Board game scene in Athens

I just returned from a beautiful vacation in Greece (Athens, a mountain village called Valtesiniko and the island Paros) to relax and overthink the direction I want to take in my professional life. These months, I'm mostly working on freelance webdesign projects and a web based system that my clients can use to update their websites, and be in full control of member/shop/marketing management. Before the vacation it felt like investing too much... But I decided that all this hard work and low income will eventually pay off.

Board game scene in Athens

Since I was on a vacation I didn't have enough time to get to know everything about the scene in Athens, but I can share some interesting details (and please correct me if I'm wrong!)...

Playhouse is a 2 floor bar, with many card & board games (I even saw a couple of games in german). Every non-gamer teenager seems to know about it. When you sit down for a drink you can "rent" a game for 1 euro, and one of the "game masters" will come to your table to explain it. Unfortunately I didn't have time to sit down and see how this works but I have to say... I was impressed by the place, it had a nice modern mixed with fantasy style (there was a big dragon on the ceiling) and they were able to draw a lot of casual board game gamers (and new players!).

Espairos is a monthly game gathering for the hard core boardgame gamers of Athens. I went to the July meeting where I could demonstrate and sell Day & Night. I sold all the games I brought with me on the plane (7) and had the opportunity to sell maybe double at the meeting itself. Again I was impressed by the place, as it had several rooms - in every room there was a different game going on, with a different atmosphere... Different than I'm used to; all games together in one big room with always a chaotic atmosphere. People were very enthousiastic and friendly. They didn't seem to like Playhouse though.

Shops and distribution in Greece

Again, since I was on vacation there is not so much knowledge I can share here. Again some details;

There are two chains of shops that every game enthousiast know; Kaissa and Fantasy Shop. Kaissa has 18 shops (9 in Athens) in Greece, Fantasy Shop 12 shops (9 in Athens). Both chains also translate and produce games to distribute in their own shops. Kaissa translates many well-known games (all the games seem to have a different color tone) to the greek language. It was funny to see the greek Carcassonne, it was based on and named after a greek town instead of the french one.

Unfortunately, all companies in Greece seem to be pretty disorganised; and it takes a long time and energy to get in contact with the right people. Kaissa is considering to order Day & Nights (in English) and even to translate and produce Day & Night next year.

I will try to get into contact with Fantasy Shop one of these days.

I will let you know how this goes!

Day & Night at the ABC Amsterdam!

The 4th of April Illustrator Eerin Vink and I demonstrated the Day & Night board game to customers of the American Book Center in Amsterdam.

Unfortunately, most of the customers were there for the books, not for games... That made it hard to sell the games. People were excited though and we got a lot of positive reactions on the design and illustrations of the game. It was also very nice to meet a polish couple that was so excited about the game they offered to translate it in polish if we would need it!

The 13th of April will be very different; we'll be at an event with a good target audience - board game fanatics. Zuiderspel posted a good promotional news message on their website (in dutch though):

3 april 2009: Spel auteur en illustratrice van spelprimeur 'Day & Night' op Zuiderspel aanwezig.
Spel auteur Valentijn Eekels en illustratrice Eerin Vink presenteren op Zuiderspel voor een eerste keer op een beurs het strategische bordspel vol illustraties "Day & Night"!. Eerin schildert tijdens de beurs voor het oog van de bezoeker een Day & Night kunstwerk dat bezoekers kunnen winnen door deel te nemen aan een wedstrijd. Meer informatie over Day & Night: http://dn.mystics.nl.

The event is in Eindhoven, and it's the first time they organise it. I'm not sure about the number of visitors, they think between 500 and 700.

The Day & Night website can now be found on the "international" link www.dn-boardgame.com (should be a lot better for search engines too).