Video Game Search: Day 7 & 8 (Demo Night Recap)

Hi Folks.

As you know, I went to the IGDA Demo Night last night. Very interesting. I learned a few things, which was the intent.

1. SU in the building- Saw a good guy that I went to college with (SU= Syracuse Univ.). He and a friend of his gave me some of the ins and outs of the industry in general. Got to catch up on what’s going on with him and some of our classmates. This is what I likes- learning and having fun at the same time. Make a mental note of this. 🙂
2. Casual Gaming- Realized that this category of gamers is not 45 year-old housewives that play the Nintendo Wii to get some exercise in (if you’re one of these people, no disrespect intended). I realized that I’m actually a casual gamer. These are gamers that aren’t hard-core and play sparingly. These are the people that I want to give feedback to the developers, so I think that casual games may be my niche. My college friend’s friend who’s been in the industry for a good while, enlightened me on this. Makes me wonder though- Can this niche be segmented more? Everybody that isn’t hard-core still means a lot of people. Hmmm. I’ll marinate on this one a bit and let you know what I come up with. The wheels are in motion as we speak.
3. Oh yeah, the games were really good. There was one that I could see myself playing (Frontlines: Fuel of War); two which I thought had really great creative concepts behind them (U.B. Funkeys and Casablanca); one I respected because of its sheer guerrilla production and marketing nature (Blackwell Unbound). I think all of the presenters did a great job of explaining the games in layman’s terms. How do I know? Easy. I actually understood what they were saying, because they hardly used industry jargon. The audience used jargon much more than the presenters did. I’ll just leave it at that.
4. Developers can never have too many testers. A couple of the presenters emphasized this. Good news for Crowd Control! Good news for you developers too, because help is on the way!
5. Not all developers need publishing deals to get their stuff out there. A few of the presenters self-publish and distribute their games online. Kinda like the book publishing industry. If you get a publishing house to “pick you up” great! If not, do it yourself. Those who know me know that I love that!

Anyway, signing off now because my head hurts. Could be all of this learnin’ I’m doing. Onward and upward. Till tomorrow.