5 tips for exhibiting at the Minibooth at PAX East

This year I was lucky enough to be selected for the Indie Megabooth at PAX East. It was my first time showcasing my puzzle game Circles at such a major convention, so I wanted to share some things that I learned and some I wish I knew beforehand.

Mind that I got to showcase at the Minibooth area. Here your booth is set up for you, so my experiences and tips are very much based on that. You might have a different experience with a bigger, custom booth, but I hope this still gives some helpful insights.

1. Make your demo short… then make it shorter

I started out with what I thought was a solid build. It took around 10 minutes to play and showed a good portion of the game. But I soon noticed people were dropping off mid-point. And when they were done, people who were previously watching had often left or started playing a different game.

This was a big problem. With previous playtests this did not occur to me, but at the convention this became totally obvious. Especially when you only have one game running at the time, you don’t want the game to last longer than 10 minutes.

So since Circles is level based, I removed a few of them. It went from 19 to 11 levels. Still, it was hard to keep players interested and keep potential players at the booth. So again, I removed some levels and went from 11 to 9. This seemed to be the sweet spot.

With 9 levels and about 4 to 5 minutes of play time, players quickly got to the meat of the game and spectators were able to quickly jump in after each other. Perfect!

2. Give more to the fans

Although a short demo is great, I do want to mention that it’s useful to have more content available. Some players really liked the demo and were asking for more. Luckily the demo build contained the whole game, so I could let players continue playing the actual game.

So if your game allows it, add some more content behind your demo that you can access when needed. This can also come in handy when press comes by and you want to show a bit more.

3. Always have someone playing your game

The first day I had some problems getting to people to play at the booth. I’m not the outgoing type so it was hard to just start talking to people and get them to play the game. At times, I was just waiting for people to play.

So the next day I tried to turn it around. I didn’t want to be too pushy but I tried to greet anyone that came by and introduced myself as the developer if they seemed to have an interest. This turned out great and I got way more people playing the game.

And especially when someone is already playing, more people will stop for a bit and just watch. After some time I would start talking to them about the game and shortly after, they could play the game next.

4. One machine is not a lot

The Minibooth offers you a nice space, but there’s only place to run one game on the monitor. For this setup to work well you’ll need a really short demo, or you’ll need to be creative in some other way.

Opposite of me, the guys of Mimpi Dreams had the same booth, but they were showing their game on three devices. One on the PC/monitor and 2 on their iPad minis.

Having the possibility of multiple people playing at the same time can really boost your booth presence and of course, get you way more impressions. So if it’s a possibility, get your game playable at multiple devices. It helps a lot!

5. Have a clear goal in mind

As a small indie, it’s expensive to go to Boston and pay for the Minibooth. You’ll easily pay over $2000 to be there. Which for me, as a starting developer, is quite a lot. So you’ll need to get your goals straight and make sure you get as much out of it as you can. Do you want to sell your game to players? Get some attention for your upcoming release? Test your build? Get some player feedback?

I wanted to get some attention for the upcoming release and get a better view of my audience. I definitely got that out of PAX but it’s hard to say if it’s worth the money.

It’s a good idea to have a plan to make some of your money back. I saw some developers selling t-shirts or steam-keys, but the best way is to really find something that fits your game. Like huge posters you could buy for Hidden Folks. Good stuff!

Round up

So, that’s it for my tips and experiences at PAX East. I hope they’re useful anyone preparing for an expo. Thanks for reading!

I’ll be going back to work on Circles. If you’ve got some time, check out the trailer: