So what a weekend!
Where do I start? When I first got the email informing me that I was selected to appear at the PLAY Expo I had a rush of surprise, followed by excitement and then fear. I believe in GLO and when I sent out the email showing my interest in exhibiting I felt I had done a good job of putting my best foot forward. Still there are never any guarantees and to be selected from hundreds of applicants, is an amazing feeling! The excitement came from the fact that I’ve heard so much about gaming expos but have never gotten to actually attend any myself. I’ve also seen a lot of YouTube videos of indie developers preparing for shows and showcasing their work. Being so early in my career as an indie developer I didn’t think I’d be so lucky to add an expo to my list of achievements! And then came the fear… Can I do myself proud? I’ve never been to a gaming expo let alone exhibited at one. Will I know how to talk to people? Will I know how to explain my game in the best light? I’m not new to public speaking but there’s something about presenting work you’ve put your heart and soul into that makes it that much more daunting.
But I kept telling myself what an amazing opportunity this is. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. I will be in an environment of likeminded people who love computer games as much as me. At the end of the weekend I know I will look back and will have loved every minute of it. So I ordered my stuff and prepared the setup of the GLO stall.
On the Friday I went down to start to set up the table with some of basics so I wouldn’t have much to do on the Saturday morning. I didn’t really know what to expect and was quite nervous, even though the show was not till the next day. When I finally found the exhibitor entrance I went in and collected my wrist band.
And then I saw what was going to be my home for the next two days… I couldn’t hold back the massive grin on my face! When I saw the LAN PC gaming set up, followed by the hundreds of Minecraft PC and then PS4 stand followed by the retro arcade section I felt like I was in gaming heaven! Suddenly all my fear turned into pure excitement! And to think I was going to be a part of all of this!
I headed over to the Indie Zone to inspect my spot and start to set up. I thought as I was one of the free tables it would be in the back and beyond hidden away. How wrong I was! The Indie Zone was smack bang in the middle of the whole expo and my particular table was right at the end of a alley of shop stalls. Perfect for catching peoples eye! It’s so cool how much focus the guys running the expo put on the Indie developers. I think they deserve a big thank you for that.
After I’d set up the table cloth and placed the cards, posters badges, laptop etc on the table and was happy with the look I decided to call it a day and head home for some last minute laptop setup.
Saturday morning came around (after a marathon session of Super Meat Boy with a friend I’d not seen in some time!) and the nerves were back even more than ever! I’d relaxed after Friday, but today was the big day! Today it all started for real. I’d be face to face with the public while they play GLO. What would they think? Had I been tricking myself all along thinking this was a good game? The imposter syndrome started to kick in. Anyway, I had to just suck it up and get on with it!
Me and a friend who said he would help out headed over to the expo centre and did the final set up for the stall. It didn’t take long and when everything was all up and running it looked great! I was so pleased with the two laptop set up and the finishing touch was the lovely cake my wife sent over.
30 mins before the doors opened I went for a quick toilet break and happened to walk past the waiting crowd. Woah! This is real!
Then 10:00am hit and the doors opened. How long would it be before anyone came over? Will anyone be interested.
Straight away a guy comes over with his partner and starts asking me about GLO. Cool! Suddenly I was explaining GLO what it’s about, why I made it. It just flowed. What was I even worried about? I’ve spent the last three months putting every spare minute into this. I know it like the back of my hand. And my wife could tell you first hand, I can’t shut up about it! After a decent play on GLO and supporting me in Thunderclap I cut nice big slice of cake for his pregnant partner and they carried on through the expo. Turns out he was from the press! Cool!
From that point on it was a constant flow of interested people. Kids, adults, parents, cosplayers. You name it. And they all seemed to really love playing. The difficulty level along with the quick re-spawn had them giving it “one more go” for an average of 20mins per person. GLO was performing perfectly as well. There were absolutely no bugs in the first day and that was over about 3000 attempts.
I also managed to get an amazing amount of feedback. People loved the concept and found it genuinely unique and satisfying. I also picked up on improvements I can make for the final release including, some tweaks to level 14, a few more visual aids to explain the use of aiming and secondary bullets.
The highlight of Saturday was one lady who was dressed in awesome Warcraft cosplay coming back 3 times to play, racking up about 2.5 hours of game time an getting to level 32!
Something else I didn’t quite expect were some very young aspiring game developers who didn’t know where to start to get into making games. When I told them of my journey their eyes lit up with excitement. It’s great to think my personal hobby might help a younger generation decided what they would like to do in life.
So the first day came to a close and we were absolutely knackered, in a good way. We hadn’t sat down all day and didn’t stop speaking to people but it was all amazing! I got home had some dinner and chilled on the couch, caught up with the Twitter buzz that was going on after the first day and watched a bunch of Rick and Morty episodes. When I drifted off I fell into a bit of a groundhog day sleep where I was explain what GLO is and asking for support with my Thunderclap campaign, lol.
Sunday morning arrives and I’m still tired from the day before but raring to go! For the second day I had another friend helping me out. So we met at the carpark so I could give him his pass and we headed on over to the stall. We didn’t have too much set up to do apart from the laptops and monitors. 10:00 came round and you could tell it was instantly quieter than the Saturday. All the indie devs were just stood waiting as people walked past heading to the shop stall and the VR set ups. I wondered if the Sunday was going to be much quieter.
30 mins in and a couple of press guys from the day before popped over to say hi again. On the Saturday I met some great people and we really got on. There were no formalities and it was great to just catch up about the day before and see how things went on both sides. While I was chatting to some interested kids came over to have a go. Again they were hooked for about 20 mins trying to double jump their way through the darkness. Suddenly things got back to normal! A constant flow of interested gamers and press kept on coming over to check out GLO and chat to me.
I met one press lady who specialises in sorting out GameMaker Studio meetups in London and we had a really good chat! She’d even been at a party the Friday before with a YouTuber who has an amazing series of GameMaker tutorials that I’ve watched a lot of! That was really cool!
As the day progressed I saw loads of new faces and some familiar ones form the day before. One in particular, a dad with his two kids, came back to have good 30min session! We had a good chat about Indie Game the Movie, making games and other cool stuff. It’s really nice because he’s since contacted me to wish me luck and to let me know he’s inspired by the indie development world! It’s the interactions like that, which make this so worthwhile for me.
Around 17:00 one guy comes over to have a play and after playing for 10 mins asks me who has gotten the furthest over the weekend. I told him about the lady who got to level 32 and he said “Right I’m going to beat that!” He then continued to play for about an hour and a half and got as far as level 44! I was amazed by his dedication and again seeing someone so interested was brilliant! Another great thing to come from him playing was that he found the first bug in the game. It’s great that it went so far through the weekend with no mishaps, but I’m so pleased he found it as it would have been really frustrating for that to come out on release day! The bug has affected the vertical scrolling platforms (anyone who’s been following me knows the issue I’ve had with those) but has now been sorted. It literally was that the centre point for the character was off by a single pixel so all my calculations were out by 1! Big thank you to that guy!
As the Sunday started to come to a close I go the chance to try out some of the other indie titles. Super Lumi Live is an awesome game Gemi Games that just release this September on Steam and they had a huge buzz around their table with some hardcore players trying to outdo each other on speed run attempts. I only had a quick go but I can see how addictive that game is. It’s like a neon mashup of all the best bits of Super Meat Boy made with a Super Mario World feel. I’m definitely going to be buying that! There also was a really cool game called Tanglewood by Big Evil Corporation. It’s a brand new Sega MegaDrive/Genesis game being made by one guy! So cool! Unfortunately I didn’t get to have a go but I got a sweet beanie and it is on my Christmas wishlist.
Looking back the PLAY Expo has been an absolutely amazing and emotional experience! I met so many amazing people and had such a great time watching them play GLO. I will definitely be hoping to attend more expos and conventions and would love to get more chances to showcase GLO and my future games. Even if GLO doesn’t go on to make many sales, having had this experience makes all the hard work worth it…