Man! October had a LOT of events for us! September 30th-October 1st gave us GDEX, October 14th saw Ohio Gaming Brigade’s Pop-Up Con #2, the 21st-22nd gave us BOTH Kabo, and LexPlay, with the month ending for us on the 27th with the West Virginia Game Developers Expo! That’s not counting all the news that happened BETWEEN those events! Let’s get going else we’ll be here all day…
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https://jaycd291f974096.files.wordpress.com/2020/10/ad819-img.jpg had to split up the team just to be able to do both events (not everyone, of course, because some of the team really despise handling the booth, but that's fine). Natalie and I went to LexPlay, while Adam and Kristy headed up to GDEX. It was really unfortunate, since the people who run both events were actually looking forward to attending the other one; but due to problems with their venues, those were the only days available to hold their respective events. It was a real shame.
This time, everything worked out where they were a couple weeks apart. So what about Kabo?
You guys remember Galatune, right? We mentioned them before a couple times. They’re a really awesome card game that’s kind of like a mix between Magic: the Gathering, Overwatch, and Smash Bros. We had the fortunate opportunity to do multiple Ohio Gaming Brigade events, as well as Kabochacon and GDEX with the game’s creator, Adam. It’s so good. Luckily, we ended up becoming fast friends with him. That’s where us being at Kabo went from being a cool thing we should do for charity to being something we simply couldn’t pass up on…
At Kabo this year, we were able to announce a partnership that we’d been working on in secret for some time now: an official Galatune companion app made by us! I’m not going to go into much detail about it here, but here’s a link to the announcement video:
Other than that, Kabo was spent eating so much cotton candy from our friends over at ConeZone, and once again, talking and playing great games with friends. While that was going on…
LexPlay: For LexPlay, our Adam (as opposed to Galatune Adam), Natalie, and Steve (going to his first event in a long while) headed down to Lexington to show off some Collapsus! While they were down there, much like with GDEX, they got to meet up with some of our developer friends from events past and meet all new people.
On day one, Natalie and Steve also went on to the Game Over Game On podcast, like I did last year. Man, those guys are awesome! Since last year, I’m really glad to have gotten to know the GOGO team a lot better, and am happy to call them friends. From the sound of it, Natalie and Steve had a blast being on. For me, though, after Kabo, I had to catch a Greyhound, which brings us to day 2.
After meeting me at the station, we had a bit of a breakfast, and went right back in to set up for the next day. Very early on, I had to step away to give a talk all about VR: Past, Present, and Future (a title and premise that I used before for a talk at Pandoracon 2016). It was a great crowd with some even better questions. My only regret is that I wish I had been a little more awake; but everyone swears they enjoyed it anyway. While this was going on, Natalie and Steve went back on the air with Game Over Game On!
WVGDE: I’m cheating here a little bit. The West Virginia Game Developers Expo had asked us to come down, show off Collapsus, and for me to give a talk. With all of the other events that were going on, it was something I was going to run solo. Unfortunately, on my way to the Greyhound station, we ended up hitting two big patches of construction in the middle of the night, and I ended up missing my bus by, like, 10 minutes.
Fortunately, the good people running the event let me Skype in onto a projector and sound system, so I was able to give my talk anyway! It was very similar to one of the talks I gave at Pandoracon 2016, Vector Conference 2017, LouisvilleMakesGames, and GDEX 2017. Basically I ran down how to start a game studio, secure funding, and make sure that it doesn’t implode on its first few years. It’s a talk that I’ve been pretty comfortable giving; though it does change a little bit every time. It’s something that I think a lot of people just starting out don’t realize you can do: just starting up a business, getting a traditional loan, things like that. It all seems pretty overwhelming; there’s a lot of little fees and paperwork. I’m really glad that I’m able to use the knowledge I’ve learned (a lot of it ripped straight from the head of my small business advisor, Mark Lankford) to help prop people up.
So yeah. We had so many great events this month! As you can probably tell, this is just the Cliff’s Notes version of it all. Next month, we’re heading out to the Ohio Gaming Brigade Pop-Up Con #3, once again at the awesome Star City Brewing Company in Dayton, Ohio. After that, who knows? So far it’s looking like we’re clear until January; events-wise, that is. We keep trucking away on Collapsus, and we have tons of updates you may have noticed while playing the weekly builds, or if you were at any of these events. Who knows? Maybe that’ll be the next blog post.
Until then, catch you next time.