Devlog #46 - 29/04/16I have returned back to the living (somewhat) after the expo and convention earlier this week. The time between my last post and this one was spent entirely on updating the UI and fixing up a bunch of bugs. I pretty much did double-time. I'm just hoping I won't end up getting too sick from it all.
But, in any case, I'm here to write about how the expo went (with pictures!).
A free info card I was giving away for the game. So this past weekend (April 24) was the Ottawa International Gaming Conference (OIGC) expo. It was the first one they've hosted, the first expo I have ever attended, and the first time showing Gataela to the public. I wasn't too sure of what to expect of it all, but overall it went really well!
First of all, the expo itself was insanely busy. The facebook event had about 500 people interested, yet 2600 people ended up attending! I was standing around and talking
a lot more than I was expecting. There were a lot of people from the area showing off their stuff and unfortunately I couldn't really look around all that much, but there were some projects from the local college/university game dev programs, some other small startups and companies, some individuals and a lot of artists.
The nice thing about this con was that it ended up being
completely free. Free for the ones doing the showing, and free for the attendees. I think that helped a lot to get people in and walking around. That and probably the farmer's market on the other side of the building. (Lots of grandparents bringing their grandchildren around.)
My friend stopped by to take pictures and this was around 1 hour before the expo ended. I was really concerned before the expo about people not liking the game or passing it by. RPGs are kinda hard to show - let alone make a demo for - so I ended up with just taking the next beta release and throwing a lot of polish on it. It probably didn't help that I only had a keyboard and mouse setup too, so that was some extra worry. (Plus I had no chairs to give to anyone :X)
Someone playing through the game. Most people who came by didn't even make it through the tutorial/opening content (~5 mins of playing). This content is simply a couple cutscenes and battles. It pretty much introduces the tutorials through the story, so there isn't that much waiting around (~1 min or so). Most people unfortunately didn't get to the debate battles. I guess story stuff just wasn't what they were looking for. That or they needed a chair.
There were some people though who played for 15-40 minutes. I had a couple kids who (as their parents told me) had very little interest in games or only played things like minecraft. It was really nice to see them play so much. It was also nice to see their parents struggling to pull them away (sorry parents).
Interestingly, I had some 6-10 year olds playing the game without any issues. It was rather surprising for me since I figured all that text would likely be too difficult for them. Some of them went around talking to as many NPCs as they could. Others just skipped through it all.
It was also really nice that a lot of people got really into the game and characters so quickly! Some people even came back quite a few times. I saw someone who ended up buying the artbook showing it off to a bunch of people and redirecting them over to the table. It was also really nice that a couple of my Kickstarter backers ended up showing up, and buying the artbook. They seemed quite happy with the game so far, which I am really glad about. (My backers like to be very silent people so it's something I'm always worried about.)
I got a lot of nice comments from people, some of the most common ones were that they:
- found the game really pretty/liked the art
- liked the characters
- liked the music
- liked the UI/aesthetic
-
it was fun- hurry up and release it faster
I had a guestbook people could write in and cards people could take. I was also selling some old merch from the Kickstarter. Overall the experience was really great. Just some observations I made and some stuff I would probably want to change in the future.
Things done well- had cards of the game so people could take to follow up later (also people love free stuff)
- had a slideshow with concept art, in-game shots and so forth on a third monitor
- had enough content for the demo so that people who wanted to stay longer could have stuff to do
- had a copy of the character art book people could flip through and read
- the slideshow monitor was off to the very edge of the table row and faced outwards, people walking by/around the corner could see it easily
- bringing the extra merch and pricing it at "easy to pay" numbers (ex. $2, $5, $20, etc.) (I ended up selling all my artbooks!!)
Things to Improve- get some chairs or request extra chairs
- when no one was playing on the machines I should've had a video play or something with in-game footage
- make some premade file saves so that if people just wanted to run around and kill stuff they can
- set up the free cards and such at the end of the table or a place with a lot of "traffic flow"; the middle of the table ended up getting clogged with people asking questions or flipping through the artbook
I think one of the things that this expo has convinced me to do is to release a free demo of the game when I get around to Steam Greenlight later this summer/fall. Seeing so many people enjoy the game thus far was really great, and I've been sitting on the fence about a demo for greenlight for the past few months. Hopefully everything will end up being worth it.
The only downside of the expo was that I didn't get everything I planned for this month done, so the completion percentage didn't increase as much as usual. Hopefully all of that will be fixed up in the next month but for now I'm rushing to fix the few bugs a couple people found while playing so I can get the next beta out more-or-less on time. Then I'm gonna to take a break. A nice couple of days off from deving (minus project management stuff). Then back to work!