From Gamasutra: How do you evaluate the worth of going to industry shows?
First things first – Australia is far away from many of the largest game development hubs in the world.
We don’t have a lot of domestic shows to choose from, making it tougher to fairly evaluate the benefits of PAX Australia for a domestic dev vs. international dev. But let’s break it down.
When you’re looking at showing at a game event, you must know what your goals are. Without goals, you don’t have the data you need to reflect on what went well, and what could go better next time.
Your goals for showing at an event like PAX Aus may include:
– Get more confident and natural at pitching your game to consumers, media and colleagues
– Get more qualitative and quantitative feedback from consumers (beyond your friends and/or other game devs!)
– Gain media coverage
– Drive support for a new Kickstarter or crowdfunding campaign
– Trying to find a suitable publisher for your title
– Sell copies of your released game(s) and/or merchandise
– Celebrate your progress, release, or just share your game baby with the public!
– In our opinion, PAX Aus is a great show for some, but not all of these goals.
All shows that our team has attended have been valuable. But all have been helpful for different reasons, and we want to stress that we don’t recommend developers see one single public event to be ‘make or break’ for their title. Your mileage may vary with our pros and cons lists, but this is how we evaluate making the choice to show at PAX Australia.
Image: Our demo space at the stand of our console publisher, Nnooo at GX Australia 2016
Read more at Gamasutra
