OPINION Evolution event is much missed


David Smith laments the demise of Evolution PR’s Christmas in July and, having missed out on January’s Toy Fair, explains why he’s felt detached from the industry this year


FOR THE first time since I launched ToyTalk, there has been no Christmas in July to get excited about. I am well aware that


there have been other events staged this year, all very useful in their own right, but I’m talking about the event staged by Evolution PR, which acted as a kind of mini toy fair in the middle of the year and helped us all to get geared up for the big push to Christmas. I was always a huge fan of this. Just as the year started to lose momentum, you would get a welcome boost, with a good selection of companies showcasing new products due to launch in the autumn.


It was a great way of


keeping in touch with familiar faces, meeting a few new ones and having a chat with other journalists in the field. The first few times I attended Christmas in July, it was held at the Hellenic Centre, and I clearly remember some of the highlights. Having a go at the new


Rubik’s 360, trying out the Hive game from Tantrix and marvelling at the Air Hogs Zero Gravity Micro Car from Spin Master. The event moved to the


Camden Centre for the last few years, where soaring temperatures made the huge fans the best place to hang-out between visits to the various stands.


David Smith runs the consumer-focused toy news site T oyT


It was always a little incongruous to see Christmas decorations and munch on a mince pie while wrestling with the


It was always buzzing with visitors when I attended, and from a journalist’s viewpoint it served a very useful


It was a great way of keeping in touch with familiar faces, meeting a few new ones and having a chat with other journalists in the field.


summertime heat, but if the Aussies can manage it, then so can we, and there was a rather charming air of British eccentricity about the whole thing. All of this meant I was


very disappointed to hear that Evolution was shelving the event this year.


purpose (and you got a very impressive goody bag at the end of the day as well). Add this to the fact that I was unable to attend the Toy Fair in January and I’ve felt strangely detached from the industry all year.


alk (www.toytalk.co.uk) and is the author of the book, 100 Classic T oys. We’re big fans of animal testing


Big Potato’s Tristan Hyatt-Williams explains why he’s all for ‘animal testing’ when it comes to creating games, but don’t worry, he doesn’t mean forcing a chimp to play Linkee


OKAY, BEFORE you steam round to my house and firebomb it for being totally evil, let me explain myself. By testing, I mean game testing, and by animals, I mean willing human guinea pigs. There’s no better way


to iron out any flabby bits and make sure you’ve got a great game on your hands. Before we launched our


first game, Linkee, we tested it on hundreds of people before we were happy with the gameplay and convinced it was good enough. But then we had years to


tweak and dabble because we didn’t have a deadline to hit. We were just doing it for fun back then. Now we make games for a living (our parents still


T


have trouble getting their heads around this) we don’t have the luxury of time, and we can’t afford to get it wrong. To ensure our new games


are good enough we went in search of guinea pigs. Luckily, we didn’t have to


go as far as South America to find them because there are loads of enthusiastic ones here in London who were only too willing to come over and let us experiment on them. The promise of a few beers, some carrot sticks and a bit of cash was all we needed to get them over and playing.


Since putting out those


initial feelers, we have now assembled a crack team of


over a hundred guinea pigs who we can call on at a moments notice to give our games a proper mauling.


get a little better, tighter, more simplified. The guinea pigs are not just great sounding boards,


All games on the market must have been tested to a certain degree but playing a few new ones recently, you do wonder how much was really done. Many have too many pieces, are too complicated and could sell themselves better. It’s always a nerve-


they come up


with excellent solutions too. And we don’t just


These testing sessions have proven to be invaluable. At every one our games


test the games on them, we canvas their opinion on the game design, name, strapline, target audience, rules, box and so on.


wracking experience having strangers play your game for the first time in case they hate it. But to make sure it’s in tip-top shape before it goes to market, my advice is: get yourself some guinea pigs. We did and our games are


far better for it. In fact we might even write on the box: thoroughly tested on animals. And they enjoyed every moment of it. Mostly.


ristan Hyatt-Williams spent 15 years working undercover as a copywriter in a number of London agencies before he made his ninja-like move in 2014 into the games world, jumping ship with his long-suffering art director Ben and fellow ad man, Dean. Their first title was Linkee. They have three more titles coming out this year.


www.toynews-online.biz September 15 Evolution has said there


are plans for a new event, and I’ll await news on that with interest, but my big wish would be for them to find a way to make their July showcase work again. This is one industry


where Christmas shouldn’t come just once a year.


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