"That game saw at the convention was so cool... As soon as I get home, I'm going to... wishlist it and wait for a sale."

To get people to your booth you can pay someone to stand near it and tell everyone "This game sucks, it's so bad it's hilariously bad." so they try it to have a laugh, then after they discover how glorious your game is they go and tell this person that they're full of shit, so they get in a fist fight. This fist fight will attract a lot of people and you just have to persuade one of them to play your game (You can pay them/get in a fist fight with them too, this strategy is incredibly adaptative).

That was 100 slides? It went by so naturally, I didn't even notice 30 mins had passed.

I like the idea of a "Convention mode" for the game. I imagine that would lock out most of the game's menus, stop people exiting completely and also subtly tweak the gameplay to make it easier/harder/faster whatever is needed to make the player not put the controller down after 30 seconds. I'd leave that in the final game too, maybe as an unlockable bonus or "arcade" mode. Also - QR Codes. Put them everywhere. In them put URLs to your game, discount codes, hidden messages, anything. People seem to habitually scan these things now... and if some UKpostsr walks past and catches one in their video, people watching the video will try to scan it too.

Short and up to the point talk. Thank you for that!

I didn't realize from the title alone that this was going to be about event booths. I figured it was for steam store, your website, your press releases, or something like that. The description is just fine but I just saw the video title and hit play.

Not really what I was expecting from the title, but a very useful presentation. I'm not in the game industry, but I do conventions every year, so let me add some points from experience: - Comfortable shoes over fancy ones. A sitting exhibitor is a bored exhibitor presenting something boring. So be prepared to stand a lot. If you are tired, go further away from your booth to sit. The same applies for using your phone for personal stuff. - Bring extension cords and splitters are a must, as there are never enough power outlets. The same applies to hotels. - Never plan your booth down to the millimetre, as they are temporary structures, so the corners are not always 90 degrees or lengths and widths can often be shorter than planned for. - Bring cleaning supplies. People love to touch everything, especially screens and prints on hard surfaces. Also, if you have your own decor, it often gets dirty during transport. - Bring small, hard candy or glucose tabs. As you are going to talk your tongue off, your mouth will be dry as a desert. The best way to get yor saliva generation going is to suck on some candy. Prepare different flavours as you will get tired from the same taste fast and they need to be small, so it doesn't affect your speech or they are easy to shallow. Candy will make you thirsty, but you will still drink less than relying only on water. It also have the bonus of dealing with bad breath. - Always take the long way to the toilet and try to take different route each time. Attending to a booth will make your world shrink without you realising, making you tired faster. Walking around will free up some of the stress. Also if you have a printed shirt, you are a walking advertisement. - Always have a promotional material in your hand. You will flail around less while you speak and offering it as a gift at the end of your presentation will add a positive reinforcement. People will also often approach you to ask for it, presenting you with an opportunity to hook them. - Lastly: don't smile all day like an idiot. It will not only make your face cramp up, but it will make anything you say seem fake. Also if you stand around and smile all day, people will avoid you as if you were a creapy clow.

One big tip I can offer to everyone is to make yourself a convention box. I used to grab my power strips, phone chargers, duct tape, etc. from my house every time I went to a convention. Spend a little extra money to get duplicates of all those things that are ONLY for conventions and put them away in a convention kit. It's also nice to put an inventory list inside the kit to just verify you have everything you need. This is also good to remember to get the things that you can't just get 'convention duplicates' for (i.e. a laptop or TV). Fantastic talk. This stuff is so important for people to hear.

Direct and to the point. Great talk.

This might be super helpful for just-began indie game teams. Thank you for sharing.

This dude is GREAT at talking. Such good presentation, everything had sense and structure, there were no boring parts. GJ!

i love barbeque guy, very fast and on the point. Many good advices, definitely gonna keep notes

Events kind of make sales. They increase the interest for your game and plenty of people add it to wishlist to get it on sale afterwards

Best talk I've seen in a long while! You obviously are a great designer, your slides show. You also had great ideas for your booths! I absolutely LOVE the drawing on blank characters contest thing. It's brilliant.

Kinda makes you wish you had a game in a state to do this stuff, seems amazing. Coming from a musician background it's almost like a live show. Well because it is actually. You spent all this time revisiting and honing your craft, refining it and then present it to an audience. Live.

The amount of questions at the end of the video translates how condensed and effective his explanation was!

28 minutes of basically me saying " how the he*k didn't i think about that?! "

This is one of the best talks I've seen. Very straight forward, practical and explanations were backing up the content! Well done.

Absolutely love this guy! He seems to have all this knowledge that came naturally to him about games and behind the scenes of them. Super inspiring

Super good talk, well done. The slides featuring videos and fixed photos helped put things into perspective.

These practical tips are great for showcasing or running a booth at any event, not just for games. Thanks for sharing! :)

As always Berbece is my hero! every talk I saw from him was a HeadShot with Critical Hit on it! Thank you again for everything Mr Xelu

Those are really awesome guys! Thanks for the input, very informative.

Great presentation with valuable information! :) I'd like to add that the "exposure" that is being earned by attending events directly translates into trust, into brand recognition, into the perception of being high quality.

i'm so happy i got recommended this talk it's AMAZING THANK U

Great talk. I especially liked the little mini-talk in the middle, "How to sell your game and get some sweet-ass character art at the same time."

Fantastic talk Nicolae! Thanks so much for the feedback!

Hurray for concise, effective talks :D

really good talk my dude.

This talk is on another level. Great presentation.

This is great advice for other types of convention booths! Thanks!!

Amazing! For my ears "steam key" sounds like "stinky" lol

So now I know how I know this guy! I saw him as a part of a panel @ GIC 6.X.2017 (Poznan)! ("How to prepare for events and how to attend them") IIRC there are no VODs of the event (as it is smaller one), but that proves his point even further, that events are there to make business connections :) Now I can see that yellow jacket really works :P btw: Yeah, I'm kinda sad there are no easy access to GIC VODs (?), as there were few gems, mainly: "A Maddening Whine: Creative Agency in the Audio Design for Darkest Dungeon" (that I attended) "The Creative and Artistic Design of Darkest Dungeon’s Crimson Court DLC" and "Paint It Black: Creating Artwork for Darkest Dungeon " And there is nothing more sick than to hear about the way DD was designed :D

One of the best GDC talks. Fantastic.

Am not a developer but still a very interesting presentation

Superb Talk. To the point. Surely will be helpful for new indie developers.

That's the most amazing GDC talk I've ever watched

Awesome informatioon dense talk, also, I am loving the orange blazer!

Incredibly well done talk. Excellent.

Fantastic talk, can be extended to presenting at conventions in general

Amazing talk from a great presenter, thanks a bunch!

I am not a game dev, not an artist or anything related, but now i really want do go to an event and present something!

This genuinely made me laugh in a great way, entertaining host and great tips!

I love this guy! He makes the best talkes ever

Precise and helpful talk, thx a lot !

Awesome talk 4 years later, stuff still rings true

very practical advices

Very interesting talk and superb slides

Incredible talk!

One of the tightest GDC talks Ive seen so far

GG. Great talk, extremely useful insights!

The most important part? Don't promote the hype (by boasting big things) or presentation (by hiring big-budget performances). Promote the product (by showing the gameplay clean, raw, and unedited).

dude I didn't know he was THIS good at talking about video games, holy hell. I'm super impress, really great presentation.

Thanks for the vital info!

Very informative video! Thumbs up from Moldova!

You should have looked at wishlist graphs too! To see if there are wishlist spikes after events.

I love this guy!

amazing focus on content

12:48 Finally a good use for a line 6 guitar amp

At one time we were on a small convention with a small game about catching grapes, just because a participant dropped out and I was asked if I am interested to go. We did some stuff the talk mentioned: business card sized flyers, giveaway (we brought a basket of grapes), some decorations (an old style one shooter wich was also in the game), and a competition. We told whomever played the game, we write their name down, and their score, and the best will get a small rooster figurine. We didn't had big screens just a laptop, or roll up banners as it was a small hobby game. But still, it was fun. :)

PURE GOLD!

good presentation!

That's how presentations should be made - straight to the point, without unnecessary blahblahblah. Great job

Great talk! Thanks! :D

I saw this dude at Sweden Game Conference. Really funny and informative (but on a different subject)

Very good talk without the usual "death by power-point" structure reading from an awkward script.

You were happy. So I paid attention. And that was cool! Thanks for the speach :) Great haircut btw, I've got the same ;D

not 100%percent sure about others, but pretty much for sure the idea used by a successful alcohol in China is the same as he mentioned in 20:20. it is the customers' interaction with the producer. which is really an awesome idea.

Great talk, thanks! :)

What the video from start to ending and i really enjoyed the speaker.

Great talk! Never been to an event but would like to some day in the future. One thing I'm concerned about though is that a lot of the demos seems to be short fast games. Is there room for slower paced games like an adventure RPG?

Wow this was a great talk

This is a masterclass!

eyooo romania represent !! swag presentation dude, loved the venn diagram omg

That was awesome! (My first words after this presentation)

their youtube channel is Mental Checkpoint for those who want more of xelu

You guys have to watch the previous video about Move or Die with Nicolae Berbece, he teach a lot in 30 minutes!!!!

I guess what's interesting about the spectators-get-rewards idea is that, whilst it doesn't translate to sales, it has the potentiality to increase people playing the game, thus increasing word of mouth. And on steam, as you can see how many people are playing, I'd be more encouraged to buy a game with people already playing it/checking it out.

Convention modes would be super great if more developers would do that. I hate wanting to play a game and one person is able to just keep playing and playing. Also iwhile having a line is good and all if you have a line to demo make it clearly defined and monitor it in case somebody quits the game early or w/e to allow the line to keep moving as well as being obvious where it is at. I had a bad experience with one game at my last convention because they had several empty stations and no obvious line so I went to go play and the booth people got very angry like it was my fault and that I was line cutting and it didnt make me want to try it after that.

Such an intelligent guy!

This was great

Very interesting; I have never even thought of such booths (never been to a gaming convention before). But I guess you'd need a larger team to pull this off and also some spare money

Was the Expo in Japan at Bit Summit?

Ok, this is going into my must haves

What a cool dude!

Thanks soo much I would have never thought to pack scissors and box cutters in my luggage!

Thank you for uploading these videos. 😊

This guy’s a genius

Hold this for a second. - Nicolae Berbece aka Johnny B BQ :D :D :D :D You need to give awards, like TOP 5 humor, 'something new', etc.

Every indie should watch this.

awesome

I wonder how different those sale spikes are for indie devs that don't promote their games like this.

How can i secure VR controllers in an event?

If y’all like the speaker and want to know more about game development, xelu has a youtube channel called Mental Checkpoint.

I demoed my game at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo last year and I still find this talk super helpful. The techniques for recording player feedback, community building, and getting people to play are excellent, thank you Nicolae! Here is my post-mortem: alexbairgames.itch.io/robovdino/devlog/14925/retro-on-the-retro-gaming-expo

Best talk on the GDC channel?

After seeing this my biggest take away is never go to these events. Being recorded and tracked like that ruins any fun I could have.

Maybe instead of a sale chart they should measure visits on the website/trailers/steam page etc to see how much exposure the event generated?

I loved the guy at 17:44

A good way to do lights would be to have the game output serial commands (maybe only in convention mode), and then get a USB-compatible or USB-to-serial capable microcontroller like the ATmega32u4 or even a single board computer like the raspberry pi (that's overkill though), and control the lights based off of the serial commands.