Game Conference Guide: News #1
Early designs, future plans + some interesting math.
Hello and greetings from rainy Zagreb, Croatia, home of the Game Conference Guide. It feels like ages ago, while in reality only four weeks has passed since the launch.
Hope everyone is safe and healthy.
Let me take you on a short journey that kickstarted the whole idea of creating a list of all game developers & games industry events.
Way back in March 2020, when the major shift in the events landscape happened due to the harsh restrictions and global pandemic, I was starting to receive updates from my favourite event organisers. After a few days I felt lost. The amount of updates was overwhelming and without writing down the details & new dates I was not sure what event is still going to happen in physical form and which one was delayed. To clear up a bit the picture, I created a simple spreadsheet.
Now, I am aware that I was not the only one, nor that Game Conference Guide is the only tool out there. The spreadsheet was offered to Slovak Game Developers Association to share it with the community and then European Game Developers Federation stepped in as one of the curators and the list grew from there. And with it the audience as well.
But to be able to offer more flexibility with the increasing number of entries, got me thinking about a new way of interacting with the data and making it a bit prettier. Visualisation itself wasn’t enough; you can see, but you can’t touch (as pictured on the screenshot from the first version below).
A simple dashboard kickstarted the development of much more robust project
The options to sort, search and filter data had to be introduced without going overboard with complex interface. Remember, Game Conference Guide started as a spreadsheet and I wanted to keep everything simple to use and easy to understand.
A move to a full-fledged website accessible on any device anytime was obvious.
As the number of entries increased, so was the number of available options for plugins and visualisation solutions. To keep the story short, there were a lot of blind alleys, payment traps and not-flexible options. In the end the website is running on DataTables and using DataWrapper for the graphical elements.
From this point it was matter of choosing the right tools, graphic elements and plugins.
There is one more piece of information I want to share it with you, the whole website was programmed and created by myself without knowing anything about coding, scripting or design. And it is the first website I made from scratch.
What was my biggest surprise, was that after first days since the launch, all my expectations (monthly 300 UIP) were crushed during just one weekend. This was a clear signal, that even in the spreadsheet days more people accessed it everyday, that I could have imagined.
Now, where to go next?
Dark Mode, Deadline Watch for Indies (Awards / Submissions), Reset Button for filters, adding more events, these are just a fraction of new features I am planning to add in the future.
One of the most requested one - Calendar - is already available. It allows you to add single, multiple or all events in the database to your preferred calendar. Bear in mind that only events with confirmed dates are listed.
Partner of the Month
Huge shout-out to friends at Games Farm for supporting the launch of Game Conference Guide. These lovely people are based in Slovakia and they are running a campaign on Kickstarter for one-hit-kill action fighting game Die by the Blade, heavily influenced by legendary Bushido Blade. They have already reached their initial target 20.000 USD, you can still help the game and get amazing awards like katanas, handcrafted jewellery or leather mask in return.
Monthly Update
Apart form introduction of the Calendar, a small cosmetic update has been added. The main graph showing number of events per month was corrected. From now on it shows scheduled/finished events both in 2020 and in 2021 and a new red line is tracking number of events cancelled in 2020.
Don’t want to scare you, but there are still 36 events scheduled till the end of this year. Good luck everyone!
Math for the Q3 2020
Let’s say, you wanted to participate at every event between October and December 2020. How many of weekdays and weekends would you have to sacrifice?
It would take you:
231 work days
72 weekend days
Totalling in 303 days of conferencing
And those are just events during the last quarter of 2020, which was not as busy as year before.
Exciting ins’t it?
Did You Know?
One of the hidden features not visible at a first glance are discount coupons. I am thinking about to position them elsewhere to better promote the event organisers creating a custom code just for Game Conference Guide. You can find them by clicking either on the event itself or a small blue “+” button in the list.
Currently discount codes are available for:
DevGAMM 2020 (9 - 20 NOV) - GameConfGuide15
Games Gathering Kiyv (3 - 6 DEC) - 10% off = GG2020PRMCD4FRNDS
Indie Game Business Sessions: Winter 2020 (8 - 11 DEC) - GAMECONFERENCEGUIDE
Thank you for reading and supporting Game Conference Guide. Consider sharing it with your peers, colleagues and community.
Pavol Buday, curator of GCG
[Game Conference Guide is tracking games industry & game developers events, trade shows, festivals, conferences and events around the world.]