Phew!
Home today after an insane 4 days in Melbourne. Missing it already but at the same time, glad to be back filled with inspiration, motivation and new ideas.
I'll be treating this post as more of a diary of my time there so if you're interested in the perspective of a new developer being totally in awe of the gaming community and the vibe surrounding it please read on!
I'll start off by back tracking a little bit. About a month ago while browsing through Facebook I saw a post from one of the organisers of GCAP offering a chance for new developers to apply for something called GCAP Assist. The program basically allowed successful applicants to attend the event free of charge. I applied and immediately started scouting out other events in my area, optimistically hoping that if successful I should at least have some experience showing the game to people.
Sydney has an event every month called Beer and Pixels where local developers bring their games to a bar in the CBD and show off what they've been working on. If you've read our devlog before you'll know that I'm a big fan of this event, it's a great place to meet local developers and get a new perspective on your game. Niall and I have been working hard to get a demo build ready that we can leave alone and let people play without any explanation. From the start we've wanted our core gameplay loop to be something that people can jump right into and start playing without confusion, it is afterall meant to be a party game that anyone can play and the new build went really well!
Props to these guys for yelling so loudly that security started eyeing us off
If you're not participating in your local game dev scene you should be! Playtesting in places like this is absolutely invaluable. While nothing totally game breaking, the amount of new bugs and issues I saw with the game while watching people play was staggering. People were exploring the mechanics and levels in ways I never would have thought of and without showing the game these bugs might have gone completely unnoticed.
So, a few bug fixes and re-worked rooms later and I was showing the game at AIE's game day. Another Sydney based event at a game development college.
Brought the whole set up this time
After these events I felt so much better about taking our game to a conference like GCAP. The improvements made just by showing the game and gaining that new perspective boosted my confidence a lot. It was also nearing Halloween at this point so I carved a mini podepumkin.
Spooky
Soon after this I got confirmation that I had been successful in my application to GCAP Assist and I was off to Melbourne! I arrived with the new build on my laptop on the Monday morning and headed down to the conference hall so that I had an idea of where I had to go the next day. I had somehow completely missed the memo that Unite Con was on that day, the conference hall was packed! I decided, at the risk of getting kicked out, to set up Muddledash.
The beginning of my rogue marketing strategy
Thankfully everyone was really cool with me setting up like this, it looked absolutely hilarious in comparison to everyone elses set ups. A lot of people there were showing what they had brought for PAX AUS so their tables looked amazing.
That night there was an after party in a pub across from the conference hall, the vaporwave was blasting and I had an awesome time catching up with some devs from the Sydney scene and talking to a bunch of new people. Massive shout outs to
Thom Wheeler,
Julian Wilton and the guys behind
Party Golf. You guys are awesome.
The next day was the start of GCAP and wow. I thought Unite was big, GCAP was crazy.
Technically this was the closing keynote but I am bad at remembering to take photos
It was another huge day of setting up Muddledash, running in and out of some great talks and meeting a bunch of new people. By this stage I was starting to get a bit of a reputation as the guy who was setting up his game everywhere. I was super surprised that no one else was doing this. There were empty tables everywhere and great opportunities to show the game to really influential people. A lot of people came up to me purely because I was there and no one else was. If I can give one piece of advice to anyone who is new to the scene, do not be afraid to show what you have made! Everyone in the community is super nice and supportive and the worst case scenario is that a bunch of new people now know your game exists.
The afterparty was another big networking event that was super enjoyable. I got talking to
Laura Dale who had been flown out to Melbourne by the Victorian Government to write articles about Australian games. I saw another opportunity here and asked if she wanted to play a round of Muddledash right there in the bar and out of that we got our first bit of press about the game!
You can read it here!I also had a great talk with
Rami Ismail about commiting to the game you are creating and believing in your ideas. That man is a saint!
The next day was a lot of the same insanity and honestly from there it is all a bit of a blur. The excitment of feeling like I am living out a dream I have had since I was 8 has totally blown me away and I'm not quite back to baseline yet.
An image of me being carted back to the airport
Anyways, congratulations to all the winners from the awards night and thanks to the organisers of the events. The last few days have been amazing and I can't wait to get to work.
Keep an eye on this thread, there's a lot of stuff coming.
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