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SPIEL.digital
Dec. 5th, 2020 08:12 amI have no idea whether SPIEL.digital was successful or not. It wasn't really designed for fan-to-fan interaction. Game- and table-specific chat was spread over multiple Discord servers which appear to have been purged of non-dealer users every night. None of the channels I wound up on had much traffic. Even during my early mornings, overlapping with the German afternoon, I didn't see many other people. I don't know whether they were all somewhere else or there just weren't many other attendees.
It did look pretty cool, though.
This was the dealers' room. It was divided into categories like casual games, expert games, toys, and so forth, and the virtual booth for a given dealer would appear in every category. A booth would get a green outline after I visited, which would persist when I encountered the booth in another zone.
Individual booth pages were much like the ones at Virtually Expo: a description of the business, a list of games and events, links to contact them directly or join their virtual tables. Also like Virtually Expo, there was no attempt for the con to provide its own shopping platform.
The coolest thing I found was a whole virtual world. This had originally been constructed by a group of gaming companies for Castle TriCon, a gaming con local to Germany. There were links from the company booths to an ongoing event with its own (free) registration. After downloading the Windows app and entering my access code, I was wandering around in this:
A variety of avatars were available, as usual none of them really matched me, so I decided to be Lara Croft.
One of the sub-worlds within it had a scavenger hunt, which I spent a fun couple of hours trying:
The virtual world worked much like Gather, in that when you approached other users a video chat would start. In this way, you could walk up to the virtual demo table, ask questions about the game, and be able to talk while playing a demo round on a virtual tabletop site.
In this way I got to play Unicorn Frenzy on Tabletopia with a demo-er who was actually in France. It's a fun game about betting on unicorns as they race up the rainbow (and meddling with the race a bit too). Would recommend.
At another point, the SO and I tried Reichbusters: Project Vril, a co-op game where your team fights its way though a stronghold of Nazi supernatural research to rescue a prisoner and/or steal an artifact (mission goals can vary from run to run). Not quite my thing, but the SO thought it was good.
This one was demoed by a man with a very obvious Italian name and accent, who said he'd never been to Spiel Essen in person, because he lives in Georgia and didn't get into Eurogames until after he immigrated.
There were also a wide variety of fascinating-sounding games which either weren't being demoed or which never accumulated enough people to try playing while I was logged in. Top of my list would be Village War: The Calamity, published by a Nigerian company and advertised as drawing from Igbo history and legends.
For local flavor, Friday night of the con, the SO reminded me that there is a German restaurant around here, so we got takeout from there. I had potato pancakes, Bavarian-style meatballs, and something like a bread pudding, all very good. I don't think I've ever had specifically German food before.
As a marketing exercise, I think SPIEL.digital mostly achieved its goal, in that it got me interested in a bunch of stuff and looking for opportunities to play. As a convention, it was a disappointment.
It did look pretty cool, though.
This was the dealers' room. It was divided into categories like casual games, expert games, toys, and so forth, and the virtual booth for a given dealer would appear in every category. A booth would get a green outline after I visited, which would persist when I encountered the booth in another zone.
Individual booth pages were much like the ones at Virtually Expo: a description of the business, a list of games and events, links to contact them directly or join their virtual tables. Also like Virtually Expo, there was no attempt for the con to provide its own shopping platform.
The coolest thing I found was a whole virtual world. This had originally been constructed by a group of gaming companies for Castle TriCon, a gaming con local to Germany. There were links from the company booths to an ongoing event with its own (free) registration. After downloading the Windows app and entering my access code, I was wandering around in this:
A variety of avatars were available, as usual none of them really matched me, so I decided to be Lara Croft.
One of the sub-worlds within it had a scavenger hunt, which I spent a fun couple of hours trying:
The virtual world worked much like Gather, in that when you approached other users a video chat would start. In this way, you could walk up to the virtual demo table, ask questions about the game, and be able to talk while playing a demo round on a virtual tabletop site.
In this way I got to play Unicorn Frenzy on Tabletopia with a demo-er who was actually in France. It's a fun game about betting on unicorns as they race up the rainbow (and meddling with the race a bit too). Would recommend.
At another point, the SO and I tried Reichbusters: Project Vril, a co-op game where your team fights its way though a stronghold of Nazi supernatural research to rescue a prisoner and/or steal an artifact (mission goals can vary from run to run). Not quite my thing, but the SO thought it was good.
This one was demoed by a man with a very obvious Italian name and accent, who said he'd never been to Spiel Essen in person, because he lives in Georgia and didn't get into Eurogames until after he immigrated.
There were also a wide variety of fascinating-sounding games which either weren't being demoed or which never accumulated enough people to try playing while I was logged in. Top of my list would be Village War: The Calamity, published by a Nigerian company and advertised as drawing from Igbo history and legends.
For local flavor, Friday night of the con, the SO reminded me that there is a German restaurant around here, so we got takeout from there. I had potato pancakes, Bavarian-style meatballs, and something like a bread pudding, all very good. I don't think I've ever had specifically German food before.
As a marketing exercise, I think SPIEL.digital mostly achieved its goal, in that it got me interested in a bunch of stuff and looking for opportunities to play. As a convention, it was a disappointment.
