Mana Marketing was at the Full Indie Summit on October 22nd!

It’s always wonderful to know that your city is supportive of indie developers, and that a big indie community exists. Like Alex Vostrov, one of the founders of Full Indie, says, we’re truly lucky to be in a city where you can meet up with indie devs and talk about what you’re working on. Go Vancouver indie games!

For those of you who didn’t get to experience the one-day conference, we’re here to recap the event.

It started off early in the day when guests checked in. The first talk was from Kevin Regamey, who has worked on titles such as TowerFall, NecroDancer, and Darkest Dungeon. He’s also the creative director of Power Up Audio. He got different people from different studios to talk about the most interesting and effective ways they used audio in their games. Instead of being just a background track, how do you make music actively add to gamers’ experiences?

For those of you in the VR scene, we had Kayla Kinnunen exploring what’s next for virtual reality. Her suggestions? Take your games beyond the zombie shooter. The market seems to be saturated with games that think shooting zombies is the epitome of a perfect game for VR. Kayla’s thoughts? Narrative exploration, creative sandbox, interactive art are great examples of what can be done.

Firewatch also had a good piece on the challenges narrative exploration games face. They had Nels Anderson, the game designer for Firewatch (and was previously the lead designer for Mark of the Ninja), go on stage to share five issues that they faced when making the game, and how to overcome it. What were the five problems they found?

• You will be shackled by the game’s premise
• Present tense is hard
• Communicating info is hard
• Narrative is all there is
• Playtesting is very hard

Wanted to learn from a game’s launch? Hugh Monahan takes a look at what his game Brigador did right and wrong, and his learnings from it. While Brigador has a 94% positive rating on Steam and Metacritic tracked reviews as high as 90/100, why wasn’t the game a commercial success? A problem he touched on is how Brigador was designed. They knew they wanted players to play it a certain way, but it turns out it wasn’t quite what gamers are used to. While playtesting, they never asked if people liked controlling their mechs with tank controls, but instructed players that it was how the game is meant to be played. You should also make sure your indie game marketing is aimed towards the right target audience, which was something Brigador missed at its launch. Its trailer was a little misleading in terms of the gameplay shown versus the games’ experience.

Zach Gage, a game designer, took the stage before our lunch break to talk about traditional physical games and what game designers can take from them. He likes that physical games are accessible, have history, has depth, and its overall handiness. He specifically took a look into card games and dice games, analyzing what makes these games fun. Overall, don’t be afraid to use probability to drive your game!

You may know Kert Gartner as the guy behind the trailers for Fantastic Contraptions and Job Simulator. If you haven’t seen the mixed reality trailers he’s made, it’s worth a look.

He talked to us about the barriers VR games face when trying to show a good trailer. How do you make a game look fun while showing how interactive it is due to VR? He has some pretty fancy rigs made just for shooting and testing out different ways to properly showcase the games.

You’ve likely encountered #altgames every now and then. Claris Cyarron from Silverstring Media explores what alt games are (without giving a specific definition! Because to constrain alt games with meaning is to take away from the games), and how you can encourage and support games in these alternative spaces. Follow the @SupportAltGames where they retweet alt games!

If you go on r/indiedev, you’re sure to have seen the Line Wobbler at some point. Robin Baumgarten, the creator of the Line Wobbler, gave a talk on what’s going on in the hardware gaming scene. How did he personally prototype then produce the Line Wobbler? What are some outlets you can join to get involved in making gaming hardware? One place you can start is the alt.ctrl.GDC!

Feeling a little dejected when developing your game? How do you get better and improve on your skills when there’s no good quantifiable route to learning? Steve Swink (creator of SCALE) talks about the idea of deliberate practice for game design. What can you do as a developer? While deliberate practice for game design sounds nearly impossible, create a skill plan to come up with effortful activities that are designed to optimize your experiences.

You may be used to designing 3D games, but what about 4D? Check out Miegakure, a game that explores how 4D is brought into games in order to make challenging, vibrant puzzles. Miegakure’s creator, Marc ten Bosch, explains what 4D really means and how you can start programming with it.

Lastly, to round off the day of talks, Ryan Clark, the creator of Crypt of the NecroDancer, explores how to create a winning indie game. You need to have great hooks for your game to get a gamer’s initial attention. Identify what genres of games are popular and can make money. This is proper market analysis. While Ryan says he has a lot of respect for indie games that chooses to do whatever it wants independent of what the trends are in the market, he has a family to feed and says he has to consider monetary outcome. With many successful games under his belt, it’s safe to say that he’s worked out a good method to position a game that’ll sell well.

With a day of talks over, everyone headed upstairs for demos. They had a dedicated space with tables and sofas for people to share and playtest their games. We got to check out many Vancouver indie games by talented developers and had lots of meaningful conversations. If you’re in the Vancouver area and you’re working on an indie game, definitely consider going to the summit next year. Thank you to Full Indie team for putting together this wonderful event.

Full Indie also has monthly meetups that are free to go to. Expect friendly conversations and the ability to check out what other fellow indie devs are working on! The Vancouver indie games scene is ever-growing so don’t hesitate to join in on the fun!

Got an upcoming game? Want to send out an announcement? Need some indie game marketing support? Give us a shout at Mana Marketing!

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