The team leads headed up to PAX east this past week, to scope out the industry news and get some feedback on Villainville. We found the devs and publishers on the expo floor to be incredibly encouraging and supportive, giving us solid information on how to proceed, and even a template for our pitch deck!
The fans were also great to chat with. I (Suzanne) carried around an envelope with inked 2D drawings of most of our NPCs, and let people pick out a favorite. This served the obvious purpose of passing out info on the game and getting players into our discord, since the invite link was printed on the pages. But as any villain would tell you, it’s always great to have an ulterior motive. In this case, I was also doing an unofficial poll of random gamer’s gut reaction to the 2D image of our NPCs.
The clear winner, blowing all the other characters away, was… Crim the baby dragon!
Yeah. Not a shocker. Dragons already get a big edge, and who can resist that face?
However, the competition for the second Most Chosen character was much tighter. Since a printing problem meant Dr. Reaper didn’t join the line up until the last day–when I was mostly loafing off–I’ve decided to have a QA group of students we’ll be working with in April do a more formal poll.
This is partly just for fun, but the info also really helps me get inside the gut-reaction of our player base. I’d prefer that the narrative undercurrents of the game emphasize those NPCs the players most want to spend time around.
This was our teams first PAX so its true we didn’t have much to compare it to, but it pretty much wowed us. The rising PAX showcase was fun and informative, with cool new games that have gone on our list. The AFK Journey game that’s using characters we thoroughly enjoyed in AFK Arena was gorgeous, and the demo showed lots of promise. And of course, the big names like Pokemon and Baldur’s Gate were awe-inspiring. Best of all was the energy. Gamers are such a great group, and know how to have the best fun!
