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Navigating Game Dev Events as an Indie Dev

Events are an important avenue for indie game developers’ to find important stakeholders. From potential players to publishers and investors, game development events are important spaces to make these essential connections.

With so many things going on however, it can be difficult deciding which events to go to or have a presence in. We made this guide for Australian game devs, focusing on local events big and small.

Types of game dev events

This is a masterlist of recurring game development events in Australia. This is not a laundry list of events that exist, but an attempt at categorisation that will hopefully help with understanding if an event is worthwhile for your purposes! 

Gaming conventions 

Gaming conventions are large expos that bring together a broad mix of gamers/general public as well as stakeholders in industry such as publishers, government workers (Eg. from the Arts Sector), press/journalists, studios, devs, streamers/content creators and more. There are game booths, talks, guest meets and other adjacent events on the show floor.

Local conventions

Gaming conventions within Australia can be divided further by their scale/primary audience. For example, Games Expo is largely for Melbourne game developers and games enthusiasts, whilst PAX and SXSW are large enough to draw significant interstate and international visitors.

Typically, these conventions will be large enough to have satellite events in the area that may be worthwhile to go to as an attendee too! 

Nick, Reuben and Dom at Games Expo.
Nick, Reuben and Dom hosting a panel over at The Game Expo.

International conventions

There are many gaming conventions internationally of different scale, but support is sometimes available to attend some of these conventions. Here are a few of them:

  • GDC (US) (With IGEA support)
  • Gamescom  (Germany) (With IGEA and Government (NSW) support)

Industry conferences OR B2B Networking/Investor meets

These are events that are more focused on building industry connections, with attendees in the business of making games. These would include publishers, government workers (Eg. from the Arts Sector), press/journalists, studios, devs, lawyers, accountants and more. These events often involve insightful talks and networking sessions/opportunities.

Locally, several key industry conferences happen during Melbourne International Games Week, such as the following:

Reuben giving a panel at GCAP.

Local Community events

In a previous blog, we defined what we meant by community events. Community events can involve showcasing games, pop-up galleries, talks, networking sessions/meetups, and much more! With their variety, the people you can meet differ greatly as well. Typically though, these smaller events bring together local devs, hobbyists, and general game enthusiasts.

Here are a few examples sorted by states:

Victoria

New South Wales

Western Australia

Southern Australia

Canberra

Northern Territory

Queensland

Tasmania

For a full and living calendar of game dev events in Australia, check out this calendar.

A photo of all the attendees at WIP Night.
WIP Night over at our office.

Preparing for events (Tradeshow edition)

Identifying audiences and establishing goals

In the case of deciding whether showcasing or boothing your game is worthwhile, it’s critical to identify what you intend to achieve at the event, and whether the event’s audience will match up with it. 

Specifically, are your goals:

  1. Networking with Publishers/Investors – Seeking funding opportunities
  2. Networking with influencers/streamers/content creators and press/games journalists – Seeking marketing opportunities
  3. Networking with potential colleagues/work – Seeking hiring opportunities
  4. Increasing wishlists/game sales
  5. Something else?

Depending on the stage of development for your game, these goals will be different. For example, if you’re boothing in the lead up to your game’s launch, an event would be most worthwhile to attend if it allows you to network with relevant content creators and journalists.

Budgeting, planning and preparation

Ultimately, money, time and manpower limit what events you can attend. An extensive number of resources have already been created to help with creating more accurate budgets and plans surrounding booths and gaming conventions.

This talk by Meredith Hall at GDC goes in depth about getting the most out of tradeshow type events as a game developer.

In addition, she shares in great detail about valuation pre and post-event, exhibiting best practices, tips to offset costs and more.

Networking (The social kind) at events

Like any other networking event, socialising with others is a skill meant to be honed. Specific to indie game dev events however, everyone is excited to talk about their game. It pays to be an active listener, asking questions and staying engaged. By finding common ground, you might be better able to have whoever you’re conversing with resonate with what you have to say as well. 

Other strategies to help gel the conversation along is to use tools to break the ice. For example, Noble Steed Games’ businesscards were specifically designed as Tarot cards, to provide a point of discussion that is fun and a bit more memorable. Keep a QR code that leads to your contact information, presskit and other relevant landing pages. Keep some visual aids in the form of some gameplay photos or videos of your game on hand too, and bring it up when you have opportunities to talk about it to people.

Some of our Tarot themed Business Cards.
Some of our tarot themed business cards!

Conclusion

Events are great for meeting new people and finding valuable relationships. They’re also great fun! We hope this blog has helped you sort out the types of events out there, and made it easier to figure out what works!

We hope you enjoyed reading this! Have a question or want to chat more about game development? Reach out to us!

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