The Game Crafter will be returning to Gen Con this year and we’re going to have another 20x10 exhibitor booth! We’ll also be hosting the 2nd Annual TGC Community Social and a Community Game Night! If you plan on attending any of these events, please RSVP on the links above or by visiting The Game Crafter Facebook events page.

Our friends at Double Exposure, Inc are once again running the First Exposure Playtest Hall. This event space allows designers and publishers to preview and test their newest creations before they go live. Scores of all-new role playing games, story games, board games and card games will be represented in the Playtest Hall. The event is free for gamers who want to playtest titles. Game designers and publishers can purchase blocks of time for their games to be featured and tested.

The full-length and official announcement for the First Exposure Playtest Hall is available here.

We were saving a Featured Designer @ GenCon spot for the winner of the Map Builder Design Challenge. This was Danny Devine and his game, Mob Town. However, Danny is unable to attend and so we have added it as a new $200 perk in our Indiegogo campaign. We only have 1 spot available and it will be the last one we offer. (the other 6 sold out within days of launching the campaign) The perk description is below:

Featured Designer @ GenCon
This perk allows you to be a featured designer for half a day at GenCon 2013. You can hang out in the exhibitor booth with staff and demo your games on your own table.

Click here to see our campaign

Gen Con is always an exciting event for our team because we get to see so many of you from the community and meet a thousand new people who haven’t heard about us! 

Last year we held a community gathering at Scotty’s Brewhouse and it was a great success. There were about 20 people on the outdoor patio and we had a great time eating, drinking, and hanging out! We plan to do this every year and the details will be posted closer to Gen Con.

So with the success of last year’s gathering, we wondered if you, the community, are interested in having us host another type of event during Gen Con. We can reserve a space/room and use it for just about anything. Maybe you’d like a design workshop, prototyping room, or just a place to play games with other people in the community?

Let’s hear those ideas/feedback!

Mike Tresca of the National RPG Examiner talks with JT at Gen Con. 

Cog bids Gen Con 2012 farewell.

Cog in full battle gear. Weapons courtesy Battle Legend USA. Look them up on Facebook.

Tox of CritsHappen interviews JT at Gen Con 2012

It’s day 3 of #GenCon 2012!. In this video you will get a guided tour of our booth (2041) and get a sneak peak at some of the products available. Come see Cog, our 8ft tall robot weighing in at over 500lbs!

Visit The Game Crafter booth (#2041) at Gen Con 2012. This year’s special guest has arrived!

We’ve arrived safely in Indianapolis and are beginning to set up for Gen Con 2012! We’ll be sure to post lots of pics for you. If you’re one of the lucky 40,000 people coming to Gen Con this year, stop by our booth. This map will show you where to find us in the exhibit hall. We’re booth 2041.

We have a special celebrity guest that will be helping us out at our Gen Con booth. I don’t want to give away who it is, but I will tell you that this individual is big enough that you will definitely know who it is, and photogenic enough that a huge number of people at Gen Con will want to get their picture taken with him or her, even those that don’t know who it is. Our guest celeb will not be making autographs, but has agreed to an unlimited number of photographs at our booth. We hope you’ll stop by our booth and get your photo taken with our special celebrity guest. 

Any guesses as to who it might be? 

The owners of The Game Crafter will be hanging out at Scotty’s Brewhouse on Friday, August 17th at 7pm. We’d love to hang out with users of The Game Crafter in person. We know many of you only online, and are looking forward to meeting you in person.  We’ll buy a few pitchers of beer and hang out and chat. If you’re in Indianapolis for Gen Con and would like to hang out with us, come to Scotty’s at 7pm on Friday night. See you there!

We are getting ready for GenCon 2012 next week and wanted to repost this video!

We recorded this at GenCon 2011 where we interviewed 4 different designers from the TGC community. We ask them a series of questions and they explain why they love the service, the community, and why other game designers should consider using it.

The Game Crafter will once again be exhibiting at GenCon this year. It’s hard to believe that this will be our 4th year running a booth there! This time around, there are some exciting changes to the booth (it’s twice as big!!) and we think that everyone will be excited with our big surprise special guest! He will be there all 4 days and he’s going to draw in a huge crowd. If you’re going to attend, be sure to stop by and visit us at booth 2041!

There are two noteworthy announcements that we wanted to repeat to the TGC community:

We found out that GenCon is going to debut a new gaming area called the “First Exposure Playtest Hall”. Attendees will be able to sample new games and speak with their creators throughout the entire convention weekend. This will be great for players who are interested in trying out new game concepts and prototypes. Players have to sign up and get tickets for the event, so be sure to do that if you’re interested. However, we think the coolest part of this opportunity is that GenCon is asking for game designers and publishers to fill out an application form if they want to present their games for playtesting! We figured some of you might be interested in that!  :) The full policies and instructions are available here.

The other event that may be interesting to some of you is the Indie Games Explosion. This is a chance to play exciting and unique independently-produced tabletop and story based role playing games. You don’t have to sign-up before the event so just bring your event tickets and you can play a wide range of indie games. GMs will be happy to teach all of the rules so no experience is necessary and all skill levels are welcome.

As usual, we’ll be posting photos, videos, and updates live from GenCon. Each day we’ll have different game designers from the TGC community in our booth and they will be demoing their games. We’ve been planning this event all year long so we’re certain it’s going to be our best GenCon ever! If you’re going to attend, be sure to drop us a line on the forums, Facebook, or Twitter and let us know!