Prolific and popular game designer Bez Shahriari has announced they’re quitting the trading side of the tabletop business midway through UKGE.
Bez, who has a Wikipedia entry for her contribution to the hobby, made the announcement on a public UK Games Expo Messenger Chat Room with over a thousand members. However, a note of caution, Saturday night is a tough night for game designers at the UK Games Expo. Emotions, stress, and various impulse factors are running high. Bez may return.
However, it’s hard to accuse Bez of being too rash. I asked her, in the same public group, why she was quitting, and she gave a rational and level-headed response.
I’ve made a loss every year. As a business, it’s not worth going. As a hobby, it’s too stressful and I’d rather spend my time/money on other stuff.
However, we may well see Bez and her iconic red dress again in the future, as the game designer added;
I’ll probably come back next year but only as a visitor.
Bez’s games include Kitty Cataclysm, Wibbell++ and Yogi.
This reporter for Geek Native was at the UK Games Expo on Saturday and can report it was much busier than Friday, but there were many more indie tabletop game publishers and fewer giant wargame publishers than I’m used to. We didn’t have Monolith, Games Workshop, Steamforged/Privateer or Wyrd Miniatures, although we did have Corvus Belli, Mantic and Warlord Games. It might just be that with the economic climate and the competition of indie games, which are always a financial challenge, the future on Saturday night looked bleak.
A special thanks to Vortex Verlag for sponsoring Geek Native’s coverage of UK Games Expo. You can meet them at stand 3A-758 and find out about the exciting new Serenissima Obscura crowdfunding campaign.
