How to run a megagame - part 3
Chris continues our series on how to run a megagame, using lessons learned from running First Contact: 2035 - a 200 player megagame about alien arrival - earlier this year.
Your ticket offering
Pricing and selling tickets can be a little tricky. Until recently, most UK megagames were priced at £30 per ticket, however there now appears to be some experimentation with ticket prices including raising base ticket costs, “choose what you pay”, group discounts and concession models.
In the US, pricing generally runs between $25-$45 for most games, but it really depends on a number of different factors that you’ll have to work out as megagames are not known to most people.
If you’re running the first megagame in your area, you might want to aggressively price your tickets to attract players and then rely on word-of-mouth to entice a larger group of people with a higher ticket price at the second game. If however you’re running your game in an area that knows what megagames are, you could price differently so have a think about your options.
Pricing too low, or even offering a completely free game, could devalue the experience in your players’ eyes, to the point where they may not bother turning up, or fail to tell you they won’t be playing, as it only cost them $5 and something else came up on the same weekend.
The budget you create will also guide you on how much you should price tickets, if you wish to at least break even. Depending on your plans, you may decide to create a loss-leading game to spread the wonders of megagaming through your local community but this is not always viable.
When you come to sell your tickets, I’d recommend Ticket Tailor and Stripe (for the financial processing). There are more details about both offerings in this post, but for me it boils down to cost and customer care. The cost of using Ticket Tailor and Stripe is the same as PayPal at the time of writing in the UK. By using these platforms you’ll get a full ticketing platform and automatic access to the funds seven days after players make their purchases.
This compares to the market leader, Eventbrite, that charges a lot more for using their platform and by default only provides the funds after an event has run.
Another model you may consider using is asking potential players to register their interest using a Google form, or another data collection method. At this point you won’t take any money for tickets, but should you feel you have enough interest, you then contact everyone on your list to ask them to purchase tickets.
This method does increase the amount of admin you’ll need to manage, but you will avoid the cost of refunds should you have to cancel the event due to lack of player interest. There is also the danger that the people who have signed up do not convert into paying players, but they may never have paid for a ticket regardless.
Getting the word out
This can be a difficult one, primarily because megagames are not widely known and a standard elevator pitch hasn’t been developed to easily impart what your players will be doing at a game.
That said, there is the video that was shot by Shut Up & Sit Down about their experience at the first Watch The Skies game, megagame reports by players and designers on our site, and social media accounts you can send people to in order to find out more.
For further ideas on marketing your game, I’d suggest checking out the MegaCon marketing video and Rob Grayston’s Megagame Marketing 101 post.
I have become convinced recently that in addition to utilising social media such as Facebook and Instagram, word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective tool that can be utilised by megagame organisers. Your friends and work colleagues may already be part of your organising and/or control team – ask them to help spread the word. Additionally, there could be board game cafes, role-playing or LARP groups in your area. Get in contact with their organisers online and ask if you can promote your game in their channels. You might be surprised about how much interest there is.
Another good option could be targeting students. For First Contact, we sent individual messages to all the UK university societies that are megagame adjacent, for example board game and LARP societies. As with any cold contact, responses differed between groups, but we certainly saw some students signing up for the concession tickets that we offered. Contacting local universities may be an option for you too.
If you can obtain interested player’s contact details and their permission to send them emails, that is ideal. Set up a Mailchimp account to manage the collection, storage and creation of your marketing emails and over time you will hopefully have a database of players wanting to play your next game with minimal marketing effort.
Marketing megagames is hard but not impossible. If you don’t feel completely confident in marketing straight away, perhaps organise a smaller game and work up from there (or ask that extroverted friend who loves talking to everyone they meet for help).
Megagame Assembly can help
In case you’re not aware, we maintain global and regional calendars on our site and you can easily have your megagame added. Just let us know what your game is called, when it will run (date and times), where players can purchase tickets, an outline of the game and provide an image that you would like to be used and we’ll do the rest.
You never know who may stumble over the calendar and see your game listed, and best of all your listing will be completely FREE!
We also have a Facebook group where you are welcome to post about your game - don’t forget to link to a website or Facebook page for more information and where prospective players can buy tickets. As a guide, you should ensure that you add the date the game will run, its title, and some background on what the game is about. You can provide far more information at the link you provide so try not to overwhelm the post with too much detail.
What do you think? Is Chris right about word-of-mouth marketing, or is he completely off base? Tell us what you think on our Facebook group!
Part 4 of this series includes information on casting questionnaires and the importance of staying in contact with your players between games.