I announced last week that “True King” will be exhibiting at GDEX (Game Developer’s Expo – https://www.thegdex.com/ ) on the weekend of October 12 – 13, 2019 in Columbus, Ohio. That’s in 2 weeks! And it will be the first public showing of gameplay outside of Michigan!
… well, I hope it’ll be playable by then.
GDEX 2019 looks to be a fun time in Ohio!
My last indie game released in 2015, and I haven’t had a good reason to exhibit anything since then (aside from a weak attempt to promote a game jam in 2017). It’s been a long time, and as my current project continues to take shape, I’ve been anxious to promote it again as an exhibitor. I intended to do this as early as May 2019, but missed application deadlines led me to GDEX, a half-day’s drive from my place of work.
GDEX reminds me of the Ottawa International Game Conference in Canada (which has gone under different names over the last decade). I haven’t been to GDEX before, but it’s professional-looking website hides the limited audience appeal. Targeted at game developers (and to some extent, fans), GDEX advertises industry talks, presentations and tutorials from both local indie developers and a handful of AAA professionals. To try to attract more attendees, they are also offering an artists’ alley, cosplay competitions, and a e-sports tournament. The exhibitor list is large, but all of them are indie developers with games of widely varying quality, more than half of them without a logo or screenshot on the site (as of now, less than two weeks away). The exhibitor deadline is still open for a few more days, offering booth space at prices that cost more than larger events in Toronto, Canada. I suspect only a couple thousand will attend GDEX this year.
This sounds like a depressing outlook, but GDEX will, most importantly, be a fun weekend to showcase and support the local game developer community. When they say it’s the largest event of its kind in Midwest America, they aren’t kidding: outside of GDC in California, PAX in Seattle and Boston, and a couple events in Ottawa and Montreal, there simply aren’t many options for dedicated gaming events in North America. This is true for both players and developers. Any other events like them barely manage to get over 1,000 attendees. It’s a shame, since I’ve seen first-hand that Michigan has a lot of quality developer studios hiding in the cracks, each struggling to find talented workers and get the attention they need.
I’m seeing the same sort of pattern that applies to the job and housing market: GDC, the biggest event, gets ever larger and more expensive as more people crowd to it, and all others fail to survive. There should be more events like GDEX across the country, and developers should actively support these events, which come out to be a lot cheaper than flying to the other side of America, only to struggle to stand out in a sea of recent graduates and dreamers. This trend of smaller events struggling won’t go away, but I’ve seen nothing but complaints online saying the exact same thing as I am here, and I hope developers step up to support their local community in the coming decade.
Anyway, “True King” will be playable to developers and gamers in two weeks in Ohio. Is it ready?
“True King” looks better… but it’s still not ready.
… in short, no. I still had hopes a month ago, but I’m quickly losing confidence.
A lot is functional, and has been for the past couple-of-months, but there’s a lot more to do. And it’s clear I won’t finish everything I wanted to show a polished slice of the first 10-minutes of gameplay. What should I abandon finishing for GDEX? Should I finish making sprite-assets for different body types? Or should I finish the UI to allow a player to place their units at the beginning of a tactics map? Or should I finish making a single music track for the background? And there’s a lot more to do than that… I can’t do it all, so I have to make some tough choices.
Or should I finish writing this blog post? Perhaps a bad choice to write, wasting yet another hour of potential dev time.
Thankfully, I’ll have my old games on hand to promote in an emergency, but at almost five years old, I shouldn’t rely on them any longer. I’ll also be promoting my “Indie’d” webcomic, although I don’t really have an outlet to efficiently render or sell them. When looking at the rest of the exhibitor list, not unlike PAX, I’m relieved that my game (even unfinished) will be in the better-half on display… but that’s subjective and may be my own bias, and is a poor excuse to not try harder. When looking at “True King” in a bubble, it’s clearly not good enough. I have a lot more work to do. Both for myself, and to respect GDEX as well.
Oh well, embarrassment is part of self-promotion. It’ll just be fun to take a weekend off and meet other developers, maybe share stories or advice. Look out for pictures on my Twitter or Instagram feed. And as a warning to anyone who says ‘hello’ to me: no, I’m not hiring at this time.
