EGX Rezzed 2015 post mortem

EGX Rezzed 2015 was our first convention in another country, so we decided to go for a booth including 1 computer with a  giant screen and a printed banner to avoid travelling with everything. 
But you could also chose a booth without computer and banner for about half the price.

You can also apply to get a free booth in the Leftfield Collection (we tried but didn’t make the cut), it was in a less crowded area than the Indie Room, but closer to the Press Lounge.

Budget:

1000£ for the single screen booth (incl. banner)
+ 50£ extra for a bigger screen
0£ for hotel, we stayed at a friend’s appartment
240£ for trains tickets from Paris for 2
70£ for subway/bus
30£ for flyers and buttons (estimated amount, since they were from a previous order)

Total: 1390£ / 2080 $
(without food expenses, we didn't keep good enough track of them)

What went right :

- The game concept: gamers liked the overall concept (horror movie parody mansion sim), the art style, and enjoyed the humor of the game. The game design, though still at a very early alpha stage, was well received as well.

- Meeting players and seeing them play: It’s a good reminder that we may know how the game works, but it’s not always obvious for people who didn’t design it. We saw what players tended to do/look for and we’ll try using those reflexes to improve our GUI (which still requires a lot of work).

- Press: we met quite a few journalists, got a short pre-convention article on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and on several other websites right after the convention, all very supportive.

- 30’’ screen: maybe not the best choice for playing, but very useful to showcase the game.

- Having a mailing list form: on our previous convention (Paris Games Week) we gave flyers, but completely forgot to ask if players wanted to join our mailing list, which was very important since our game isn't released yet. This time we had a sheet ready !

What went wrong :

... the mailing list form: a hand written form is a good idea if you are skilled at decyphering writing. We have about 1 in 8 adresses I have to show to my pharmacist.

- The timer: we didn’t have an “end” to our demo, so we put a somewhat brutal end screen at 10 minutes. Turns out it wasn’t enough, because management game takes time (if only to build something), plus the timer included the tutorial.
The second problem is that it created a quick turn over, and considering that having players attract more players, we never had a crowd. The obvious good thing about a crowd is that it gets people to notice your game, even if they don’t have a chance to try it, so you get more interest compared to the limited amount of players who can try the game each day.

- Banner: ours was kind of desaturated, which was obviously our mistake considering all others were fine (my best guess is wrong colorimetric profile ? we were in a rush and forgot to check it)

- Networking: we’re still more social caterpillar than butterfly, that’s something we’ll have to work on.
We also thought we’d use our evenings in London to catch up with our friends who live there, not realizing there were things happening after the convention, and ended up missing networking and just plain fun occasions. In retrospect, this is probably our main really avoidable mistake.

- Our english: is very, very french. It’s okay when talking in person (you can easily tell if you're not expressing yourself clearly just by looking at the confused face in front of you), but not so much on camera.
 

All in all Rezzed is a fantastic convention for indie games. 
We’ll definitly want to go back with our lessons learned !


If you have any question, feel free to ask !

(my apologies for the probable occasional butchery of the English language)