Starkon 2015 through the eyes of an indie developer
Last weekend in St. Petersburg, Starcon died down - a major festival of fantasy, comics, games and other entertainment.
Despite the fact that many people associate it primarily with cosplayers and comics, there was also something useful for the game developer that I want to tell you about.
In addition to the standard range of comic-like events from souvenir shops, board games, cinema, comics and cosplay, Next Castle Party's stand was held in one of the pavilions - regularly held in St. Petersburg festival of indie and retro games. I took part in it with my Aurora RL last fall, and now, having learned that they were recruiting game projects for my stand on Starcon, I hurried to sign up. For registration, this time it was necessary to indicate the site of your project and brief information about it, to provide an image for the billboard and a short 10-second video (which, however, has not been shown anywhere else). You do not need to be some kind of super AAA title to participate, so this is a good way for new teams to show themselves and look at others.
')
If the NCP itself is a rather modest and tube festival, then Starcon hit the scales and crowds with people. Under the NCP, a whole pavilion was allocated in which traditional zones of modern and retro games were housed, an indie-games demonstration zone (where there was a place for our team), and a lecture hall where they lectured on game-devils.
Indie zone was a table, standing on the aisle, with a socket for connecting equipment, on which developers were free to demonstrate their projects on their own equipment. I used the most budget option indicated in the title photo: a laptop with a running trailer and a sign describing the project. I wanted to show the game to as many potential players as possible, for which I had to fight in every possible way for their attention. From the experience of past similar events, as well as stories of table neighbors, I can say that for demonstration it is necessary:
Show on the big screen, of course, much clearer
This may seem obvious to some, but there were enough teams that didn’t think about it beforehand and were forced to hand out to players the pieces of paper torn out of a notebook with the address or tinkering with a name / description of the project on the spot.
Speaking of the crowd. You need to be prepared that your equipment will survive this (find the developers and their tables in the photo):
The influx of people can both help (more potential players) and prevent (people just do not have the physical ability to linger near you). Feels like the most visited day was Friday, a lot of visitors gathered at the opening, as a result, most of the developers who showed the games that day were out of work - there was simply no place for the apple, let alone linger and enjoy the gameplay.
Communication with the players goes something like this: you are standing at your table and shifting from foot to foot (for some reason it is not accepted to give out chairs to NCP, only the table). Periodically, someone passing by stops and begins to peer at the screen with a trailer or read the description on the tablet. Here is the time to establish contact, grab an arm and drag play / look along the way telling what and how is happening in your game. And do not forget to stick a business card.
This is Commander Shepard, and this is the best game on the Citadel, hehe
The success of this whole process is, of course, largely determined by hitting the audience. According to the observations, spectacular games with short sessions are going well, so that you can immediately give the person a joystick passing by and he immediately began to play. In this case, you don’t even have to be near - visitors will come and try from time to time. With my project, alas, a little bit wrong, the rogalic-like gameplay is disposed towards thoughtful and lengthy passing, so you just had to show everything yourself, explaining along the way. By the end of the day, the language is already a bit too dry to repeat the same thing, by the way, therefore, it is advisable to have water with you (on-site all the wild overprices are, of course, but participants are usually not inspected, so anything can be carried)
In general, somehow this is how it all happens:
By the way, at KRI 2014, they also tried to introduce a similar format of a “business zone” with tables, for those who do not have the ability / desire to arrange a full-fledged stand. True, it somehow didn’t take off, the players weren’t allowed in there (the passage from Igromir and Comicon to the CWI zone was only for participants), and other developers, indie projects that happened to be there, were of little interest.
Demonstration of his game opportunities are not exhausted. In the corner there was a lecture hall in which one could listen to various specialists from the industry. And unlike some KRI, where last year most of the reports were devoted to all sorts of boring things like how to squeeze more money out of the user, the NCP usually discusses quite practical things about art, game design and programming. Unfortunately, this time the lecture hall was located unsuccessfully, there was no separate room for it, so shots, explosions and music, rushing from everywhere, greatly interfered with listening. But judging by the fact that there has always been almost filled with greedy knowledge, it was not distracting.
Developers talk about how you can get into the industry
From what I heard, I can note a lecture on the artistic style of the characters (even though I am a programmer myself, but I have to understand everything in a small team, and also about randomness in game design, perhaps some of the ideas presented there (for example, a curious refusal option). from chance, when instead of honest randomness pre-generated sequences of numbers are used in order to avoid even if unlikely, but possible situations like ten misses in a row) I will use in my game.
About efficiency
I must say at once, the effectiveness of such measures, expressed in numbers, is quite modest. In one day of participation several dozens of people approached us (I distributed about half of the printed packs for 100 leaflets), while the number of game installations grew by only three dozen, plus a couple of subscribers in the group. In part, this may be due to the lack of project compliance with the audience, since at the same NCP everything was much more fun, at least in the number of people interested (I did not think to calculate download statistics at that time) and their compliance with our project (almost everyone there, for example, are familiar with Star Control 2, from which I drew inspiration, while at Starcon the majority knew the maximum about Space Rangers).
The main advantage of participation is, of course, communication. With other developers who can pick up interesting ideas with players (after all, you can get live feedback on the spot, sort of corridor testing, for which indie teams often do not have resources), with various flysplays and other game players who can to be helpful in disseminating your project.
Well, it’s always nice to look at naughty cosplayers for free (the participants don’t pay for the entrance), too, without that.
So if you are an indie developer with your already playable project, I can recommend to participate! Next Next Castle Party will take place in the autumn in St. Petersburg, registration for developers will open sometime in August at http://2015.nextcastle.ru/ru/ .
Despite the fact that many people associate it primarily with cosplayers and comics, there was also something useful for the game developer that I want to tell you about.
In addition to the standard range of comic-like events from souvenir shops, board games, cinema, comics and cosplay, Next Castle Party's stand was held in one of the pavilions - regularly held in St. Petersburg festival of indie and retro games. I took part in it with my Aurora RL last fall, and now, having learned that they were recruiting game projects for my stand on Starcon, I hurried to sign up. For registration, this time it was necessary to indicate the site of your project and brief information about it, to provide an image for the billboard and a short 10-second video (which, however, has not been shown anywhere else). You do not need to be some kind of super AAA title to participate, so this is a good way for new teams to show themselves and look at others.
')
If the NCP itself is a rather modest and tube festival, then Starcon hit the scales and crowds with people. Under the NCP, a whole pavilion was allocated in which traditional zones of modern and retro games were housed, an indie-games demonstration zone (where there was a place for our team), and a lecture hall where they lectured on game-devils.
Indie zone was a table, standing on the aisle, with a socket for connecting equipment, on which developers were free to demonstrate their projects on their own equipment. I used the most budget option indicated in the title photo: a laptop with a running trailer and a sign describing the project. I wanted to show the game to as many potential players as possible, for which I had to fight in every possible way for their attention. From the experience of past similar events, as well as stories of table neighbors, I can say that for demonstration it is necessary:
- Video gameplay / trailer. Usually, everything is shown on laptops, the preferred option is a large screen. You can also connect a tablet to it if the game is for mobile devices (it is difficult to look at the tablets / smartphones in the crowd). If your game is for mobile OS, do not forget to take more devices (at least 3 pieces), on which visitors can play. At first, it is generally a bit scary to leave a bunch of equipment in the middle of an unfamiliar crowd, but so far it seems that no one has stolen anything from anyone.
- A sign from which it will immediately become clear what is it all about. Many visitors have a vague idea of ​​what is happening (especially at major general festivals) - some people, some laptops. At the same time, not everyone is ready to ask a person who walks next to him (and it’s impossible to stay there all the time, especially if there are no assistants), if they are not interested in a couple of seconds, they will pass by that busty cosplayer.
As for the format - there are options. I used the simplest - A4 sheet inserted in the holder. Some teams made banners about the height of a person. On the one hand, this, of course, attracts attention better, on the other, it costs money and takes up space, of which there is very little in the crowd, as a result, some people talked about these banners as useless spending. - Handouts. Ok, so a man came up, listened to your story, seemed to be interested and wants to play at his own leisure. Where can he get your game? At past events, I distributed business cards, but I myself often found myself in a situation when, after some conference, I was holding a pack of these business cards in my hands and you can’t remember which one of them is and who all these people are. So this time I decided to try to make more informative leaflets containing a brief description of the game, screenshots and all the necessary links. Printing hundreds of color double-sided A5 leaflets on glossy paper cost me a couple of thousand; hundreds usually suffice for a couple of days for an event.
Show on the big screen, of course, much clearer
This may seem obvious to some, but there were enough teams that didn’t think about it beforehand and were forced to hand out to players the pieces of paper torn out of a notebook with the address or tinkering with a name / description of the project on the spot.
Speaking of the crowd. You need to be prepared that your equipment will survive this (find the developers and their tables in the photo):
The influx of people can both help (more potential players) and prevent (people just do not have the physical ability to linger near you). Feels like the most visited day was Friday, a lot of visitors gathered at the opening, as a result, most of the developers who showed the games that day were out of work - there was simply no place for the apple, let alone linger and enjoy the gameplay.
Communication with the players goes something like this: you are standing at your table and shifting from foot to foot (for some reason it is not accepted to give out chairs to NCP, only the table). Periodically, someone passing by stops and begins to peer at the screen with a trailer or read the description on the tablet. Here is the time to establish contact, grab an arm and drag play / look along the way telling what and how is happening in your game. And do not forget to stick a business card.
This is Commander Shepard, and this is the best game on the Citadel, hehe
The success of this whole process is, of course, largely determined by hitting the audience. According to the observations, spectacular games with short sessions are going well, so that you can immediately give the person a joystick passing by and he immediately began to play. In this case, you don’t even have to be near - visitors will come and try from time to time. With my project, alas, a little bit wrong, the rogalic-like gameplay is disposed towards thoughtful and lengthy passing, so you just had to show everything yourself, explaining along the way. By the end of the day, the language is already a bit too dry to repeat the same thing, by the way, therefore, it is advisable to have water with you (on-site all the wild overprices are, of course, but participants are usually not inspected, so anything can be carried)
In general, somehow this is how it all happens:
By the way, at KRI 2014, they also tried to introduce a similar format of a “business zone” with tables, for those who do not have the ability / desire to arrange a full-fledged stand. True, it somehow didn’t take off, the players weren’t allowed in there (the passage from Igromir and Comicon to the CWI zone was only for participants), and other developers, indie projects that happened to be there, were of little interest.
Demonstration of his game opportunities are not exhausted. In the corner there was a lecture hall in which one could listen to various specialists from the industry. And unlike some KRI, where last year most of the reports were devoted to all sorts of boring things like how to squeeze more money out of the user, the NCP usually discusses quite practical things about art, game design and programming. Unfortunately, this time the lecture hall was located unsuccessfully, there was no separate room for it, so shots, explosions and music, rushing from everywhere, greatly interfered with listening. But judging by the fact that there has always been almost filled with greedy knowledge, it was not distracting.
Developers talk about how you can get into the industry
From what I heard, I can note a lecture on the artistic style of the characters (even though I am a programmer myself, but I have to understand everything in a small team, and also about randomness in game design, perhaps some of the ideas presented there (for example, a curious refusal option). from chance, when instead of honest randomness pre-generated sequences of numbers are used in order to avoid even if unlikely, but possible situations like ten misses in a row) I will use in my game.
About efficiency
I must say at once, the effectiveness of such measures, expressed in numbers, is quite modest. In one day of participation several dozens of people approached us (I distributed about half of the printed packs for 100 leaflets), while the number of game installations grew by only three dozen, plus a couple of subscribers in the group. In part, this may be due to the lack of project compliance with the audience, since at the same NCP everything was much more fun, at least in the number of people interested (I did not think to calculate download statistics at that time) and their compliance with our project (almost everyone there, for example, are familiar with Star Control 2, from which I drew inspiration, while at Starcon the majority knew the maximum about Space Rangers).
The main advantage of participation is, of course, communication. With other developers who can pick up interesting ideas with players (after all, you can get live feedback on the spot, sort of corridor testing, for which indie teams often do not have resources), with various flysplays and other game players who can to be helpful in disseminating your project.
Well, it’s always nice to look at naughty cosplayers for free (the participants don’t pay for the entrance), too, without that.
So if you are an indie developer with your already playable project, I can recommend to participate! Next Next Castle Party will take place in the autumn in St. Petersburg, registration for developers will open sometime in August at http://2015.nextcastle.ru/ru/ .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/264109/
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