October 16, 2016: We Appreciate You, Yes We Do! We Appreciate You, How 'Bout . . . You?

We recently ran an event to show our appreciation for those honorable men and women who are in the thick of it every day, battling day in, day out, roughing it out in the trenches . . . I'm talking about friendly local game store owners, of course!

We had gaming, food, laughter, gaming, announcements, mingling, gaming, and food. Listening to store owners and managers talking with each other, passing industry secrets in confidence, bragging about their event numbers, and playing games like normal people was more exciting than you could imagine!

Over the last month or so, I've run around the office making sure everything was perfect for the big day. My co-workers, Maryland and Jane, and I shared tears, laughter, stress, and restless hours of work. But who's counting?! We did it! We even had high-quality demo copies of games that aren't set to be released for months, thanks to our Production team forfeiting sleep.

Car Wars Sixth Edition and Munchkin Collectible Card Game both saw so much use that day that we're more excited than ever to share them with the public! (Keep your eyes peeled for more on these over the next couple of months.) Not to mention all the play time that Simon's Cat Card Game saw! If your local store is out, remind them a reprint is coming before Christmas.

Here on the third coast, we only expected local Texas stores to come to our event, so we were excited to see folks from the other two coasts, too – Rainy Day Games from outside Portland, Oregon, and Elite Battlegrounds from Green Brook, New Jersey.

Last but not least, we started talks for some secret projects at this event (because we just love being sneaky!). I understand that there was the [redacted], which will be great fun, and one of our friends from California came over to talk about [redacted] as well!

And for those store owners, managers, employees, volunteers, and guy-who-never-leaves-the-store-seriously-how-does-he-pay-rent who couldn't make it, THANK YOU! You guys make what we do worth it!

-- Joshua Surfus