So, I’m back from an amazing experience. And waaay too much to do and get caught up on.
So, after a frantic 2 weeks of polishing and planning, getting promo materials printed, cleaning up my PC so its ‘show worthy’ and with a ton of help from the wife, who helped with details I wouldn’t have even thought of – I hit the road, mind ablaze with plans, possibilities, and hopes. Its only about 40 minutes into the 2 hour trip that I realize I left without a friggin’ monitor.
So, quick call to the wife to confirm I left it – yup, I did. And the amazing woman she is, grabs kiddo, monitor and hops in the car to meet me on the road and get the screen safely in my hands – and me back on the road. Whew. Dodged that one. Until I get there. My GPS is insisting I go down the ONE road that is closed for repairs and cannot find an alternate route to the loading dock so I can get my stuff into the convention center. I end up on a frantic phone call with Keith, the CLE Game Co-op leader, who with the help of the convention center staff help confirm that GPS and Apple maps cannot find the alley we need to get me to the docks. After a few back and forths, we finally get me in, set up and I slouch my way to the bro-in-laws, tired, embarrassed and hoping this isn’t a sign of how the weekend will turn out.
I could not have asked for a better weekend. The drive in was quick, easy and my GPS let me to the parking garage with zero hassle. As I’m coming in off the escalator, I’m greeted by a string trio softly playing ‘The Imperial March’ (Darth Vader’s Theme) if that ain’t a good sign, I dunno what is. I proudly put on my exhibitor badge and wander over to my booth, and am surprised to see someone looking intently at my poster. I see that he’s a fellow dev and I introduce myself. His name is Leonard and he’s at a nearby booth and likes the look of my character – I explain that its the work of my son, which he really enjoys. So I fire up the Rift and give him my elevator pitch and he’s off and running; my 1st ‘customer’!
And I am off and running. The rest of the day is a complete blur – I’m seeing a ton of people and getting a lot of good feedback – smart gamers are trying to break my demo and I have just about 90% of them covered – except for some reason Unity still considers the quest complete upon level reload. I’ll have to quit the demo and restart it each time. I also notice I get a lot more traffic when the headset is active and people can see movement on the screen, so I leave the demo on the loading screen and rig up small box & piece of paper to keep the Rift sensor active and people can see my lil’ guy ready to go.

Day Two
I’m go grateful the organizer of the booth got this shot – this kid was my biggest fan. His dad is a dev at Bitmen Workshop and he had gotten a taste of my game the day before and brought his son over to give it a spin. The kid had a lot of feedback and ideas, guess it helps have a dad in the business. After the day got started, he surprised me by coming back and having another go at my game before he had to leave. To say the least, I was touched, especially since he’s the same age as my little guy – whose birthday I had missed the day before to come do this show.
Being my 1st show, I obviously had a lot to soak in- but I did have the forethought to bring a notebook and record ideas as they came to me: here are a random sampling.
- The booths next to me used coat hangers with pants clips to hold up banner signs.
- Having an ‘attract mode’ on my monitor brought people in more quickly
- Business card went quicker than the pins I had as giveaways
- Watching the booth across from me (a multiplayer game) they did a ‘mini-tournament’ winner from 5 round-robin got a small trophy, but it did generate a huge crowd
- Even though it was noisy – speakers are a must, I had to explain to onlookers that the game had sound effects done by the kids
All in all- it was a fantastic experience, everyone was supercool, had a lot of encouraging advice, and suggestions. I’m hoping to involve the whole family next year and get them day passes to explore while I try and push this a little further, and having my kids come by every so often and play will probably garner more attention. Out of the whole experience, I walked away with one thing that I thought I would never have to do:
I have to sign up for Twitter.