Game Market 2024: A First-Time Exhibitor’s report

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to participate in Game Market 2024 as a first-time exhibitor. As a fledgling game designer and hopefully publisher, this experience was very educational, and super humbling, actually. Yes, sales were less than I expected, but the overall experience was well worth it…! Read on 👇

Our Game: KEI-GO!

We (me and one seminar student) presented our original game, KEI-GO!, at the event. The game combines elements of Indian Poker with Japanese honorific language, creating an intriguing and engaging experience for players (I think). This originality proved to be both an advantage and a challenge.

Advantage: it’s unique, so when people hear the description of the game, they are intrigued.

Disadvantage: instead of being intrigued, they end up just going ‘Keigo? WTF?’ and walking away.

But if people are intrigued enough to stop and listen to the description of the game, good things usually happen.

• Do you know Indian poker?
  • Yes: OK, this game uses that mechanic. You can see everyone’s role but your own
  • No: OK, in this game, you can see everyone’s role but your own.

And then we just explain how the game works, and you can see in their eyes when they ‘get it.’

Usually this results in a ‘wow, that’s interesting’ which can mean two things:

1. That’s interesting, and I want to play it to see how it works.
2. That’s interesting, what a cute implementation of the Indian Poker mechanic. Well done. Bye.

Who buys KEI-GO! ?

• Teachers and people connected to educational occupations.
• People looking for a quick, fun party game to play with friends.
• People that we grabbed as they were walking past. I think I did a good job of this, but I’m unsure as to how important the sales pitch is. Perhaps the layout of the booth is more important?

Lessons Learned

1. Booth Layout Matters: We found that the arrangement of the booth played a crucial role in attracting potential customers. Getting the posters up, was a great addition. We should definitely get a large poster for behind us though.
2. Clear Communication is Key: Explaining our game concisely and effectively was essential in capturing interest and also helped us save our voiced!
3. Networking Opportunities: We made a bunch of valuable connections, including potential distribution leads like XXXXX and YYYYY as well as promotional opportunities with YouTube channels.

Looking Ahead

This whole experience has really opened up some cool new opportunities for KEI-GO!. We’re working on distribution options and thinking about how we can broaden our reach in the gaming community. The feedback and connections we made at Game Market 2024 are going to be super helpful as we look ahead.

To wrap things up, our first Game Market adventure was a good mix of learning, and meeting awesome people. Oh, I should also mentioned that by running a booth, you get to spend much less time going around and checking out all the other games… so next time, I’d like to try and have 2 or 3 students run the booth, so I can find some time to do market research.