How to run a megagame - part 7
Venezuelan players at First Contact. Credit: Very Large Huge Games
A picture paints a thousand words
You’ll be very busy running the game on the day, but you may want to organise someone to take pictures of everything that happens. After all, it’s much easier to convey what a megagame is like with interesting photos to show your potential future players.
If you are Game Control you will not have time to take the photos yourself but if you know a friend or colleague who enjoys taking pictures, you could ask them to do so on their phone or even better with a DSLR camera. We did so for First Contact and it’s great to be able to have the pictures available for future marketing opportunities, including posting the images to social media.
If you do organise pictures to be taken, suggest to your photographer that you would like a mix of action shots, people around the map, components and perhaps the council meetings, if your game has them. If any players decide to play the game in costume, that’s even better.
You can also ask any players to post pictures they’ve taken to your social media accounts and tag your group, which is another way to encourage the conversation.
In the UK there are no laws against taking photos in public places and no permits are required. For other jurisdictions you should check the local laws to ensure you are compliant.
Some venues may require you to seek approval, pay a fee and/or put up photography notices in order to take photos. You would be advised to speak to your contact early in the process if you wish to take pictures to ensure you are fully aware of any commercial requirements that you need to follow.
You may wish to alert your players that photos will be taken at the beginning of the game in case someone does not wish to appear in the pictures taken. For First Contact, in addition to making an announcement during the game briefing we chose to inform players via email and included this notice in each team package.
Shut up and take my money
Merch sales certainly aren’t a necessary component of running a megagame, but doing so could be another way to give your players a memento of their day and provide you some extra cash in the bank to make running future games a bit easier. While it’s highly unlikely you’ll turn into the next Jeff Bezos by selling megagame merch, it could be worth selling through an online store such as Printful, Merchly or Forthwall (US only at time of writing).
By printing on demand you will save a lot of money on holding stock, but any income is likely to be minimal as it is swallowed up by the printing company.
Another option could be to choose one item to print that you think might sell well with your players and offer the product at the game, online or via both channels. At Very Large Huge Games we are considering selling branded mugs at future games, but the logistics are something we still need to work out. If we pull it off, perhaps you’ll see a future megagame merch article appear here!
Tell us how it went!
When it’s all said and done, we’d love to know how your experience of running a megagame went. We welcome blog posts and podcast interviews with the megagame community, so get in contact and we can arrange for your story to be featured.
Send up a signal flare
It can be hard to ask for help sometimes, but you are not alone in this venture and trust me when I say the rest of the megagame community will want you to succeed! If you have questions, post them to our Facebook group, the Megagame Coalition or MegaCon Discord servers and the megagame community will respond.
You’ll get lots of great advice, and probably a boost to your morale too.
Need a helping hand?
As of time of writing, our friends over at the Megagame Coalition are offering megagame designers and organisers the chance to be mentored by experienced people from the community. If you’re interested, hop on over to their Discord server and @pani for more information.
And finally…
…while this is a guide of sorts, it doesn’t contain everything. Ask for help if you’re not sure and don’t skimp on doing your own research. It’s possible this article will be updated over time, but even then it won’t contain information on every possible scenario you’ll encounter - but it should help point you in the right direction.
And hey, just remember - lots of people have been in the same position as you before, with a dream of putting on a game and making the megagame magic happen.
You’ve got this!
Would you ever want to sell merch to your megagame and if so, what? Let us know on our Facebook group!
That’s all folks! Did you enjoy the series or think it’s totally off kilter? If you’d like to write your own guide for megagames, let us know and you could see your words appear on our site.