Dev Journal

Exhaustion. The absolute first thing we learned.

But beyond that, so much. We attended TokenCon in Midwest City, OK, and while we had been to conventions before as a guest, we'd never been as a vendor (at least, not for our own company). We made a list of the various gaming-focused conventions that we could drive to and we chose this one due to it's proximity, recency (it was occuring the soonest), and information we were provided by the Oklahoma Tabletop Design Group (which I'm a part of). We figured it would be a good place to test the waters, learn those things you just can't learn without actually doing, and reviewing the results before we went for broke on some massive con half-way across the country.

In essence, though TokenCon is a very real and great convention, it was our version of a company playtest:

• Do the players (con guests) like our design? [Our booth elements, layout, visual presentation]
• Do they like the compnents? [Our games, trinkets to sell, heck, US! lol]
• Is the board layout (our booth) conducisve to interaction? [Can we engage with the guests quickly and in volume]
• How is the level of interaction in the game? [Do we know how best to present our games and ourselves to the guests?]
• Is this a game the players enjoyed? [Did a guest make a purchase? Follow our socials? Enjoy our convesations/interactions?]

Like any playtest, some things went smoothly, while others flowed like chunky peanut butter. Below are some of the takeaways we found over our four days.

Connections

While I'd virtually met several of the game designers present on Discord, it was good to see people in person, see their games, how they presented themselves and their company to the public, and so on. More, it was nice to support each other, with people buying games from one another, and local game stores/cafes speaking with designers to get their small, indie games into stores and in front of the public.

Meeting people from other businesses was very interesting: they all had different reasons for being at conventions, different goals, and different experiences they shared. The majority of people were very helpful with information about how to make the best out of conventions, what goals to be focused on, and what little tricks help them survive the daily chaos.