from different fields that cross mine has given me new inspiration and excitement to keep working on REALITY PSI after graduating iArts, and the confidence to tackle bigger projects.
Entrepreneurial Outlook
It was never my main intention to earn money by selling the products that were made collaboratively.
It is, however, a fact that maintaining this studio (including the website) costs money. That is why I have decided to accept donations for the final games, with clear descriptions of what each donation will be used for (e.g. The Interactive Story - illustrations in the game).
The printed Conversation cards can already be bought via pre-order, and what has not been spent on materials and printing will be used to maintain the website and to fund other projects.
In the future, I do aim for the studio to pay for itself (without giving a wage to myself), while still counting on donations and artistic contributions from collaborators, fans and others – keeping it a creative organisation rather than letting it become a for-profit firm.
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