So yesterday was the 2nd and last day of the Independent Game Conference West. It was a good conference. I met a number of interesting people and felt very enthusiastic. The first person I met was this dude Marcus who gave me a high five for working on an RTS. He turned out to work for the Hotel, which made his excitement that much cooler.

Day 1 started out all-business, but just when I was beginning to worry that this conference would be all about revenue streams and marketing strategies, I heard a great talk by Aaron Vanderbeek on how the relationships between players in a game can influence the way they play. He found a correlation between the closeness of a relationship between two players and their tendency to cooperate vs. compete. Very interesting concept that can lead to many other discussions (and did).

Then John Master Lee held a fantastic discussion on indie game marketing and how even a single man operation can do the job without a publisher. A lot of his advice stuck with me. He suggested emphasizing individuality, indulging in the indie’s role as David fighting Goliath, and gave some interesting tips on creating a fan base. For one, Lee claims that long blog posts are a waste of time because very few people read them and they take a lot of energy to write. That’s too bad because I have a lot more crap to say. Continue Reading…