[00:00:00] Nate Kadlac: One thing I noticed was they had the first video game console.
[00:00:09] Welcome to the Hey, Good Game podcast, where we chat with the creators of your favorite games that you secretly play in the cracks of your day. Welcome to the Hey, Good Game podcast. I'm Nate Kadlac, and I'm here with my cohost, Aaron Kardell. And this week is a little bit special. Aaron and I have come to GDC, which is in San Francisco, California.
[00:00:32] And. This is our first time here and we're kind of just throwing ourselves in the deep end without really any plan. And so, yeah, we're here recording during the conference and Aaron, how's the conference going to you?
[00:00:48] Aaron Kardell: I feel like for us from a business perspective for being the first time here, it's a. I feel like it's been productive and it's been really [00:01:00] good to meet people.
[00:01:01] People have been very generous with wanting to connect us to others that they think we should be talking to. And so it seems like a very supportive community in that way. In prior roles, I've certainly been to conferences and in different industries over the years. I think this is, in terms of the number of people at a specific conference, I think this is the Largest one that I've been to so far.
[00:01:28] And so just the magnitude and the volume here, I think is pretty astounding. I think it's also cool to, do have other thoughts, but. Nate, what are some of your takeaways?
[00:01:41] Nate Kadlac: Well, yeah, I think there's, well, 30, 000 plus people here last year. So I'm, I'm curious to know the final count this year, but it definitely feels packed.
[00:01:52] So Aaron and I, we took the option of skipping on the session passes. So we just have what's considered expo passes where we [00:02:00] can kind of walk around and, and meet and greet people. So we're not necessarily going to many sessions here, but from what I can tell, it seems packed. And even there was a session on.
[00:02:09] How to take a puzzle game and not feel stuck and how to make it grow as a business. And I had heard that that room was 75 percent full. So even in what feels kind of like a small niche for us, it feels like there was still kind of a lot of conversations and chatter around casual gaming and puzzles, especially.
[00:02:30] Aaron Kardell: Yeah. I think in future years, I'll certainly be back with one or both of my kids at some point just, so they can. Kind of see up close some of the, gaming companies that they interact with. I think they think that's pretty cool. I took some pictures at the Epic booth, the discord booth, and I think they'd get a kick out of that.
[00:02:51] So yeah, there's the, the magnitude and scale, I think within that though. Kind of the inverse is we are operating in [00:03:00] kind of a specific niche and we're very intentionally focused on what we've coined braining games. But if you want to think of that more broadly as puzzle games or math games or word games, we've really been looking hard.
[00:03:14] Likely 30, 000 plus that are here to find others in our niche. And we've certainly had some good conversations. For example, there was. Cool Math Games had a booth on the floor and they distribute games for a lot of other publishers. They've got a deep entry into just kind of the education vertical.
[00:03:35] Sounds like a lot of teachers use their sites. So there are certainly people like that here. It has been a little bit surprising to me that we haven't seen a stronger contingent. So just as a for example, we You know, there's a little conference app you can look up past attendees and not past attendees.
[00:03:54] You can look up current attendees and we looked for You know [00:04:00] anybody who's been on our podcast so far and nobody came up so it is interesting just the sheer scale and also the Lack of matching on the specific niche that we're in.
[00:04:13] Nate Kadlac: I have to admit your abilities to wield Excel or Google sheets is pretty impressive and the spreadsheet that you put together calling a lot of the people that we wanted to do outreach to is, was pretty fascinating to see.
[00:04:28] There was one guest that we've interviewed that has been here. to GDC, which is episode 12, Lil Snack and Eric and Travis. Well, we don't know exactly the results. They were pitching at demo day on the, on the first or second day here. And if you go to buzzfeed. com, they have a banner right now that's linking to their daily game.
[00:04:49] So definitely go check that out. But I think you're right. There's, there's not a huge contingent of. You know, maybe the indie creators that we've talked to or spoken to [00:05:00] that kind of represent themselves here. And I think maybe for a variety of reasons, but not the first is that it's expensive and you have to travel.
[00:05:08] So there's that. So Aaron, as we were walking around the expo event yesterday, I happened to come across Pokey. I think it's pokey. com if I'm not mistaken, but did you have any thoughts visiting that booth yesterday?
[00:05:20] Aaron Kardell: Well, yeah, it was. Certainly in some of my, just, research earlier, you know, Poki is one of the most traffic sites for those not familiar.
[00:05:30] That's spelled P O K I dot com, and it is one of the most traffic game websites out there. Sounds like they're starting to mix things up a bit. Their model in the past is, they've been, I guess, pretty, Curated in the sense of hosting third party developer games, their team would reach out to a developer whose game they wanted to host and, you know, it was kind of more just curated in that fashion in the [00:06:00] past, believe are still in that business will be doing that, but they've got something now where it was kind of intriguing.
[00:06:07] You can get your game play tested and my apologies to anybody on the pokey team as I. Butcher your pitch here. But the, the basic idea is, as I understand it is you can upload your game, you get maybe an initial 10 people that test your game. And it's kind of like, if you've seen these sites, usertesting.
[00:06:30] com, I think it is, or, you know, some of these sites where you get kind of candid. End user feedback, like they just go in, they use your game or your app, and they just kind of talk through what they're experiencing live, and you kind of see where, where people get held up. That's kind of the first round as I understand it with this new thing with Pokey, and you just sort of get that play test up to 10.
[00:06:53] And then maybe if you get past, That first round, you're getting good engagement. They start to scale it up where [00:07:00] they open up an audience of up to 10, 000 users that play it. They really track a lot of the metrics at that time. Like what's the, engagement level, like how long do people stay in the game?
[00:07:11] What likely amount of ad revenue is this going to generate? And then at the end of that, they come back to you and say, yeah, we think this would be a good fit. Here's a projection of what the revenue is likely to be like. Or you need to do some more work. And you know, I think one of the big things that we just seen here from game creators everywhere is getting exposure getting distribution is kind of everything and you know, this seems like an intriguing way to Potentially test the waters on a, on a new game, especially if you don't have an established audience.
[00:07:47] So I thought that was kind of cool. Did you have any other takeaways? Did you have from walking the show floor?
[00:07:53] Nate Kadlac: Yeah. So one thing I noticed was probably the three most in terms of people [00:08:00] standing around at booths, the Epic booth, I think what you were just. Talking about the Discord and the TikTok booth were pretty packed.
[00:08:09] Couldn't really kind of navigate around that. That was interesting, the, they had the first video game And I can't remember the name of it. That was wild to see. It was just, you know, a simple pong game that you could play, but they had that up along with a number of old consoles that you could, you know, go and play old Nintendo and Atari and some of the Sega consoles.
[00:08:31] So that was pretty fun to see. Was there anything that stood out to you from the floor?
[00:08:35] Aaron Kardell: Well, sorry to any, video game historians who. I think we should obviously know this, but in looking at my photos from yesterday, was the Magnavox Odyssey was the, first video game from 1972. And it is kind of remarkable, like it, it definitely looks like an early console.
[00:08:59] Yeah, [00:09:00] so it was kind of cool to see they had some, retro TVs hooked up there and that, that was cool.
[00:09:07] Nate Kadlac: I'm seeing the, 1972 as the date of that, that first video game.
[00:09:12] Aaron Kardell: Looks like that was an exhibit from, well, I'm reading, I, I've only got a partial picture here from the, Museum of art and digital entertainment, maybe the vibrant media lab, butchering that VML it's VML other things, you know, just walk in the floor.
[00:09:37] Like it was some of the key booths were organized by country or by state or province, and so there was like a big Belgium contingent and in addition to like, Exhibitors from Belgium being there, there was also maybe some information up about all the tax incentives, if you set up shop in [00:10:00] Belgium and New York state had a good booth.
[00:10:03] That's where we met cool math team and some others there, but yeah, it was just kind of been to a lot of conferences. None kind of laid out exactly this way. So that was cool to see.
[00:10:16] Nate Kadlac: Yeah. I think one thing about this conference is that it just seems to be growing every year. And we ran into a couple of people we know who I think a friend of mine has been there 12 times, ran into another person who's been going since 2000 and.
[00:10:32] Eight or, or even longer than that. And so it's cool to see people just come back every year and it doesn't really feel like it's slowing down by any means. So Aaron, what do you think GDC 2025?
[00:10:48] Aaron Kardell: Yeah, I think my current disposition is, you know, we had enough, good meetings, enough, good starter conversations here that I'm, I'm definitely inclined to come back next year.[00:11:00]
[00:11:00] I'll probably look at just how. Excessive, some of the booth prices are, and that kind of thing. I'm inclined to, I don't think we would exhibit, but I, we do want to get our name out to other game devs and sort of be on the radar that we're in the space. And especially if you're in our niche, we're interested in buying your game.
[00:11:22] And so we'll be looking maybe just for other conferences too. I think like other conferences we could be at. Write in if you've got some suggestions for us. Where are Brainy Game game devs meeting up? We'd love to learn more if you've got the inside scoop. But, what do you think, Nate? You plan to come back?
[00:11:42] Nate Kadlac: Well, we've accomplished in a few days, without a lot of prep. I think it was a lot of fun and it was fairly fruitful for us. So I'm definitely in on coming back next year. I'm still on the fence, whether a booth is necessary or not, but you know, maybe we got to get our games to make sure they look good on a HD TV [00:12:00] first.
[00:12:00] But yeah, I think with a little bit more prep, we can have a much better experience next year even. So, yeah, I had a really great time this year.
[00:12:08] Aaron Kardell: For sure. Maybe I just need to hit up our governor to see if he'll, host a state booth. Maybe we can get in a little bit cheaper that way. So we'll lobby for that.
[00:12:21] All right. Well, I think that's a wrap. Thanks for your thoughts, Nate. And if you were here at GDC and we didn't see you reach out to us, let us know.
[00:12:29] Nate Kadlac: Yes, absolutely. We'll see you next week.
