A few weeks ago I was sat on the train on my way down to London. Laptop open, using the spare 3 hours of the journey for game dev I was excited and nervous. Since meeting my wife 10 years ago I’ve not really done much alone. As we share such similar interests we do pretty much everything together and when we don’t share an interest we tend to support each other as every good couple should. Therefore travelling down to an important event alone feels alien to me, but it’s something I’ve had to do a couple of times since starting my game dev career. To make this a successful business I have to be able and willing to attend such events easily without having to haul the whole family down every time. It still feels weird and somewhat lonely though.
So the train pulled into Euston and I get off feeling like a giddy kid whose been allowed to go to town for the first time by himself! As I make my way over to Fenchurch Street to setup at the Intel Buzz Workshop I awkwardly take a few selifies to mark the journey. I don’t know how social network pros take selfies all the time, I always feel like everyone is looking at me thinking what a douche! Nevertheless I suck up my awkwardness and pose away then post to Twitter wondering if anyone other than my closest followers will actually notice.
I get to the stated location in Fenchurch and look around. I think I’m lost. I don’t seem to be able to see the venue. This always happens on the few occasions I’m on time something stupid happens and I end up being late anyway! I look at my phone and it says I’m in the right place. I look up and still feel lost… I must look like a right tourist! A city newb! I decide to retrace my steps, turn around and bam! I was stood in front of the venue the whole time! Right that’s it, expunge all my awkwardness and douchiness; reset and switch into confident and capable mode.
As I walk into the venue I take the opportunity to snap another selfie by the entrance poster. I’m the kind of person that usually forgets to take these kinds of pics and always regrets it. I’ve decided I’m going to force myself to take pics and videos even when it feels awkward as I’ll be glad I did after.
I walk up to the reception to ask which floor I should head to. The lovely lady greets me and then asks: “We’re we difficult to find? I noticed you looking lost just then.” DOH! I inform her that no they were easy to find I was just being stupid.
So I head over to the first floor to see what the rest of the day has in hold for me. Up until now, my limited experiences of gaming conventions, expos and the like have all been in big warehouses or arenas that are perfect for the purpose but are pretty bare bones. This so far feels somewhat different to what I was expecting. It feels a lot more business-like. As I approach the welcome desk to get my pass I’m greeted by the young BeMyApp team who seem really excited to see me! They recognise the logo for GLO on my t-shirt and tell me I’m the first developer to arrive. Suddenly I feel kind of important. I can get used to this. I’m explained the layout of the venue, showed where my setup will be located and told about the free food, drinks, snacks and coffee. Free food and coffee, awesome!!
I see past my awkwardness once again and decided to get my phone out to film my walk through the venue.
After doing my video tour of the venue and setting up my laptop with GLO, I decide to go and grab a cup of coffee and introduce myself to the other game developers that have started to arrive. It’s a really nice relaxed environment and the pastries and coffee taste even sweeter as they are complimentary! I introduce myself to a few people and do my best to remember name (something I am notoriously bad at!). Reassuringly everyone seems excited and a little nervous, much like myself. As I’m chatting to someone I suddenly catch a glimpse out of the corner of my eye what looks like a huge picture of me! I turn around and there on the huge projector is one of the selfies I took on the walk to the venue and posted to Twitter. Next is the picture I took form home in the morning showing my breakfast bar, drink and laptop! Turns out everything tagged to #BuzzWorkshop was being displayed on the huge screen! Awkward but hilarious too!
As the morning progresses and all the developers setup the workshop gets into full swing. It’s a great environment filled with really enthusiastic new and young game developers as well as industry veterans and media specialists. Everyone I spoke to either wanted to learn as much as they could or help as best as they can. There was not a single boring conversation to be had. One of the things I didn’t expect was to be in a position to provide so much advice to the other game developers. Other than the Play Expo and chatting with people through social media I haven’t had that much opportunity to talk in any level of detail with fellow game developers. I guess in the past year and a half of getting into game development I’ve consumed a lot of information, not just game dev related but also around drive and commitment. I’ve also received some amazing info from other developers on how to market my games. Although I’ve been putting a lot of this into practice and trying to keep track of it in this blog I’ve never really had the opportunity to help somebody one on one. There were a number of amazing games on show at the workshop, games that if I was privileged enough to be part of their development I would think I was on to something really successful. However I was surprised at the lack of visibility they were getting. There were a number of conversations where I was able to share a lot of what I’ve picked up over the past months and year. Tricks about using IndieDB, #screenshotsaturday etc, somethings that I’ve taken for granted that I know and assumed everyone else did to. It was great to see people’s excitement and reaction to finding out new ways to promote their games. It felt really nice to be in a position to help and I’m really excited to see how well some these game can do! One in particular that I loved was a game called Eldest Souls. It’s by a development team called Fallen Flag who is made up of two young Italian guys and an artist. It’s one of those situations where they are so passionate about game development and the game they are making but I don’t think they realise just how good they are!
After a busy but fun morning I decided to make a plan for after lunch and the rest of the day. Firstly I checked when I was due to pitch GLO on stage. Yep that’s right, stand up in front of a crowd and tell everyone why GLO is awesome! It’s only a two minute pitch but boy was I nervous about it! My slot was around 17:30 and one of the last of the day. Great I now have the whole day to stress about it… Trying to not overthink the stress of the pitch I went to check out what mentoring slots were available. They had this thing where you could book a slot with one of the industry veterans or media specialists and ask them anything about game development, marketing etc. I had a look through and one that piqued my interest was Dann Sullivan. His areas of expertise were focused around gaining visibility of your game and contacting press. I booked myself in for a 20 min chat with Dann after lunch and I was really pleased that I did. One of the best things to come from the chat was the validation Dann gave me for the things I am currently doing to promote Gym Empire. It can be really difficult to know, especially in a small time frame, if what you are doing is actually having much traction and getting visibility. Being able to talk with someone who is on the other side and has been exposed to the industry for a lot longer than me really helps to cement some of the strategies that I’m trying to employ. On top of that Dann is a really nice and approachable guy and someone I feel comfortable asking for advice from again in future.
As the day continued it was more fun chatting with people, playing other indie games and catching the odd presentation all fuelled with lovely food and drink; all leading up to pitch time. To be honest the hours absolutely flew by and I didn’t stress about doing the pitch as much as I thought as I was so preoccupied having a great time. Nevertheless the second round of pitches came up and I was sat in the audience waiting for my slot. Everyone was doing a great job pitching so far and even those who seemed nervous gave a really good pitch. As the guy before me was doing his I really started to feel the nerves kick in! Those kind of nerves where you think your legs will turn to jelly and your voice will tremble uncontrollably. The guy finished his pitch and the crowd applauded. At that point I thought, right this is it, suck it up! I am the best person to describe my game, I genuinely think it’s awesome and no one is here because they want anyone to fail. I stood up walked to stage and grabbed the mic. When I looked at everyone they all seemed relaxed and chilled out. When I looked behind me I saw the huge logo of GLO on the projector behind me waiting to play my trailer. I suddenly felt at home. I was excited to tell everyone about GLO and how much I love it. I introduced myself, talked about my love of the unknown and mystery in computer games and described how and why I created GLO. I spoke about the feeling I wanted to capture in the player and how that drove itself to the manifestation of the darkness mechanic in GLO. The trailer then played and I talked through some of favourite parts of it. I even managed to get a laugh from the crowd when I joked about how proud I was of the firework explosion part. The trailer ended, my two minutes were up and although it was so short I had an absolute blast!
With all the pitches done all that was left to do was to wrap up, mingle, grab some dinner and head off to catch my train home. The evening meal was just as lovely as the food throughout the day. Tasty pizzas and salads topped off with free beer. I gobbled up fast, downed a beer and grabbed a coke for the road.
The train back home was absolutely packed. There wasn’t a single spare seat and the “quiet” carriage which I had booked was not so quiet. It didn’t bother me too much though as the noise was just from a family that were going somewhere on holiday with young kids that were really excited to show their grandparents what the newest coolest mobile games were. It felt a bit ironic that I was sat three aisles ahead crunching in some more work developing my own game. Still it was a relief when they got off their stop and could grab 30 mins of shut eye.
I finally got back to my stop at around 23:30 and I stepped out the train station to see my wife’s car pulled up and waiting for me. I got into the car with my son in the back fast asleep and my wife looking absolutely stunning. She’d been over to meet her mum and sister for a meal with the kids and was looking lovely.
What a perfect conclusion to and absolutely brilliant day!
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