Boston FIG Recap

September 18, 2013

So… FIG happened.  And it was crazy.  It took a few days, but I’m finally coming out of my post-FIG coma.  Long story short, it was a great day.

Short story long, here’s some highlights from the day:

Players

There were over seven thousand attendees at the event, nearly three times more than last year.  There was a constant flow of people stopping by to watch other people play The Electric Shocktopus.  As for the players themselves… well… while my laptops were all being used, there was a bit less of a constant flow.  You see, my game was addictive.  The players did not want to relinquish their seats — they were determined to beat more levels/the next level/level 30.  Some were at my booth for a half hour.  Some for an hour.  And I was not about to stop them, It was fantastic seeing frustration turn into dedication.

Special Guests

One part of the day I didn’t expect were the special guests.  Unbeknownst to me, there were people at the event who already *knew* about TestTubeGames.  Some had come out specifically because a friend posted about Shocktopus on Facebook, and told them they had to come play it.  Others planned out coming to the day in advance.  I was blown away by this, and felt really honored that people cared enough about the games to do that.

Business Cards

I put out a couple hundred business cards.  I returned with five.  Whoa.  Good news: I can start designing TTG business card 2.0

Zappy Zappy

No good day is complete without a little chaos.  Or a lot of chaos.  The Electric Shocktopus *refused* to stay in my laptops — he insisted in coming out into the real world.  No, I’m not talking about the Shocktoplush (which was a big hit), but rather about my laptop’s power cord *exploding*.

The Magic Black Smoke came out

Yikes!  There were some bad power issues in that room, what with all the devices plugged in.  So at some point, about halfway through the day, things on our end of the room started flickering.  And then I heard a nice, loud zapping sound and caught the whiff of fried electronics.  I feverishly unplugged everything, and thankfully, the power cord was the only casualty.

I wasn’t about to plug back into that power source (other people tried, and lost more equipment), so I ran of laptop batteries the rest of the day.  Not ideal — sadly I couldn’t show off the game on the huge monitor.  But it worked.

First Gravity Look

As a benefit to the loss of power, when one of my laptops ran out of juice, I got to try out the current prototype of the Gravity Simulator I had on my iPad.  Just as I hoped, the artistic spirals and loops drew people in — and they got a kick out of flinging planets to see what happens.  It was just the most basic of versions, too, so I’m excited for how people will react to the full thing.

All in all, a full, amazing, and exhausting day.  I learned a bunch by watching people play with The Electric Shocktopus, and hopefully players learned a thing or two, too!  And though I’m gonna need some time to decompress before it rolls around again, I’m already looking forward to Boston FIG 3.0

-Andy