CK Status Report, November

Hey there! It's about time we update you all on what we've been up to over the last couple of months.

AIE Post-Incubator Development Grant

In June, after a multi-stage selection process and a lot of paperwork, we were fortunate enough to receive grant money from the Academy of Interactive Entertainment's Post-Incubator Development Grant program. In the months since this has enabled our team to dedicate even more time and energy to making games, with less stress and worry surrounding both personal and company financials. We'd like to thank the AIE for the opportunity and for selecting us. You can read more about it on Kotaku: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/06/aie-launches-brand-new-games-development-grant/

Incorporation

Since we last blogged Cardboard Keep PTY LTD has been incorporated as a real company! We have a business number and everything. This is a big step to take and means both less legal hurdles in the future and hopefully a greater chance that we'll be around well into the future.

paxauswide

PAX Australia Post-mortem

At the end of October Cardboard Keep bunkered down in Melbourne for a week of conferences and expos, starting with the inaugural Unite Australia and GCAP 2014 developer conferences, and ending the week with PAX Australia. The response we got at PAX Aus was phenomenal. Well over 2,000 people played Warden across the three days, including many of Penny Arcade's staff and other industry heavyweights. Through this we also met new friends and took a sizable swing at our Greenlight campaign, speaking of which...

Warden Greenlit

If you haven't heard, Warden: Melody of the Undergrowth has successfully made it through Greenlight and is approved for sale on Steam! We'll be launching in 2015 on Steam among other platforms, stay tuned for more news on that front.

steamwide

iFest Canberra

Just yesterday CK attended local indie games festival iFest here in the nation's capital, and not only did we get a great response to people playing Warden, but Warden was selected as the iFest Canberra 2014 Indie Games Showcase winner! I also gave a talk to iFest attendees titled "How To Start Making Games Right Now". It should be online in the next few weeks so if you're someone who wants to get into making games but doesn't know where to start, keep an eye out for that.

Friends of Cardboard Keep Shoutouts

Finally here's just a few of the things our friends in game development have been up to. Echidna Studios launched their hex strategy game Merchants & Mercenaries onto Greenlight along side PAX Aus. I'm personally really looking forward to this one, you can check out their Greenlight page and give them some love here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/comments/330534057Whale Hammer Games have premiered a new trailer for their upcoming game Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire. The art and animations in Tahira are incredible, give it a watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nq0LFoe6Ps

That's it for now! Stay tuned for more announcements as Warden creeps closer and closer to release. Until next time, Calum

Blog: PAX Prime 2013 - CK in Seattle!

Hey guys! PAX Prime was pretty sweet, but the suckiest thing for an Aussie dev was the flight over. Thirteen hours of being stuck in a flying tin can under pressure is not fun! Worth it? Absolutely!

PAX Dev was filled with a lot of really great talks. Some of them made us think about and reconsider how we go about our projects. From how we prototype, to how we approach marketing. The opening talk was inspirational to say the least, it's nice to be reassured that some of the bigger devs such as Gearbox still care about making games as an art-form rather than a cash cow.

Going to Seattle was great, and going for PAX Prime just one month after PAX Australia allowed for a lot of comparisons to be made. Prime is a lot bigger than Aus, this is pretty obvious considering how long Prime has been running while Aus only has a single iteration under it's belt. Despite Prime being larger, PAX Aus was packed denser if only due to the smaller venue. Prime had more people, more games, more devs and more talks. As such Prime was, as a developer, far more enjoyable and valuable.

Having the chance to show our game, Clicktraption, off to not only thousands of gamers, but also to other developers is simply fantastic. Any other event that I have attended, even PAX Melbourne, didn't provide this opportunity. Showcasing Clicktraption however showed us many of the silly little mistakes we made and I will try to keep this concise.

• Not enough business cards. I ran out and then couldn't give any more to people.
• Giving non-industry people business cards. They don't care, they want something that is either pretty, or better gives them free stuff. Mainly we should have had a flyer for our game to give out.
• We didn't have the title of our game on our banner, or anywhere! We eventually mocked up a logo and stuck that to the top of the screen. People kept asking what Cardboard Keep was, not what Clicktraption was, and couldn't easily make the connection.
• Didn't have a mailing list. People actually want to know about games they like, and people thought our game was good enough to give us their emails, but we didn't have an easy way to receive those emails. Again we mocked up a written mailing list.
• Didn't have a fancy screen to watch. When people were playing our game, no one else could see the screen, so they had no reason to stop and watch. I believe that if passers-by could see the game being played, we would have people queuing up to play it.

For expo research I looked at all the booths other exhibitors had. One stood out as how we, as Cardboard Keep, could have presented ourselves. Their booth was a box fort! Entirely made up of cardboard boxes and drawn on to look like a castle. Totally awesome. The devs were super nice too. Check out Backyard Battles by Naked Sky.

Meeting with people who aren't developers but love games, hundreds if not thousands of them and getting their opinions and thoughts of our game was scary. It always is, the fear of being shot down. What if people hate it? The first day of PAX Prime, before all the people came in, despite all the play testing before hand and the fun times we ourselves had had in it, the steady fear of showing to the public an expression of who we are, and what we are capable of is intimidating. Luckily, people loved Clicktraption!

The Indie Megabooth was awesome sauce! And probably the most crowded place at PAX Prime. There were so many people pouring through that section that I had to check it out when I got the chance. Lucky me for having an exhibitor pass I checked it out after the floor had closed, and it is amazing how nice the marketing guys, the developers and all the Megabooth people are after 8 long hours standing on ones feet selling a game idea to the masses again and again. It's exhausting but all the Megabooth devs and staff were super nice after the fact. So nice in fact that Kelly Wallick, the person who started the Megabooth gave me a free Megabooth shirt, which I proceeded to have signed by as many of the Devs and staff there that I could. Unfortunately I couldn't get all of them, I think I only missed about four studios :(

While having an awesome signed shirt by a bunch of devs doing what I love and making it in the harsh world of big AAA titles and bigger publishers, getting a signed Vlambeer music CD which doubles as a business card is pretty rad and having Dennis Wedin, one of the creators of Hotline Miami give his personal email on the shirt was hilarious, meeting every single one of them and having them all wish us luck for Clicktraption and wanting to be shown our game was mind blowing.

All the contacts made at PAX Prime were great, from Nate Mitchell and Palmer Lucky, creators of the Oculus Rift (And promising a Rift version of Clicktraption), to Ouya, Sony, Intel and more reps (Handy for sponsorship to go to more expos!) and all the developers of indie games plus Youtubers, bloggers and media gurus. Suffice it to say we now have a huge list of contacts to communicate with and that list is not big enough, we'd love more (and more business cards!)

PAX Prime was fantastic and while I was dubious of the usefulness of attending an expo, PAX has instilled a strong faith in showcasing at such events. I had a great time, I met heaps of awesome people and the times for Cardboard Keep are looking up. Stay tuned for our release of Clicktraption! Soon to Kongregate. Perhaps even to Ouya.

So thank you Penny Arcade, Indie Megabooth, The AIE, the enforcers and many more! 

Till next time. Tim out.

CK Status Report, August

Hello internet! In the first of a continuing series of status reports we'd like to keep you up to date with our comings and goings.

Development

We're excited to be working on our first larger project. While this means it won't be ready to show straight away, we hope to be prepared to reveal it in the next 1-2 months. Watch this space!

At the same time we are making final flight checks to finally release Clicktraption. It should be out in September on the friendly and excellent game portal Kongregate.

PAX

Still recovering from an exciting and informative trip to PAX Aus in Melbourne, we're prepping to fly to the US of A and attend PAX Dev and PAX Prime in Seattle, just one week to go! Let us know if you'll also be there. :)

That's it for now, stay tuned for further news from the front!

Calum

Blog: PAX AUS 2013

As many should know Australia broke the metaphorical champagne on it's first Penny Arcade Expo on July 19.

This event is a huge pro for the Australian games industry and we were lucky enough to be able to attend. For those whom are unaware of what PAX is all about let me inform you.

PAX is a convention started by the guys who made the incredibly popular webcomic Penny Arcade. They love video games, tabletop games and everything about games! It's fantastic, PAX is a place full of game developers and just as importantly, gamers! Such a large gathering of gamers offers a unique opportunity for start-ups like ourselves. We spent much of our weekend walking around with tablet in hand, getting gamers and devs alike to test and critique our recently released Android title: Vein Gods.

Boy, did we get some feedback! Bugs, game breaking bugs, tablets not working, devices running out of charge, not enough of us to man the small booth space graciously provided by the AIE Incubator. People struggling to understand the game in the first five seconds of having it thrust in their faces! For anyone in an indie studio who are going to PAX or any other convention: get business cards! 

But it wasn't all dark. We got a lot, in fact a metric gamer ton of feedback. Ideas, ways to fix issues, and advice for selling the game at PAX. Not to mention all the contacts made, I have a stack of business cards on my desk now ranging from the awesome Halfbrick and Voxel Agents guys, to the underground indies like ourselves such as DimeStudios, who also released their first game recently, Tasty Fish.

All that's just from a dev perspective. The expo itself was fantastic, the talks were amazing, some of the best in the industry giving their advice and wisdom upon those of us who are still trying to break even. Talks about the psychology of games and how it is going to change the coming generations and even announcements from Gearbox asking if anyone had a copy of Maya 3 so they could access the source files of the Homeworld IP they recently picked up.

PAX Aus was closed, as PAX always are, with a rare thing. This time around it was a giant game of Jenga, in front of the entire crowd of PAX, commentated by Mike and Jerry of Penny Arcade fame. The lucky Omeganaut who won got an all expenses paid trip to PAX Prime.

Going to PAX was well worth the travel costs, from both a personal and business perspective. So with that, this parting advice for anyone getting into the indie industry: don't skimp on marketing, get posters, shirts, business cards and most importantly go to conventions!

Tim Out.