Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2024-09-27

It's the Friday Rambles of Friday, 2024-09-27 on Tuesday, 2024-10-01. Tokyo Game Show 2024 has come and gone, and I'm ready to sleep for a week.

I'm writing this at a cafe in the airport terminal while I wait for my flight back home, because what else am I gonna do, write important business emails? No, I'm not functional enough. But in this dazed state, I can still write the Friday Rambles!!! ...Sorry.

[edit] I was not able to finish this post before I had to board my flight. So I'm writing the rest of it back at the ol' office. So it goes.

TGS Stuff

Well, what can I say? TGS, the event I've been preparing for, for the past month or whatever (or more if you count the work done on the Extra Chapter, I guess), is already over. Like some kind of big sneeze. Being my first Tokyo Game Show, and my first time exhibiting anything ever, I had no idea what to expect, of course, but hey I thrived, survived, and I can't wait go back next year.

I think a day by day breakdown of everything that happened would be boring to read (and write), so I'll just summarize the important bits and some of my takeaways.

Above: Outside Makuhari Messe, Day 1. Not that crowded...

1. There is something to be said about actually meeting people in real life

Or "meatspace," as they say. Did you know that game devs are strikingly normal people with strikingly normal lives? But they have a passion for making games, or more specifically, their own games. It was so cool talking shop with everyone who's going through the same thing as I am, just trying to get by while living their dream just like everyone else. I met people I never imagined I'd be able to meet, people who made the games that inspired me so much, and people who are making games that I've been looking forward to forever. On the flip side, it turned out that many of these people knew who I was too, and were actually big fans of my work as well, which was the biggest surprise for me. Super humbling. I'd drop a bunch of names here but that feels improper. But I'm definitely looking forward to meeting everyone again in future events or throughout the indie scene or whatever.

It feels like Japan has a really thriving indie game scene, which I'm not super aware of around here. But maybe I'm just not looking hard enough. But the US is also really wide and spread out and it's not so easy to gather in one place except through big events like this. Is there anything like TGS or Bitsummit in the States? GDC? PAX? idk, whatever.

Anyway, I spent most of my time at my own booth, though, but watching people play my game and eagerly taking my clearfiles, and meeting long-time fans who were really excited about the next chapter, was fun and cool.

Above: A gift art, from a cool art friend, that we displayed at the booth for the remainder of the show

2. I'm glad I made business cards

Everyone had business cards. No one cared that I was bad at doing the meishi koukan because half the people I exchanged cards with weren't even Japanese, and for the other half I'm a foreigner who can't speak their language or be expected to know anything anyway. But it felt crucial to have business cards for the "networking" aspect of all this. Now I have to organize my big collection and follow up and do "business" and "transactions." I'll do that later this week. idk

3. I'm glad I made clearfile folders

I think that was the main reason people came to my booth. The booth staff were waving around my clearfiles to attract people over, and then made them play the game to actually get one. Nice.

Even though the booth had players basically nonstop through the public days, I ended up with a small quantity left over, so I'm gonna be selling the remaining on the merch store. Super limited edition, because idk where to make clearfiles here in the states. But it'll be nice to recoup some of the cost of making them, thereby having my cake and eating it too. As they say.

Above: The mythical clearfile folders

4. I played some games and they were all good

I didn't have a lot of time to play games, so I wasn't able to play a lot of games. But the games I did play were all good. Cool. You can't really go wrong playing any of the games in the "Indie Selected 80" section, which was TGS's curated indie showcase of 80 indie games from around the world. Maybe next time I'll try to get myself into that section so I don't have to pay for a booth space and can hang out with other indies without having to walk 15 minutes to a different hall. lol

5. Indie games are just more interesting

Related to my last point. Indie games are generally made by super small teams (and many created by solo devs), so they have all this charm and personality that's very different from, say, a big budget game made by committee to appeal to the widest audience possible. A lot of them have something to say, and dangit they will say it. Thankfully TGS had a large hall dedicated to just indies, and I really enjoyed making the rounds there.

6. The TGS Steam Event Page was worth the price of admission

The Steam event page had a lot of visitors due to front page featuring over the duration of the show, and I sold enough copies of the game to make the TGS exhibit worth it from a financial standpoint, not to mention the most wishlists I've ever gotten in a 4 day period outside of launch. So even without all the non-quantifiable aspects that I felt were worth it on their own, I also made some money! Wow!

7. Misc thoughts

I went through Graph, which is AGM's new PR and Marketing arm for games not published through PLAYISM, and they handled everything about the booth, and all I really had to do was give them the art assets and the demo build. And also the money. I was also pretty particular about like merch and stuff, but they were accommodating about everything. I'm really glad they reached out to me this year because I would not have gone to TGS otherwise (this year, or maybe even ever), and now I know it was definitely worth going. That being said, I felt really in the way when I was just hanging out at the booth (I was the only developer there), so I might try to go for an indie booth next year if I'm gonna be around the whole time anyway, and for several other factors like cost and the attendee interest in indie games. Who knows. If Graph asks me to come again I might just do it lol

Above: My booth! The blinding green Graph colors, which I guess is supposed to be reminiscent of the blinding yellow PLAYISM colors. It stands out, for sure.

I'm also the most inspired I've ever been, and am feeling something akin to "hope" for the "future", although I'm old and cynical enough to know that it's easy to get swept away in the moment and get too optimistic and get stupid ideas and make stupid decisions. Anyway, I'm tired and am going to rest for a bit. I flew home the day after the show, so now I can just rest for a bit and get back to work tomorrow or something.

8. Other stuff

For packing, next time I will not be taking my giant-ass ipad pro, because I didn't have any time to draw anything, and it was freakin heavy to carry around while traveling. I might take my ipad mini though, in case I need to draw something (which I won't (but who knows)). I wish I had a windows laptop for doing emergency builds for my demo, which had a bug (which ended up not being a big deal, but what if it was a big crash bug or something), so next time I might invest in an ultralight windows machine just for that sort of thing. I also want a small shoulder bag for just walking around the city, because everyone had one of those and they're way less clunky than a giant laptop backpack.

I walked a lot. like, 20k steps a day. My Vans Old Skools betrayed me, and the back of my ankles are completely raw and destroyed. I switched to my comfy running shoes after the second day and that was way better...

The End

I feel like I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff, but I'm also physically and mentally exhausted. I'm not really sure what all happened. So I'll probably spend the rest of the week recovering and making unimportant changes to my game, and start ramping up again so I can finally finish this thing and make Game 2 in time for TGS 2025.

Thanks for your support, as always! See you next week.