As many readers will know, last weekend represented the culmination of my efforts over the last four months as a contributor to The Indie Games Room and a developer showcasing my game in this space. On top of this my birthday was on the Monday after and my final semester of Uni was about to start which is accompanied with heavy teaching hours in which I tutor the next wave of computer science students at the university. In this blog post I’m going to try to cover a lot of ground and run through the AVCon weekend.
The Indie Games Room weekend really started on the Friday as this was the setup day for developers. I arrived at the Convention Centre at around 10am to be greet by Ben, the big boss man behind IGR and Paul the stage manager who I had previously met at a Games Development Club meet. We jumped straight into the room and I quickly setup my netbook to take photos for a timelapse of the weekend. Keep an eye out on the website as it will be up soon.
Setup was straightforward and largely went without a hitch. Testing and tagging was delayed and took longer than expected but privately this was a win, at least for me, as it allowed developers the opportunity to converse for longer. Speaking of conversing, I managed to talk with the creator behind Antichamber, Alexander Bruce for several hours over the weekend. I really can’t articulate how insightful and important the conversations I had with Alex were. Through talking with Alex I began to better realise my own philisophy behind making games and felt a stronger sense of where I should be heading.
On the Friday night I managed to get my first play of Expand in by fellow local developer Matt Trobiani. Matt’s a good friend and has been very supportive and interested in Expand hence I really wanted to get his opinion on it first. I think the first play through must be when developers get the most nervous and I can tell you that I was extremely nervous.
At this point I should talk more about the AVCon prototype before moving onto the impressions of the game. The AVCon prototype(the game is still and will be for a long time, a prototype) was my attempt to showcase a slither of what I’m trying to get across with this game. My intention was to create a series of examples that highlighted the ideas that I’ve had stuck in my head for the last year and a half. The demo which ran for roughly 10 minutes managed to show a few of these ideas but there are many, many more which still need to be tested. The prototype itself was setup as a series of sequentially linked ideas. I didn’t spent much time trying to balance the difficulty as I simply wanted to focus on the ideas, after all it is a prototype Besides testing game ideas, I also used this prototype to test music and my use of expression through metaphors. For the most part I thought that the demo managed to convey enough to warrant the play testing which I was largely using to verify that I was on the right track.
Back to the impressions. Matt’s impression of Expand was very positive which was a massive relief. Lots of people including Matt have told me about how they thought the game was just going to be a bit of a toy and it was great to convince them that this was not the case. The overall feedback regarding Expand was very positive and word soon spread both in the room and via Twitter(which was a nice surprise). The early and frequent pieces of feedback that I received were positive with many people saying that the game was very different, very unique and very absorbing with a lot of people wanting to play more. Throughout the weekend we managed to keep a steady stream of people playing with lines of three people long at one or two points. My amazing girlfriend helped man the booth and did a great job talking to people who were waiting in line or had stopped to have a look.
To be frank, most of the feedback was not helpful, however there were a few things that I’ve taken on board and need to look at in more details. I also received a few ideas from watching how people played which will be tested later on. One thing I didn’t expect was for players to rush through the game.
Besides showing Expand I also helped out with the general running of the show. Luckily Ben, who has a background in event management took care of most things, which was great because honestly I have no idea what to do. The fact that everything ran really well and that The Indie Games Room looked so good is a real credit to Ben who has been fantastic to work alongside with.
We started off the Saturday with a keynote from our interstate guest, Tom Killen from The Voxel Agents. I briefly had the opportunity to chat with Tom but felt really nervous as if I invited a really cool kid into our computer club and was trying to tell him that we were still cool too. Tom presented a really fantastic keynote that covered both business side of indie development, which is important as most indies don’t have a grasp on it and hit on the core fundamentals that The Voxel Agents and many other indies use when creating a game. I was particularly impressed when Tom showed the different representational forms that their upcoming games could be moulded into. I’d recommend checking out the slides on our website.
Throughout the rest of Saturday we ran different panels. I was the chair of the Design is Law panel which I think went pretty well, it’s hard to tell when you’re on stage. The panelists Dr Mike Cooper, Kim Forrest and Alexander Bruce, all of whom I have a lot of respect for, were fantastic and luckily for me I let them do most of the talking. Unfortunately the sound system wasn’t tuned perfectly on Saturday and so I think the panels conflicted with the noise that was in the rest of the room. However on Sunday things were much better and I think the panels felt much more at home.
On Sunday the crowds were not quite as large but we still drew plenty of bodies into the room. I presented a talk called How to get started making games which I think ran pretty well, again it’s hard to tell. It drew the largest crowd out of all of the talks which was great. The lights shinning on the stage were extremely bright so I’m sorry for looking down frequently during the talk. As with the other slides they’re on our website.
I also had several interviews with journalists on Sunday which was nice considering I don’t think of myself as something worthy of being interviewed. My first interview was with Bradley Jolly from Level3. I’ve seen Brads’ name a bit on Twitter so it was great to finally meet him. I also did an interview with a freelance journalist who’s name escapes me(Sorry). My final interview was with Jessica from GamePron. Jessica has helped arrange the ARGGGH gatherings and it was great to finally chat to her at the last ARGGGH. My interview with her was filmed. I think it went pretty well, you can judge for yourself a bit later. Unfortunately I missed out on another interview with Leena van Deventer who is a writer for MMGN and is on this years Freeplay board. It was great meeting Leena and a real pity that didn’t get much of a chance to chat.
This year the Indie Games Room was intending on closing at 3:30pm on the Sunday but we stayed open till 5pm which was great. The overall impressions of this years IGR showing has been very positive and personally I think the show was a great success. The only thing I’m disapointed about is that I missed the rest of AVCon which sounds like it was really awesome.
After AVCon finished I grabbed some tea and then headed to the AVCon after party which was fantastic. I’m not a real party person but love the opportunity to have good conversation with friends. I also managed to say hello to my childhood hero’s Jade and Ryan from CheezTV. What top blokes.
The AVCon weekend was an amazing experience. Thanks to everyone who played Expand and provided feedback. If you didn’t get a chance to play Expand at AVCon then head down to the next ARGGGH gathering. That will be my last public showing for a long while so don’t miss out.
Chris