Day of the Devs was a really great experience, as I have never been to any kind of gaming convention before. Next year I would block out my entire day to go to this event again, because there was so much to see and I didn’t even get to see a fraction of the games there, let alone test play them. There was a lot of waiting in line or watching others play, as they had already been playing for a long time and weren’t sharing the controller :/.
In particular it was nice to see how people of many ages attended, although most were in their 30’s?, I also was not expecting there would be bars at the venue or food trucks! There were like 60 games total, even from game developers in other countries. Some of the games I got to see were Luna, Mineko’s Night Market, Gang Beasts, Anamorphine, and Pode.
I liked this room at the venue. The ceiling lights were out except for a few lights on the walls as well as some colorful lights on a different wall. There was a place for people to draw on the wall, and this room also had actual places to sit down, which was refreshing since the event attracted quite a crowd.
Luna was a game in this room, a VR one which attracted many onlookers. I didn’t get to play this one because I didn’t want to wait in line for the 2+ hours it would have taken. Many games shown at Day of the Devs were short demo reels while others had timers for each test-player. However due to the crowds the game devs probably didn’t want to keep enforcing 10-minute limits and would rather talk to people about their games.
This video of the game Pode is short but shows a way the developers smoothly integrated split screen into a two-player game (that usually has a shared screen). This can definitely eliminate a lot of arguments that occur with co-op games…. haha. It was interesting the difference in engagement between single and multiplayer games here.
Finally, Gang Beasts, a 4-player wrestling game, captured a lot of people’s attention. It was placed at the center of the largest room, and each game had one champion. The champions during the late afternoon were able to challenge each other while standing in a small ring on the main stage.
Overall, I’m really glad I went to Day of the Devs. It was fun to meet up with my classmates/friends outside of a classroom setting and I wish that I had stayed longer. I’m definitely going again next year!
-Erica