Hi, dear Time Travelers!
This is David, the head of 21st century Ducks.
A month ago, my team attended PAX EAST 2023 and had great time in Boston!
PAX EAST is one of the largest game shows in the world,
an event where gamers and devs communicate without concern about the award or business.
Back in the time, it's been 7 years since I exhibited my prev game - Super Pixel Racers at PAX EAST.
I felt quite new and refreshing to be back in Boston with my new project, Chrono Sword.
Now I'm already back to Korea and continuing my dev days but
I think it's good time to review on PAX EAST 2023, what I experienced and how I felt.
It goes back to...
One day in Feb,
The team were having very busy time with dev, meetings, contracts, and pile of paperworks.
It was suddenly started by my silly words as usual.
I was like,
"By the way, we go PAX next month, right?"
"Jeez, we only got one month left!?"
"Yeah and I'd like to showcase a new demo this time."
"?!"
I took the whole weekend to make a new demo with the prologue of the game.
The team tested it together and discussed about how it should be.
Everyone thought it's quite good idea to make the prologue as a demo.
But it should be able to lead players to learn easily many concepts while they playing
- Exploration, Combat, Time traveling, Characters - because it's what a prologue does.
So as the whole team started to kept fixing it again and again,
<15 hours to go, 19 hours to come back...>
It continued while passing San Francisco and arrving at Boston.
Getting ready for the booth
<The exhibition hall was very huge and my booth was also wider than I thought>
On 21st, I checked the expo hall.
Since it was an oversea event, there ware many restrictions to building the booth.
So my plan was taking only light and easy-to-go items such as banners, and buying other stuffs we need at local.
<Townscape of Boston. There were many old and low buildings. Feels different from Seoul>
Boston is a really good city.
Clean, spacious, fresh air, and people are kind and relaxed.
Personally, I think it's quite simillar with living in the suburbs of Seoul.
But there are some minor differences.
For an eg., the stores close very early and you definitely need a car because all infrastructure is spread out.
The reason why I'm telling you this is because
When I came back from shopping at Walmart, the exhibition hall was already closed at 5 o'clock.
<I'm not a fan of cup noodles since they are salty and greesy, but I needed them since local foods were greesier then them for me>
Got back to my lodging, I took a short sleep for two or three hours.
And then continued to work with balancing, debugging, translation and stuffs.
It gave me a lot of time and relief that my team already optimized the build so that it could be even run on Switch.
On the 22nd, the day before the event
<Everyone was still in the middle of building own booth. Of course I was one of them too>
I stick the main banner on the foam-board that bought at Walmart and cut the edges.
<It's getting be something!>
I raised it to the maximum of the regulation height, it was quite noticeable.
Since the game has long play session, even the shortest demo could take over an hour for those who play it for the first time.
So I created waiting seats with stools and tape bought at Walmart so that people could watch others playing while waiting behind.
The first day of the event on the 23rd
<It was so crowded even though it was a Thursday morning>
From the beginning, fatal bug had founded and it destroyed the team all.
I had to shut the booth down for about 2 hours.
All the high-performance Macs were already set up for players, so programmers had to debug slowly with Surface and old Mac.
The rest team at Seoul was also busy to make a Switch build while staying up all night, struggling with Windows Crash.
The internet was too slow, I had to run around buying USB Flash from FedEx.
It was like, 'Damn, we're doomed...'
But instead of giving up, the team cheered each other and installed a new build, turned on the Mac and Switch, started the exhibition at last.
<Thankfully, many people visited the booth and played the game>
The Crowd.
People came in, lined up, played game, and got excited about little dscoveries and victories.
Some said they didn't notice that it's been over an hour because it was so much fun.
During over 4 years of dev, my team put countless time and effort into every little detail.
But there's always some worries followed
like,
What if the game isn't fun?
What if the game not get any interest?
Will gamers notice and enjoy these details?
and so on.
Thanks to this opportunity, I could shook off those worries watching people enjoying their play.
The second day of the event on the 24th
<It's the event for game lovers!>
I prepared an improved build reflecting yesterday's feedback.
And the team got quite used to run the booth and became more confident.
So I could able to take some pictures with cosplayers when they passed by.
Morrigan, GLaDOS, 2B, Mandalorian, Majima...
Those people who express themselves were really cool.
You can see the crowds in costumes standing in line from the hotels to the expo hall.
I think it's one of the charm of PAX.
The third day of the event on the 25th
<Still many people visited the booth and enjoyed the game>
Again, I installed more improved build.
I could get real-time feedback and see if the improved demo works.
I think it's a good thing about game shows.
The last day of the event on 26th.
<I gave a Time Traveler's cape to the first one who cleared the demo everyday, they really liked it>
I installed the last build.
Still there's some minor bugs, but the gameplay became really smooth.
The team forgot tired watching gamers enjoying the game.
The last day was Sunday and there were quite fewer visitors than other days.
Guess it's because they have to work tommorow.
But thankfully, there were still a lot of visitors in the booth.
Anyway, so I could afford to take turns looking around other booths.
I think it has changed a lot compared to seven years ago.
The exhibition hall is separated in half of major companies, half of indie and board games.
In the past, Indie Mega Booth helped indie teams,
so that many devs were able to participate in without any burden with smaller booths.
However it seems like Indie Mega Booth disappeared during the Pandemic,
and big indie publishers such as Devolver and ChuckleFish took over the places.
The number of individual indie booth has decreased significantly.
It's a bit shame that I can't say hello to indie devs and playing their games.
Closing the booth
<Stools and tables were very helpful throughout the event. It's not much but I donated them for the children>
The event was over.
All I got left to do was cleaning up all I used - banners, stools, and tables, so on.
It's quite amazing that those small stools helped us fill the booth for four days and made people happy.
I donated all of them for children.
Short tour in Boston
<Boston, where the concept of a port city is still alive>
<Giant lobsters!>
<Visited Quncy Market. Even Starbucks has a bit different vibe with one in Seoul>
The Next day, I had some tours in Boston before the team go back to Korea.
It's a port city, so Ellie fed the team with giant lobsters.
The team also visited the famous Quincy Market.
I wanted to visit the campus of MIT with the team too but everyone was so tired, so that it was skipped.
And the next day, it's not a secret that I almost missed the flight for overslept.
<I faced a High wind of over 60km/h and heavy rain on the way back>
It started raining in Boston, and in San Francisco, heavy rain and strong wind delayed the flight for two hours.
But somehow I could come back with the team safe to Korea.
It's been weeks since I back from PAX and now I barely can write this review.
Because I had to deal with some delayed paperworks.