Returned to Chicago on Monday from PlayStation Experience. It was pretty exhausting. I was hoping to work on Tuesday, but ended up taking the day off to recover.
PlayStation Experience this year was very different from last year’s event.
Here’s my write up for last year’s PlayStation Experience: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Regarding the event itself, PlayStation Experience this year was much bigger. There was a pretty large crowd on both days, while last year there were several times when the section I was in felt quite empty. I think this is a combination of the event being more well known, and also being in SF instead of Las Vegas.
With regards to the game, last year, it felt like nobody knew about the game. Many of the people who came to my booth last year and never heard of the game before. This year though, a lot of people came up to me and told me how they had been seeing screenshots of the game everywhere, and some also said they had actually been following its development for some time. It felt really awesome knowing that the game was getting out there, and now people know about it.
This year I also got a lot of press coverage, which was much better than last year, when I got none. Here are some of the articles that have covered the game so far:
Kotaku – Manifold Garden, An Incredibly Pretty Puzzle Game
US Gamer – Manifold Garden is a Real Mind-Warper
Game Informer – Our 10 Favorite Indies From The PlayStation Experience 2015
VentureBeat – Sony focuses on the joy of gaming at PlayStation Experience
The GWW – Manifold Garden – My Biggest Surprise at PSX
4Gamer – エッシャーにインスパイアされた奇才が3年をかけて開発中のパズルゲーム「Manifold Garden」 (Japenese)
All of this was really great to see.
Show Logistics
Arrived in San Francisco on Friday at noon, and headed straight to Moscone Center to pick up my badge and set up the game.
Like last year, I had a 10′ x 10′ booth:
Sony provided 2 TVs, 2 PS4s, and 2 controllers, so set up was pretty simple. All I had to do was show up, install the game from the USB, and hang up the banner. Normally, having to carry all the computer equipment, screens, and setting up, is such a huge hassle for conventions, and Sony took care of this.
Also, this is pretty funny:
Not sure what happened here. My company is “William Chyr Studio”, and that’s the name I have registered with Sony and what I put as the company when I filled out the PSX participation form, but it looks like there was some confusion.
Everyone said to own it. I should really go for the mad scientist vibe. Anyone got an extra lab coat they can lend me?
Here’s a picture of the crowd on the second floor watching the keynote:
This year, the indie section was split up across the entire convention, instead of being all together. I think this was a really cool way of doing it, especially given the size of the whole show, as it didn’t make the indie games feel like they were a separate category. The only downside was that it was a really hard to see the other indies if you just remained at your booth.
In other conventions I’ve done, because all the indies are within a 10 minute walk of one another, I’d end up getting to see and talk to everyone. This year though, I had other friends at PSX who I did not get the see and talk to at all!
The show on Saturday was also 12 hours – from 10 AM to 10 PM. The hours were quite brutal, especially for one person manning a booth (I wasn’t the only one doing this either!). I don’t think last year had such insane hours. I do hope Sony changes this in the future, for the sake of the smaller indie teams that can’t afford more booth personnel. Or perhaps have volunteers that man the booth for an hour or two so smaller teams can take a break?
The show on Sunday was 10 AM to 6 PM, which was pretty nice.
After the show, I hung out with some of the other developers, and it was great to be able to do a bit of catching up.
Here’s a pic of my friend and fellow game designer Chris Bell playing Manifold Garden at the booth: