This last weekend was Wisconsin’s largest gaming convention, Gamehole Con. I got off the wait list this year, so I was able to have a booth. Since it was my first time and there and folks who enjoy these after action convention reports, here’s a super deep dive into my experience and thoughts on the whole thing. Hey, this is my third attempt to get into Gamehole Con, I’m going to give it a lot of attention now that I made it in.
Booth Location and Layout
My vendor booth was in the "demo row", which was located in the main concourse and not in the vendor hall. Demo row booths are lower cost to provide a space for newer or small publishers to be able to demo their games. We'll get into the pros and cons of that in a little bit.
A small catch is that you can only sell products that you've made. So no dice or third party books to help boost sales. Not being able to sell third party books wasn't that big of a deal since I’m moving away from carrying other people’s books, yet it is a little annoying because I can’t have the Savage Worlds core book in case someone needs it to go with Street Wolves: Turbo Edition. The dice thing though, dice have saved my bacon at so many cons, it was a little scary going in without them.
This isn’t the sales part though. More on that later.
Anyway, the booth cost $350. It came with two badges and a table.
I set up the booth layout into the L shape I’ve been moving toward (I brought an extra table). I made them overlap a little, so my footprint wasn’t as obnoxiously wide. I was a little nervous the I was taking up too much space. I got to the con on Wednesday to set up and was alone in the row. My neighbor vendors didn’t get there until I left…. so I wasn’t able to do the thing where you go, “Is this okay? I’m not in your way am I?” It turned out pretty well though. They didn't have any complaints and my setup worked well with the folks on my right.
Pro Tip: The con floor in the concourse is not carpeted, so bring one of those mat things to stand on. You know, the soft rubbery ones.
What I Brought
Since I could only sell things I made, that’s what I brought!
- Street Wolves Turbo Edition core book
- Street Wolves Adventures: Turbo Dreams, Heart of Glass, Dead Hand, and the Street Wolves: Jumpstart
- Street Wolves Turbo Edition USB Tape
- The Wicked Forever King Hungers
- Monster Truckers
- Monster Truckers extras: Hats, keychains
- Stickers that I’ve made for my games.
- Dice bags (both solid color made by my partner and Street Wolves and Forever King themed).
In addition to what I was selling, I also had signs and a demo set up for Shadow in the Stars and a bunch of marketing cards and flyers.
The Crowd
The crowd was pretty large. It is the largest con I’ve vended at (about 6,000 attendees), but it wasn’t an overwhelming amount of people. By that, I mean I’ve been to cons where the rows are just wall to wall people. This wasn’t that. It’s more of a very regular flow of folks walking through, particularly on Friday/Saturday. The images from my booth view were taken on Sunday when foot traffic was way lower.
The location of the booth allowed for most convention attendees to potentially see the booth, my wares, and signs if they were paying attention at all.
My partner was going to drive out on Saturday to join me. On Friday I let her know she didn’t need to bother. Yes there were a lot of people, but I wasn’t being swarmed and it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. The biggest factor was that I didn’t want her to drive the two hours and back in her semi reliable car. If I was being crushed by people I would have felt better about her making that drive.
Anyway, there were a lot of cool people and many of them were role playing game players. I didn’t get the question, “Is this… a game…?” at this convention, so that was nice.
Side Note: The bathroom wasn’t that far away and I really appreciated that. I was drinking a lot of liquids during the con.
The overall vibe of the crowd was great. I had a good amount of folks check out the booth that were interested in the kinds of things I had, though that didn’t necessarily translate into wanting to buy those things. There were a few folks who were totally into my games and I appreciated that a lot.
I ended up having a lot of conversations with both regular attendees, fellow indie creators, fellow vendors, and a couple of the guests and all that made the con fun for me.
Sales
Okay, now for what you really came here for, financial disclosures! I usually don’t share numbers. This time I’m laying it all out on the table for you. I want to show fellow creators (and those just interested) how much a not totally new, but also not super established publisher can sell at one of these things.
Remember how I said the cost of the booth and hotel was $850 combined? I ended with net sales of $836, just shy of the goal. The gross was $857… so I kind of made it?
If I didn't need to get a hotel I would have made 500 bucks. So yeah, hotel fees kill profit again. I may have found a trick around this, more on this later.
To be fair to the convention, I was officially in the demo row, not seller row. The emphasis is on demoing rather than selling, at least on paper. I did demos of Shadow in the Stars as best as I could, it is hard to demo a traditional role playing game like Street Wolves or Monster Truckers at a booth without just playing it.
Here’s what sold:
- Street Wolves: Turbo Edition - 8 copies
- Street Wolves USB Tape - 4 copies
- Monster Truckers - 4 copies
- Street Wolves Wild Die - 3 units
- Street Wolves: Turbo Dreams - 3 copies
- Street Wolves dice bag - 3 units
- The Wicked Forever King Hungers - 2 copies
- Street Wolves: Dead Hand - 2 copies
- Wicked King dice bag - 2 units
- Dice bags (solid colors) - 2 units
- Stickers (total stickers sold) - 2
- Street Wolves Jumpstart - 1 copy
- Street Wolves Heart of Glass - 1 copy
- Monster Truckers hat - 1 unit
Side Note: If you’re wondering why I’m not counting gas and food. For food I generally bring a lot of my own food and drinks from home, so the cost is relatively low. And gas, well I didn’t need to put any gas in the car, so yeah I used gas to get there and back, I just didn’t buy any so eh, I’m letting it slide.
Edit: One thing I forgot to add when I first wrote this post was that during Chupacabra Con I made a thousand bucks and that con is SIGNIFICANTLY smaller than Gamehole Con. There were a couple things in my favor there, like my buddy doing art (so that money went to him) but there were a larger concentration of Savage Worlds fans. Still, that one was in Texas and the costs of travel and lodging pretty much wiped out profit on that one. Just something interesting to note.
Deals
I had my usual bundle deals available, but I didn't have anyone take advantage of the mega Street Wolves bundle (pretty much everything Street Wolves that I sell at the table). Usually at the bigger cons there's at least one person that bites. With this being the largest con I've done, I was a bit surprised I didn't get someone to take it.
One person did take advantage of the Street Wolves adventure bundle (the core book and the three adventure books), so that was cool.
I had two coupons this year: If someone stopped by my booth and then said something like, "I'll come back later" or "Maybe I'll be back" or just otherwise seemed interested in something but was clearly passing. I'd hand a coupon to the person. I handed out about twelve of them and only one person came back to use it. But he also left his water bottle at my booth... so he had to come back.
The other coupon I had was for the two sessions of Street Wolves that was being run by an unaffiliated officially with Table Cat Games (but still cool) GM. I gave him coupons to give to the people that played in his games. Two of them were used to get copies of the core book, which was awesome.
Despite middling success overall with the coupons, there was some and it's totally worth doing again.
On the final day of the con (Sunday), I decided to give away some Monster Truckers keychains with a purchase of Monster Truckers. Unfortunately, nobody took me up on that offer.
Other Positive Results
Aside from the financial aspect of having the booth at Gamehole con there was meeting with fans of Street Wolves and Monster Truckers and that’s always very cool and invigorating creatively. One cool dude had a Monster Truckers hat and another had a Wolfpack sticker from the first con I did three years ago!
After talking to the folks who were excited by my games, it really made me want to go home and make more games.
As far as outside of the con activities, I ended up getting a couple of follows on Street Wolves: Zero Hour pre-launch page. I may pick up a couple more as people dig through their cards and flyers before tossing them.
I got one Shadow in the Stars pre-order, which is possibly from the convention. I have no way of knowing, but I don’t normally get those because I’m not really actively promoting it.
There were two people that got free stickers by signing up for my email list. I got a couple follows on Bluesky/Threads and there were follows on itch, but that may be unrelated to the convention.
The Street Wolves Games
As I had mentioned, there was a GM that ran two Street Wolves sessions. This is the first con I've had a booth where someone was running my games. I've gone into this before in previous convention updates and I'm not going back into it here, just know I haven't been able to have this happen. Still, I recognized how critically important it is to have games run at cons you are vending at.
So when the stars aligned and someone else decided to run a game I made at Gamehole Con, my assumptions were confirmed. It lead directly to sales. More importantly though, there were some great conventions with the players who had a lot of fun and even more with the GM who gave me some highlights of the sessions.
Side Note: If you want to run any of my games at a con, even ones I'm not vending at, let me know! I'd love to work with you!
Would I Do It Again?
Yes! But not like I did this time!
There’s two things I'd like to focus on if given a chance to get into Gamehole again: 1. The cost of the stay and 2. sales numbers.
Let’s go into #1. I was talking to a fellow creator and he pointed out that there’s a camp site behind the convention center. They have electrical hook ups and showers. And it’s only 35 bucks a night. That would save me $90 a night or a total of $450!
But the negative is that it’s in October in Wisconsin, which can get cold. However, with climate change it’s more along the lines of chilly lately. Yeah that sucks, but... I guess make lemonade out of lemons. If I have electricity I could get a safe heater/electric blanket and I’d be fine. I’m not above sleeping in the back of my SUV. I have plenty of room back there once I unload all the stuff for the booth.
Another trick I could do to save money is simply not stay Wednesday night. I theoretically could set up, drive back home and get up early Thursday morning. It’s an hour and a half drive, so it would be semi annoying, but not insurmountable. I didn’t want to do it this time, because there were too many unknowns for my first time doing this, but now I know the ins and Wednesday and yeah, I totally could do it.
Okay let’s go to #2, sales.
Since I basically broke even, that’s good! I essentially didn't have to go into the negative for loads of marketing benefits. Just being there and talking to people raises the awareness of Table Cat Games. Much more so than an ad on Meta or whatever.
I could go for demo row again. However, I’ve spoken to someone in the main vendor hall that made the transition from demo row to the vendor hall and they said that even though the booth cost is higher in the vendor hall, he got much higher sales
The prevailing explanation for this is that the people in the vendor hall are expecting to make a purchase or may be more ready to buy than someone in the concourse. Even though I have nearly every single person walking by my booth, many of those people have no intent to buy anything at all. And those that do may be subconsciously primed to spend in the vendor hall and not outside of it. Again, it’s called demo row not sales row.
I also have a personal theory: Being in the demo row may be seen as somewhat “lesser” than being in the vendor hall, which can have some more legitimacy attached to being in the main area of commerce. Don’t get me wrong, the other vendors in the demo row had just as good, if not better, offerings than those in the vendor hall. However, the human brain is weird and I can see this being a reason someone would be more willing to spend on something in the vendor area.
Back to the question, “would I do it again?” Yes, I would. BUT I think I’m applying for the vendor hall next year with a back up plan of going for a demo row if that's not an option.
Or they may not want me back at all!
Wrapping Up
Overall, Gamehole Con was a very positive experience for Table Cat Games, and for me personally. I didn’t lose money, I met a lot of cool people, and made some great connections. I’m grateful to the Gamehole Con staff for giving me a chance and calling me off wait list. I hope I have the opportunity to do it again.