Thursday, July 31st, 2003

by the Writer's Guild of Wunderland

---

• New Product: ICE-7
• Misprint Advisory: ICE-7
• Jake updated the Icehouse Tourney Almanac
• GinohnNews: Birthday And Other Bashing
• The Ember Update: Monkeys and Vehicles, Bertha Portraits

We've just gotten back from Gen-Con (again), a huge adventure game convention held every summer in (as of this year) Indianapolis. It was a big success... we ran our usual trade show booth and did gang-busters business all weekend long. In fact, for the first time ever at an event like this, we sold completely out of Fluxx decks! (But truth be told, I didn't really think we were bringing enough...)

I'm sure this report will end up in the dreaded Bulletized List Mode sooner or later, so I might as well give in now.

• Kristin and Alison arrived at Gen-Con rather late this year... in fact, hey didn't arrive until it was half over! This is because they went to California for the Frane Family Reunion (again), which overlapped Gen-Con by several days. So, it was up to me, Marlene, and Russell to get our booth built and operating on our own. But it went fine, as you can see from the photo. (Kristin said it was weirdly wonderful arriving at the con to find our booth already fully functioning.) Photos and details of K&A's trip to CA will be forthcoming (as will the Origins Photo Album, the Official Index of Promo Cards, and lots of other webpages I need to work on...).
• Speaking of promo cards, the rumors are true: We were giving away free Robots at Gen-Con. (The Robot is a Keeper that counts as either the Toaster or Television.) We'll be giving away another cool new promo card at Dragon*Con, and after that, we'll be making the leftovers of all these promos available in a packet we'll be selling this fall in the Dollar Store. Those of you who can't get to these events but crave the cards, please be patient but don't worry: We've been holding back some of each kind of card for this purpose.
• 'Becca distinguished herself once again by running her independent Recycling program. She (with the help of Russell and a few other volunteers) set up 20 tie-dyed collection bins around the con and reclaimed about the same number of beverage containers from landfills for recycling as she did at Origins. Yay Becca! Thanks again for doing all that work! We look forward to the day when Convention Centers simply provide this service...
• The new host city is beautiful and the facilities were great, and the drive was shorter for us too, but I still missed Milwaukee, for 3 reasons: Giordano's Stuffed Pizza, the Safe House, and those miniature donuts that cart always had cooking, just outside the exhibit hall.
• There was lots of fun and funny stuff to be seen and purchased at Gen-Con... one of the most popular this year seemed to be a T-shirt reading "You do not need to look at my chest. These are not the breasts you're looking for. Move along."
• While we were away, our email really piled up. More accurately, the spam really piled up. Several of our accounts reached their quotas, and as a result, some of us may have lost emails that might have been important. In particular, Kristin lost all her mail from last Thursday through Tuesday! Anyway, if you sent us email last week, it might have disappeared...
• I myself had 5760 emails to download when I returned after being gone a week. Of course, the vast majority of those emails were spam... the situation has gotten so bad that something drastic will probably have to happen soon. (Liam is investigating new forms of spam elimination...)
• I'm going to Essen! Ever since studying German in high school, I have been anticipating my first visit to Deutschland, and it's finally about to happen! EssenSpiele is the biggest gaming convention in all the world, and while we've talked for years about attending (and even someday exhibiting), we've never done it before. And costs being what they are, Looney Labs can't really afford to send more than one person. But I can't stay away any longer... this is the year that Amigo will be debuting the German version of Fluxx, and I just have to be there for that! Kory was already thinking of attending on his own, and Russell too has always wanted to attend Essen, so it looks like I'll even have some traveling companions. Yay!
• Although Fluxx requires a full translation to be appropriate for the German market, Aquarius has so few words on the cards that a translated set of rules is all you really need to make it good for another nationality. So, we're thinking of printing up a German rules insert and shrink-wrapping them onto the back of the box. Then I can have 2 Germanized versions of my games available at Essen! All I need now is a good translation of the rules...