So, I am excited to say that I will be demoing Xenofera at PixelPol Oct 8 and 9th at the St. Louis Science center. And as a bonus, I've been asked to participate in their Game Design Panel. That was totally unexpected.
So, how do I prepare for talking about how I design games. Hmmmm...... Thank goodness, I've got some of it already recorded in my blog posts.
Anyways, I will update this post with details on how it goes Sunday night. Until then wish me luck!
The Update
As promised I said that I would update this posting after PixelPop.
The PixelPop Festival was a great event. The St. Louis Science Center is such a good location. A lot of people came in to check out the games and I had some really good conversations with other St. Louis area gamers. We are lucky to have such a vibrant gaming culture here.
Participating in the Game Design Panel was a very unique experience. I was on the panel with a number of designers from VolcanoBean. Some very talented guys who do digital games.
We discussed the creative process and how we each come up with our game ideas and how those game ideas evolved over time. Having worked alone on my games, it was really interesting to see how VolcanoBean works as a group coming up with ideas and working off of each other. I may have to do a couple of games with other designers. That creative process of bouncing things off of each other just seemed like so much fun.
One of the main challenges to designers that we discussed was getting exposure. This is problem for most new indie designers and other than hard work there is no sure fire way to get. Some advice we had for new designers was:
1. Make sure you have a good game. If it's not good then wait till it is.
2. Attend as many gaming events as you can to show off your game and make sure you have a way for people to sign up for your Mailing List. I failed to do this and probably missed out on a few backers, who now may not know my game has launched on KickStarter.
3. Constantly find new places to get exposure. My goal since the launch of my KickStarter has been to find a new place to announce my game each day of the project.
Anyways, I will definitely attend the PixelPop festival next year.
Let me know if you have any questions about PixelPop or game design specifically. I'd be happy to answer.
Liz