A year in review: East Midlands Megagames
3D printed models ready to do battle in Den of Wolves. Photo by East Midlands Megagames
Written by Rob Grayston from East Midlands Megagames in the UK, here he recounts 2023 for the group, what they got up to and what their 2024 plans are.
As a new megagame group, we at East Midlands Megagames thought it might be useful or interesting to talk about our first year of existence in terms numbers and how we’ve done things.
Different groups will obviously have different requirements and ways of operating, but as a point of comparison and trivia, we’re hoping some people find this article useful – and maybe even share their own data.
Organisation
Our first meeting of the three people who founded EMM was in July 2022; by September we had registered as a Community Interest Company (CIC) to help with ease of administration and transparency. At the end of November 2022 we ran our first megagame, and from then until November 2023 we have now run six altogether.
EMM is currently run by two people as directors of the CIC (Alan Edwards and Rob Grayston), but we have some amazing facilitators, players, and people who want to design some cool sounding games. It should also be noted that running EMM, the directors draw no salary. I’m sure that’s not very surprising to the people who’ve run megagames, but it’s worth pointing out.
Currently we are looking at running games which have been ‘home grown’ by ourselves or local designers, but we have game licences for a few different megagames based on what people have wanted to play previously; 2023 didn’t see any original EMM games run as Coalition of Chaos is technically an amended version of Jim Wallman’s Power to the People.
For one of our 2023 games we shared the ticket revenue with the designer directly, rather than purchasing a licence. This is something we might consider doing again, but this will depend on the game – as we do more, we encounter decisions like this and so it’ll inform EMM group policy in the future.
Likewise, some aspects of how EMM is set up and organised may change over time, as we want to try new things and see what works best. Maybe we’ll steal be inspired by an idea off of the Pennine, Melbourne, or Texas groups?
Political mayhem at Coalition of Chaos. Photo by East Midlands Megagames
One example of something we do differently is that we have been paying reasonable transport costs for facilitators for a few games now, alongside offering free tickets for future games to those who facilitate, and this seems to be working out for us and these amazing volunteers. Will it always be viable? We don’t know – but we’re open to exploring things like this.
We’re also very keen to use local providers wherever possible, so the second printing of spaceships for Den of Wolves were done by 3D Kingdoms, game cards and promo materials were printed by Tompkin Press, and our bigger print components were done by the Nottingham Trent University print shop – all based in the East Midlands.
Enough about that though, here’s what you came for – cold, hard statistics!
Megagames run (all in Nottingham unless otherwise noted)
November 2022: Den of Wolves
March 2023: Coalition of Chaos
June 2023: Den of Wolves (UKGE, Birmingham)
June 2023: Event Horizon
September 2023: Last People on Earth
November 2023: Den of Wolves
People numbers
Number of player roles filled: 228
Number of unique players: 175
Number of players who came to more than one EMM game: 39
Number of people who have facilitated: 14 (thanks, we <3 you)
Facebook group members: 210
Instagram followers: 98
Jaffa cakes consumed: Many
This means we’ve had an average player attendance of 38 per game. Are these numbers good? We can’t really say until we’ve tallied the stats up from 2024.
Looking at the number of people who came to more than one game, and going on an unscientific and rough estimate done for megagames in general (examined pre-pandemic), there was a roughly 33% player return rate of people who came to more than one game.
Based on these overall numbers, EMM’s return rate is 22.3% - but if we discount the first game (where nobody could be a returning player) and the UKGE game (outside the EMM home region) then the number becomes 38.7%. What does this mean?
We don’t know yet – we don’t have enough data, so for now it’s all a bit theoretical.
Sleuths megagame when? Get to it, people.
Finance numbers
Here’s the crunchier stuff, where money is concerned. As a note to help frame this data, EMM charges £35 for a ticket, £25 for a concessionary ticket (students, unwaged, pensioners, etc.), and have previously considered discounts for big groups (10+).
The categories of financial allocation are as follows:
Venues: Hire costs - five uses of the National Ice Centre in Nottingham, one deposit paid for St Martins House in Leicester (the UKGE venue was technically free). This was our chunkiest expenditure, at around £3,500.
Components: Printing, pens, badges, notebooks, maps, cards, 3D printing, paying artists, etc.
Director’s Loan: Money paid back to EMM directors
Travel: Facilitator transport / car parking compensation
Food: Facilitator sustenance; we tried offering lunches, but people preferred to bring their own. A couple of post-game meals and drinks for facilitators are included here, along with some facilitator snacks.
Marketing: Pop-up banner and printed A5 flyers
Refunds: In line with our refund policy on the EMM website – sometimes people can’t make games!
Playtest: Venue cost, as separate from actual game venue
Designer cut: Agreed fee to a designer for co-running a game with us, providing materials, etc.
Admin: Website, Companies House, insurance, email service, etc.
Revenue: What we have left in the bank account at the end.
Total current money in the bank: A little over £1,000
There are outgoings still to be made, including repayment on a director loan, the remainder of the venue payment for Collegium in March, and admin fees. Just because the money is in the bank, doesn’t mean it’s not already assigned to stuff! In reality this means the actual ‘profit’ from six megagames across a 12-month period is closer to below half of what we have in the bank at the moment.
We’re not here to make money – we’re here to use it so players can have a good time doing a cool hobby.
As an aside for those so concerned, this timeframe doesn’t tally quite neatly with our tax year, but the majority of megagame groups don’t have to deal with this so... shh.
2024 and beyond
We’re not here to talk the fun stuff about doing games, although we can’t fail to mention that we’ll be running John Keyworth’s quick-play version of John Mizon’s Den of Wolves at the end of January as part of a bigger UKGE sci-fi event at the National Space Centre. You can sign up here!
Are you a wolf? Picture by East Midlands Megagames
This may be an organisational consideration though – what if we went to more events like a Comic Con or Dragonmeet? Something to think about, especially as BritCon have asked us to run a game for them later this year. Would people even want this kind of approach outside of UK Games Expo?
Moving to funding, we’ve seen some international megagame groups introduce crowdfunding and membership models for passive income to help deliver better games, but that’s not something we’re looking at. Others make cool merchandise that we must admit does look good... but if people aren’t interested, it could be a waste of time and resources. Posters, badges, and mugs are all things we’re thinking about right now, but maybe there’s a market for megagame-themed wooden spoons?
Conclusion
The main thing is giving people a memorable experience with lasers and dragons, changing the course of history, or maybe some light conspiracy and thrilling heroics – it’s just that there’s all this organisational stuff behind the scenes to sort out too. The more we talk about this side of the hobby, the easier it might become to help new groups, find new ways of doing things, and generally make it easier on organisers.
If anyone would like to talk more about the Dark Arts of community building, marketing, player retention, or finance in megagames, or would like to share their own data (privately) for comparative purposes, get in touch via our email address, our Facebook, or carrier pigeon at the usual coop.
Rob Grayston is one of the people behind East Midlands Megagames. His day job involves emergency planning and resilience, and he is a firm supporter of using games for educational and training purposes. He’s always happy to promote megagames and their serious uses, or just megagames in general, so if you would like to talk to him get in touch.