Plan some games

We have found that sharing an empty event is not effective. You want anyone viewing your event to have something to look at. Ideally, they see something exciting and claim a seat, confirming that they will be attending your event. It may also inspire them to plan one of their own. You can plan several different types of games depending on the type of event you’re planning:

• Learn-to-plays - These games will have a teacher assigned and anyone signing up can feel good about showing up knowing nothing about the game.
• Demos - These games will be taught by the designer or a team member and may be full games or partial games depending on the designer’s preferences or the lengths of the game.
• **Playtest -** These games will usually be led by the design team and may be full or partial games where participants are encouraged to give feedback after playing.
  • A super handy tip to give your playtesters is to encourage anyone who plays their game to continue recording thoughts in the chat of the play log so that they can still capture the reflections that take longer to develop.
• Tournament - Plan a game as usual, then change the name and maximum player count to make it clear it’s a tournament.

Games planned by you or your admins will display your group’s logo and will be considered Official Games for the purposes of searching games with the Official filter turned on.

Get the word out

Don’t neglect your socials calendar. Getting attendees onboard early ensures everyone has a chance to play something they’re really excited about.

Get your whole team on the same page

Make sure your team is familiar with how you’re using Aftergame. If you’ve planned a bunch of learn to plays, your team should be able to help people join a game. If you’ve added your games library, your team should be able to show people how to use it to find out what games are available. If you’re hosting a Play-to-Win, your team should know how to help people if they’re having trouble submitting their entries.

Focus on the attendee experience

While we obviously love when people join Aftergame, if someone is having technical issues setting up an account (it’s rare but does happen occasionally) the focus should be on enabling that person to still do the thing they’re trying to do through the app. If they want to make an account to look for a game to join, you can look on your app to see what’s available and help them join a table.

• If it’s an official game that you’ve planned, you can decrease the player count for the game by one and inform the game chat that the person will be joining. (This is ideal.)
• If you haven’t planned it, you can put a note in the game chat for the organizer that the seat you’ve just claimed is for this other person. (This gets messier but is still moving in the direction of getting the person into a game.)

Control the messaging

Sometimes there’s some resistance from folks who don’t want to get another app just to use at a convention. We’ve found that working some of the things you can do outside of an event setting (shared game logs, finding people to play games with, joining groups, etc.) into your messaging can ease the weariness for a lot of people. It’s an app with ongoing uses and benefits PLUS you can use it at events you attend AND it’s free.

• For those who struggle with technology or have phones that don’t handle apps, if they’re with someone who can use Aftergame, they still have access to most of the benefits. They can be brought as a +1 to a game, their records can be kept as a guest player, and they can browse the planned games list and games library.