Primarily I was interested in the Independent Game Summit, which is held on the first two days of the conference. In the IGS, luminaries from the world of independent game development deliver talks sharing there experiences, thoughts and ideas about all things game development. I last went to the IGS in 2009. This time, I found the amount of new information was less than my previous IGS visit. Their was still a lot of great information, and it was completely worth it. Perhaps that just says that I’ve got a reasonable idea of what I’m doing now.

The IGS was really the start of what turned out to be a real eye-opening conference though. At the first break, I spotted Simon from The Voxel Agents. Although I’d never met Simon before, I recognised him from winning an award at Freeplay last year. I went over and said hello and got to chatting. Simon then introduced me to Ben from Tin Man Games, who I hang out with during the afternoon. We went for a drink after the conference, and I met Chris from Play Bit Entertainment. These are all people I follow on Twitter, so it’s awesome to meet them in person, forge friendships, and find out that they are excellent people in RL!

By meeting these guys and some other people later on, I was able to get involved with an opportunity that was provided by the Game Developers Association of Australia (GDAA) to met a good number of games journalists. This happened over a few days later in the week. Although I didn’t attend GDC with the explicit goal of ‘selling’ Star Hammer Tactics, or the other projects I’m working on, it turned out that I was able to show the game to some journos and talk about Black Lab Games. W00t!

The point I’m trying to make here : From a decision to go and say hi to somebody I’d never met, I ended up meeting a bunch of game journos which will hopefully get some good exposure for the company. Networking and meeting people are just as important as coding and game design, if you’re looking to build and grow a sustainable company.

L8r, Paul

Conversely, it’s the most awesome thing in the world when somebody writes a good review. So, you can imagine my delight when I read a review of Star Hammer Tactics last week on PSPenguin.net that gave the game 4-stars. Most importantly, I think the reviewer really got what Star Hammer Tactics was intended to be – a short-burst pick-up-and-play strategy game. I like when that happens!

You can read it here.

Quite amusing. I’m sure they’ll love the game if they ever play it.

Remember, all publicity is good publicity.