Welcome to the International Women’s Day edition of Spotlight! Today we have Sara Erickson, who has broken many firsts for Spotlight: First public relations person, first Montana resident, and first person to own a game store! But I’m spoiling the fun - let’s let Sara tell you about herself.

Hello Sara! Thank you for being on Spotlight. Could you please tell our audience who you are?

I am the Director of Sales and Marketing for Renegade Game Studios. I live in beautiful Bozeman, MT where I also own a hobby store, Rook’s Comics and Games with my husband. I’ve been involved with the industry since we bought our store in 2006 and have been fortunate enough to see many sides of the business.

Sara & her dog: Mishra, Artificer Prodigy.

I have never been to Montana. It is on my list of Places To Go One Day. Speaking of things I’ve never done, I’ve never interviewed a PR person before. What does one do?

My job is really about getting the accurate information to the appropriate people at the right times. That involves announcing new games to fans, providing barcodes and pricing to distributors, answering questions from retail store owners, and a whole slew of other things every day. Right now I’ve been slammed with planning for all the convention events we will be attending this year. I also get to occasionally do interviews with wonderful members of the media that do a great job of helping us get the word out about our games.

There are just so many stellar games right now that it’s a lot of work to get noticed by every part of the distribution chain. I have a special place in my heart for my fellow local game store owners so I make a special effort to create programs that help them succeed with our games. It’s a tough business!

What can the average gamer do (other than buy games from them) that would help their local retailers?

Sara’s store, Rook’s Comics and Games.

Local retailers are businesses that need to offer a compelling reason fans to shop there. If you have a local store that is offering you something you value (game nights, variety, ability to impulse buy) then support them by engaging with the activities that you value and do your best to give some of that value back to the store. If you love the open space they provide, show up to game night and teach other people how to play games they might enjoy. Be a valuable member of the community that will help them attract more customers. And always consider purchasing from your local retailer. We can often get games sooner than online stores and can usually purchase kickstart games after they release. Just ask!

You’re currently at Renegade Games, but you previously worked at Iello. Could you talk a little about what you did there?

I’ve been in the industry my entire adult life. After graduating from college, my husband and I decided to buy a very small local comic shop. Eventually I also started volunteering for Wizards of the Coast at large conventions including GenCon, Pax, UK Anime Expo, and a ton of others. It was a blast and I really grew passionate about gaming. I also started volunteering for Cryptozoic that had just been formed by many of the former Upper Deck employees to continue the World of Warcraft TCG. After a few years of volunteering at large international events for Cryptozoic, I was invited to join the team full time. I worked there for several years as part of the Organized Play Team and then on the Sales Team before the opportunity at IELLO arrived. It was great to move to a new company and see things from a completely different perspective of a truly international business. I was Sales Manager for the US team but we worked closely with the French office. Most of my job involved behind the scenes office work like processing orders and distributing information but I also travelled to shows to interface directly with fans, retailers, and distributors. I love traveling and being face to face with people. Our whole team at IELLO USA worked remotely so we also appreciated any chance we had to see each other at big events. It was a great job and I learned a ton.

About the same time I left Cryptozoic, Renegade was created by Scott Gaeta, one of the original founders of Cryptozoic. I have a huge amount of respect for Scott and couldn’t pass up an opportunity to work with him again. I’ve been with Renegade for one year now and couldn’t be happier! Every day is an adventure.

Is it more of a ‘ooh maybe there’ll be treasure!’ adventure or ‘OH MY GOD DINOSAURS RUN’ style of thing?

It depends on the day! Set up day for conventions is often pretty intense. It’s a lot like a wedding, you only get one shot to set everything up perfectly. But a lot of my days in the office are spent answering emails and staring at spreadsheets. It’s not always glamorous but I love analyzing numbers and learning new things. For me, the whole journey is an adventure!

Before we move on, I’m interested in talking to you about your Organized Play work. As someone who’s become steadily more interested in the Netrunner event scene, what would you say are the ingredients to a successful OP system?

I’ve worked with and created a lot of different programs between working on the OP team and running events in my store. My favorites are always ones that give every player reasonable goals. Not everyone is going to win first place in the event and most of the participants know that they don’t have a very good shot at first. So why are they there? They want to spend time with their friends, play some games, and push themselves a little farther than before.

Video games have been successful with increasing play satisfaction with achievements and I’ve seen great response with them in tabletop games as well. Achievements are also great because you can use them for competitive or non-competitive events. I think most board games don’t lend themselves to massive competitive organized play programs, but it can still be fun to give the players individual goals to work towards.

So what’s your favorite ever game and why? (You can pick one from Renegade or Iello if it’s true!)

This is a tough question because it really depends on the group. I had a blast playing Happy Salmon with my nieces and nephews but with my gaming group, I could never pass up a chance to play The Village, or Alchemists. I love engine building games and worker placements games. If I were really forced to pick just one game, I’d have to choose Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar. It has so many possible strategies, I’ll never get bored of trying to optimize my choices. I think the theme and art are wonderful too so it really delivers the whole package.

Czech Games really knocks it out of the park don’t they? I can also confirm that their PR lady Jana is very very nice. She took a great photo with Colin the Board Game Bear once!

Fan-painted Tzolk’in wheels. Fan-painted Tzolk’in wheels everywhere.

What are your non-gaming passions? What’s got you all jumping up and down with excitement?

I’m passionate about dog training and getting outside. I have an incredibly smart and enthusiastic dog who loves to learn new tricks. We have a blast working together to do backyard agility, scent training, and improving our trick skills. She’s taught me a lot about the importance of body language and thoughtful movement. She also gives me an excuse to spend more time outside. I live in Montana so we have limitless backcountry within minutes of my house. We do our best to get out and explore somewhere new every weekend.

Dog picture? Dog picture?

A popular internet topic is ‘What is your controversial opinion about X.’ I’ve sort of been saving this question for a while, and now that I’m talking to a PR person, now is the perfect time to unleash it. What is your controversial gaming opinion?

Controversial opinion: Kickstarter is good for the board game industry.

As a retailer and a publisher, I hear a lot of prickly comments about Kickstarter. My husband is an economist so we love discussing the implications of disruptive new businesses. Kickstarter is fascinating. I think it can be an incredible tool to reach new audiences but it can be dangerous if misused. As a publisher, I am happy that we are in the position that we can use more traditional channels to release our games. It means we can focus on making incredible games instead of managing Kickstarter campaigns which can be very overwhelming. But not every new publisher has the background or capital to be able to pay for all the upfront costs and get your games in the hands of distributors and retailers. Kickstarter can be an invaluable tool to help new and innovative games reach the market.

As a retailer, I sense a growing frustration within our tier that we’re getting skipped. I think retailers can add a lot of value to the industry by filtering purchasing options, creating gaming communities, and offering instant accesses to games. It can get old when there’s a constant flow of new Kickstarter games being played in your store that you never had a chance of selling. Retailers just want a chance to play in the same sandbox. There are more and more publishers offering retailer tiers in their campaigns but it can be tricky to coordinate with customers who don’t really get any benefit from backing it through a retailer instead of backing it themselves. I look forward to more collaboration between retailers and publishers for Kickstarter campaigns.

Kickstarter isn’t going away anytime soon. Fans love the excitement of the campaign, the regular updates, and behind the scenes info. Publishers benefit from getting pre-orders, extra marketing opportunities, and upfront capital. I think distributors and retailers are going to have to work a bit harder to compete in this new environment. Hopefully they will find that as new people learn about gaming through this increased exposure, it’ll help overall sales of more casual and lower priced games. The stores that can adapt, will survive.

What can stores do in this regard?

They need to keep an open mind and participate when it makes sense. Our store backed the Dark Souls campaign and have several pre-orders. Our customers benefit from knowing that we are going to support the game and will have several people playing. Miniatures games take up a lot of space and you really need to know that others are going to buy into the same system or you just can’t really play. So it’s much better to back Dark Souls through us, knowing that others will play, than to do it on your own and just hope you can randomly meet up with other players.

AEG recently announced a new campaign that allows stores to back a project and then add their customers to the project so that they will be able to participate in the comments and get regular updates. I love this idea. I think it really gives stores a chance to offer everything the customers want out of backing a campaign. I look forward to seeing how this program works out.

Lastly, stores can communicate more with their customers about games that will be on their shelves. Most of the really exciting kickstarter projects eventually hit retail shelves. If customers know this will happen, it might be worth keeping that money in their pockets for an extra year or two. There are also a ton of great games published through traditional means. Retailers can certainly just focus on promoting these and still have a great selection. Communicating to your customers is key whether the products came from kickstarter or a distributor.

Other than PR and Sales, do you have interest in working in any other aspects of the industry?

One of my favorite things about working for Renegade is that I get to dabble in a lot of different aspects of publishing. We’re such a small company that we all wear many hats and Scott has given me some great opportunities to learn about the whole process. I’m currently the producer on a game releasing this summer. I love the game development process. I could use a lot more practice doing it but it’s been incredibly fun. Right now we’re in the midst of art direction. I have never been involved with this part of creating a game so I’m learning a lot. I have a ton of respect for art directors now! Going through the process of pricing out components with the factory and organizing the graphic design needs has been enlightening as well. It’s been fun to experience every part of creating a game and I can’t wait to start showing it off! We’ll be announcing it very soon!

Ding & Dent exclusive reveal pls (jk).

Here’s a partial view of the cover art for the game I’m producing from J. Alex Kevern!

Sara, thank you for your time! Where can people find you on the interwebs?

Follow me on twitter @PlayRenegade, on Facebook @PlayRGS, on Instagram @renegade_game_studios and on our website www.renegadegames.com

Thank you for all these intriguing questions!

Bye Sara! Let’s have some more dog pictures.

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