{"id":455,"date":"2019-04-09T14:13:22","date_gmt":"2019-04-09T14:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/?p=455"},"modified":"2019-04-09T14:13:25","modified_gmt":"2019-04-09T14:13:25","slug":"have-to-admit-i-love-showing-off-my-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/2019\/04\/09\/have-to-admit-i-love-showing-off-my-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Have to admit – I love showing off my game"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So back in September, when I was fresh off going to Oculus Connect 5, I immediately turned around and rushed to Columbus to show my game at GDEX for the second year in a row. I was distracted by life shortly thereafter and only wrote about the OC5 experience and I never wrote about what GDEX was like on my 2nd go-around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2nd time was as much fun as the first!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It was as much fun as the first time – got to see people that I met my first time, including Leonard – my very first ‘customer’ who was the very first non-family \/ neighbor person to try my game; and we hit it off immediately. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the people I met was a gentleman who asked if I would be interested in showing my game at a Maker-space type convention early in 2019. I immediately jumped on the opportunity and gave him a business card. And promptly forgot about it in the hustle and bustle of showing off my demo to the crowd of kids that swarmed my table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until he wrote, months later; asking if I was still down with exhibiting my game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I mandated myself a deadline to finish my demo – polish it up as best I could and use that as the reason I would release my ‘vertical slice’ to the public and start getting serious feedback and (fingers crossed) funding to make the game proper. I threw myself into a frenzy and got a lot of the problems that had plagued me for a long time knocked out, and to a point where I was 75 \/ 80% comfortable with maybe<\/strong>, possibly <\/em>considering it ready for public consumption. Then I got ready to show it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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image courtesy of @phatboysh<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I’m fortunate that my brother-in-law and his family live just outside Columbus, I get to crash at his palatial mini mansion and raid his beer fridge before crashing in his guest room; instead of having to get up crazy early in the morning to drive the two and a half hours from my house to C-Bus. Even with his proximity I still end up skirting being late due to our late night geeky chats – but I’ve done this enough that my setup time is really short and suddenly I’m in the thick of demoing my game. And quite often I had a line. I needn’t have worried about having enough content – parent were often cutting their kids playtime short to accommodate the gaggle of young faces eager to see what the game was about. Mental note: I need to see if I can get a 2nd PC running so I can demo more than one at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MakerX was different, it was a lot more family & kids. More just pure ‘consumer’ perspective than fellow devs looking to network and swap ideas. I love seeing kids play and how they react that someone their own age was crucial in making this game possible. I got a lot of questions about what programs I used and how could people get started, and I think my ‘non-coding’ use of Playmaker inspired a few people who might have been put off by having to learn coding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also appreciate parent feedback, who feel that while kids are desperate to use this new technology, it is dominated by zombies \/ shooters \/ violence and that there is a shortage of kids content; so I’m happy to have a niche that I can fill with Booper. I was also surprised to see that in my one day at MakerX, I got as nearly as many sign-ups as 2 days at GDEX.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day passed quickly and before I knew it, I started seeing people pack up their booths – except it was an hour before closing – and I was still going strong; showing my game to plenty of newcomers, as well as several repeat customers who came back to explore a little more or to go further than their parents let them the first time. Eventually these trickled off and I packed up for home – realizing that this time around I had ONE glitch and no problems that I had to make a note of to fix when I got back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I might just be ready to ship this thang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Post script: After posting photos and tidbits on social media, I got this pleasant surprise: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So back in September, when I was fresh off going to Oculus Connect 5, I immediately turned around and rushed to Columbus to show my game at GDEX for the second year in a row. I was distracted by life shortly thereafter and only wrote about the OC5 experience and I never wrote about what … Continue reading Have to admit – I love showing off my game<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":463,"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455\/revisions\/463"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}