Dec 22, 2014

Year-end Roundup 8: Baby's First Expo Booth

Like we mentioned in the last post, PlayStation Experience in Las Vegas was our first ever Finji expo presence. Sony streamlined a lot of this process for us (providing some furniture, TVs, consoles, and some union stuff), but we were still responsible for populating the booth with banners and whatever else. I wanted to walk through the steps of how we did that in case it is useful for other small teams out there… Also just one last big public THANK YOU to Nathan Vella of Capy Games who walked us through this initially scary process! BANNERS We tried a couple of different options for banners. The biggest one, the one that looks like and functionally acts like a like third wall of the booth, is actually a set of 3 banners, printed in such a way that they line up and look like a single element. We ordered ours from a company called IM Photographics based out of New York, and the actual model/item number was “PM IM 1001 WM 60”, which you can find way down at the bottom of this page. We also ordered a backup banner, the long wide one you see hanging over the back of the booth. We got that printed at Staples for dirt cheap using their online pick-up-in-store option. We did the 8’ wide banner with grommets. The two banners together, with shipping, cost around $800. Total assembly time ended up being around 1-2 hours because of some printing errors on the banner wall, which we were mostly able to fix on-site. The Staples banner was an overnight print but the big banner wall took at least two weeks to print and ship. Nathan just reminded me: even though the up-front expense of the fancy retractable banners is quite high, you can ship them all over the place for less than $100, and re-use them a lot (they’re quite sturdy). You can also design them so that you can use only the central banner if you’re in a smaller space. See, this is why he is in charge of things! FURNITURE While Sony provided some perfectly adequate furniture, we wanted to try out some of the setup that Capy had at PAX last year, so we ordered some weird little ottomans and shelving units from Walmart (i know), and then took a cab out to pick them up and haul them back to the hotel, and then flagged them as charity items after the show. I think a lot of devs prefer to get their furniture from Ikea but there was none in the area. Friends also recommended seeking out local furniture artisans and offering to display their wares in the booth in exchange for having business cards out for their work, which is an idea I love and did not have time to pursue for this show. Our total furniture cost, including the cab ride, was probably around $300. Total assembly time, including loooong walks through the hotel, was maybe a few hours. We ordered these online approximately one week before the show and had them delivered to the local Walmart. Note: some shows do not let you donate your furniture to charity afterward, which sucks and is dumb. MERCH We had a few t-shirts and a lot of stickers and post cards at the booth. The stickers and cards were printed in Pittsburgh, at a local printer the NITW team trusts. We printed our shirts at Industry here in Austin, they did a great job on pretty short notice. The stickers and cards were under $100 I think, but the shirts, since there was a minimum order, were more like $400, and they were basically just uniforms/gifts, so we did not make anything back on them. These materials were all ordered and printed about one week before the show. MISC On Nathan’s suggestion we also printed some “TV toppers” at Insty Prints here in Austin. We used them for some GDC materials last March and they’ve been great to work with so far. ANYWAYS, TV toppers are those fancy cards that we stuck above and below the provided TVs. They included the game logo, the controls, and so on. We stuck them on with double-sided Velcro, and they cost maybe $50 or $100 to print. We printed them on a material called “coroplast”, which is a weird portmanteau of the words corrugated and plastic, but its just that weird kind of thickish, airy, plastic stuff of which small signs are often made. Turnaround time on those was maybe a week, and they were roughly 24" wide by 6" tall. VOILA I think that was about it. Including cab rides and lunch and stuff I think setup took around 8-10 hours, and including our t-shirts was still under $2000. That’s… a significant sum but compared to PAX I think we did pretty ok. Overall it was fun and pretty easy! That said, I would recommend dressing like a very, very comfortable slob on setup day. Skinny jeans were neither necessary nor practical!

Dec 18, 2014

mom pop game shop

mom & pop game shop

Dec 18, 2014

Year-end Roundup 7: PlayStation Experience

After a week or two of “respite” (involving a semi-disastrous but romantic trip to Michigan in the middle of a so-called “arctic bomb-front” aka a hurricane of snow) we were off to the final event of the season, Sony’s debut fan-event, the PlayStation Experience, in Las Vegas, a mere two weeks ago (almost caught up!!) Our mission: to set up a cozy booth for Night in the Woods (available for pre-order now!), and then kind of sit around and talk to nice people for a few days. MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED. It was awesome to catch up with folks we hadn’t seen in a while (and some we’d seen quite recently but already missed anyways), and thank Nathan Vella in person for all the help and advice he provided when we found out that we would have a booth and not just a kiosk-station or whatever. Trying to do this without him taking time out of his crazy schedule would have been… difficult. Surprise highlight of the show though was this impromptu Shigeto set:

Oh also that thing with the ducks and this and that other thing. But yea - super fun show, massive thanks to Nick Suttner and Brian and everyone else at Sony who helped organize this thing and for including us! OK: so, even though that was our last trip, I’ve got a few more posts planned for this end-of-year roundup thing, including a quick breakdown of exactly what we did to put our booth together and how much it cost and stuff - that one is coming up soon! I’ll also do a roundup on progress with our partner projects and of course on our internal work as well. Getting close :)

Dec 18, 2014

Year-end Roundup 6: Zoo Machines!

Immediately after GDC Next we flew from Los Angeles to Paris (bypassing Austin entirely, for better or worse) to make sure we made it to Zoo Machines in time. We met up with Kaho Abe at CDG and boarded the TGV (aka amazing bullet train) up to Lille, near the border of Belgium.

Zoo Machines was utterly fantastic, and reminded me of a lot of Bivuoac Urbain. The best part was the image above was not even lying a little bit - this was a hardware jam as much as it was a software jam. Jammers built very experimental games - no shooters here, no platformers. There was a game where the game state was sent to the player via webcam and board game doppelganger, there was a big head full of buttons you put your hands into to control an Octodad-like physics disaster, and the talk of the jam was a kind of moderated intimidate truth-or-dare like game about strangers and a curtain. It was all very strange and very wonderful. It was great to finally spend some time with Joon (of 100-player Canabalt fame), and I also met Paul Vauvrey (Kingdoms), who provided a ton of help and insight with that prototype I started out in LA. Phew - ok - we’re getting close! Just one more trip to go…

Dec 15, 2014

Year-end Roundup 5: The Last GDC Next

This was my first GDC Next (neé GDC Online (neé GDC Austin)) and by some twist of fate also the last GDC Next ever (my bad??). This was also in some weird ways a kind of layover on the way to France (more on that tomorrow) but it was a treat to share a panel with my friends Rami and Zach and try to dig down into the different ways we approach marketing for indie games. Getting to spend an afternoon with Greg Rice and fellow Michigander Zac Gorman didn’t hurt nothin’ either!

A panel on grassroots marketing for indies at the last-ever GDC Next. Adam Robezzoli from LA GameSpace (we made Alphabet with Keita Takahashi for them!) was kind enough to host me while I was there, and I got a lot of work on my new prototype (more on that tomorrow too) done in his living room. We wrapped things up with some late night Spelunky with Beau:

Spunky Wrecking Crew with @ADAMATOMIC @AttractModeAdam cc @mossmouth

— Beau Blyth (@Teknopants)

November 5, 2014

I was reminded that night of just how generous a game Spelunky is, how rich and full of discovery despite the retro trappings. As a kind of … gift, of sorts, from a game maker to their audience, I find it so inspiring!

Dec 15, 2014

Year-end Roundup 4: Tecnopolis (Argentina)

The 5am aftermath of asado at an indie studio in Buenos Aires. Midway through October we traveled to South America for the first time, and went all the way to el fin del mundo, Buenos Aires Argentina, to participate in the game lectures segment of Tecnópolis, a kind of year-long indoor/outdoor science fair and hands-on museum a few minutes outside the downtown area. In addition to an ongoing gallery of beautiful indie games they also invite guests to speak to an audience of local developers about relevant topics. This trip was a blast. In addition to being outrageously kind and thoughtful hosts, the food and architecture were such a treat. It did not take long for us to discover alfajores, and the aforementioned asado almost defies vocabulary. And the whole time we were surrounded by beautiful courtyards, vine-covered terraces, wide streets, and meandering parks. As a big Christopher Alexander fan, it finally sank in how influential South American architecture was on his ideas. Every place we went felt like home. We also had the honor of spending quality time with a bunch of talented game makers from the area. I’ve known Daniel Benmergui for years, and some of the earliest Flixel contributors were from Argentina, but it was great to meet and talk with so many other smart artists and clever designers. It was pretty inspiring all around. I got the sense that Buenos Aires was kind of the indie capital of South America in many ways. I think we are going to see a lot more work from that region soon! We capped off the trip with a guided tour of La Boca, courtesy Agustín Fernández from Chimango / Pewma, and it was just the best. Thanks again to everyone and I hope that our talk was even remotely as interesting for you as this trip was for me!