#spilbar

SpilBar 35: 3-2-1 Launch!

I went to Spilbar’s event: “3-2-1” about launching you video game. Spilbar  makes: “Informal, cozy, informational networks meeting in the Danish game industry. Hosted by DADIU, Interactive Denmark, Vallekilde Folk High School and The Danish Film Institute. In two words: rock on! “ The talks Here I heard a talk from: - Jonas Kaerlev, Gears for Breakfast: A Hat in Time (largest Kickstarter-funded game project in Denmark.) - Petter Henriksen, Landfall Games: (ClusterTruck, Totally Accurate Battle Simulator and more) - Klaus Pedersen, Bedtime Digital Games: Figment

Topic The speakers spoke about: -to use traditional media (like online game News sites) or not -To use streamers or not -To go to conventions or not. -What to do if a game that is similar gets launched the same time has yours (-> change your sale pitch) -To use Reddit as a fanbase -How to deal with emails after you launch -How steam sales affect your sales.

For the last week, we've had one goal: Prototype a game.

No more or less, one week is what we have. On Monday we'll start a new idea.

The idea for this prototype is to make a couch gaming action game, where the players are set in an island theme. In the current prototype, each player starts with a melee weapon and a gun with some ammo in it.

And then the magic just happened. People around the room gathered to see what was going on. Much feedback was received and people seemed to be enjoying themselves. Pretty awesome to see these reactions for a prototype made in less than a week.

We still have a few days of adding stuff to it before we'll head on to the next idea. The point of rapid prototyping is to try things in a short amount of time and if it seems like it has potential, then you can consider making it into a bigger project.

... since you heard from us, because we were drowning in work.

Now two important milestones are done. First, on the 3rd of September at around 12am we handed in our Master thesis with the title Learning Games for Programming, which we will make available here at some point. 

Second, we have applied for funding at the Danske Filminstitut because we want to keep working on this project and turn it from the vertical slice that it is into a real game. The deadline for this application was today, the 6th of September at 12am, very inconvenient timing, but by working our butts off, we made it.

Now we can only wait and see, it's going to take about 4 weeks for them to return with an answer, and even if they invite us for further interviews, it won't be the last hurdle for us. We are keeping our fingers crossed and hope you are too!

In the meantime I will give a talk about the development of Machineers at the first Spilbar in Viborg in a week, and then there is of course still the defense to prepare for. Exciting times!