<commit_before>---
title: Our first IndieCade experience
date: 2016-10-24 13:03:00 -04:00
---

This blog post is about to be as cheesy as it sounds. Two weeks ago, I got to go to IndieCade for the first time ever, and I absolutely loved it. Everything about the 4 days (3 main festival days) could not have been more enjoyable... well, there was one thing, but I'll get to that.

![FractureIndieCade2016.jpg](/uploads/FractureIndieCade2016.jpg)

First of all, I would like to thank the hundreds of people who not only came out to IndieCade, but in a festival full of video games, said, "sure, I'll try this cyber futuristic board game." Secondly, I would like to thank [<NAME>](http://www.northeastern.edu/camd/gamedesign/people/celia-pearce/), for her game design skills and some helpful poking and prodding to actually submit to IndieCade.

**Hands-on collaborative prototyping**

The festival started off with a handful of tool building workshops, from starting a company and grant writing to making table-top games workshop. Almost feels like this festival knew what I needed. On day one I met some wonderful developers and designers including [<NAME>](https://twitter.com/gritfish), with whom I helped design a cooperative version of UNO (I'll lovingly call Deton-ocho, written Deton8, documentation is in the works). In the span of 15 -30 minutes, we had deconstructed a game and reconstructed it together, adding mechanics and balancing the game on the fly. Another wonderful reminder that hands-on, tactile table top games, are incredibly fun to prototype, an aspect of AutomaTiles I look forward to others experiencing. (Note: Fracture originated out of a session like this, where the original concept from Celia Pearce and Mechanics of Mike Lazer-Walker came together)

**Time flies when you're having fun**

With my good friend and talented game designer, [<NAME>](http://lazerwalker.com), by my side, we hit the ground running. The first day of the festival only allowed for \~2 hours of playing Fracture, but I ended up extending to 4 hours and packing up only when the staff kindly let us know we needed to leave. The events of the day nearly convinced me that I should buy a ticket for Nick to fly out and join us, I was having so much fun and time was flying. If this was going to be how each day was, I wasn't quite sure how I would sleep, but the answer to that is with a big smile on my face.

**The stuff of dreams**

Each day continued to build on the previous one, with one amazing player even exclaiming that he had dreamed about playing Fracture again the night before and coming back to see if he could reign champion (which he did).

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JajZLRV4laY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Some players approached the game out of the gates with heavy analysis and found the game to be long lasting as they each played defensively, preventing a win condition one move at a time.

> Image of people focussed while playing<

Others worked collaboratively to achieve a Super Win, a rule invented once again by <NAME>, to encourage more cooperative play. The idea for this is that if in a single move, every tile can be put in a happy state, everyone wins, and the person who figured it out, extra wins :)

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6SYrYEp3CE8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Lastly I want to address two topics that were not as happy, but are important and meant a lot to me.

1\. I spoke about Fracture as a "competitive game towards diversity"... I would love to keep this conversation going, please share your thoughts on the matter (respectfully).

The point was brought up that it seems hypocritical to have a game mechanic that suggest segregating others to make yourself more diverse, and call it a game towards diversity. I agree that game mechanics are often the way in which we learn behaviors, and to have mechanics inconsistent with the theme or message of a game is misleading or possibly upsetting. I am curious to discuss this more, as I think the cooperative version of this game still shows promise, but I can also change the language around the game, as it really has become simply a strategic abstract game.

2\. A person playing a game at our table was acting in a way that made another player uncomfortable. I very seriously said that Move38 provides safe-spaces, and that behavior was not allowed, as it compromises someone else's safe-space. This person stopped their behavior, but I want everyone to know that this is a core value of our company and one we will always stand by. There are respectful ways of treating each other no matter how big the disagreement, and we hold our players to the same standard we hold ourselves.

All in all, the trip to Los Angeles, my hometown of 26 years was wonderful. The hour and half commute each way from the valley felt like nothing when every morning I was excited to show new people something that has been in the works for quite a while.

The community of people at IndieCade is what really made the trip for me. The fact that Fracture was a finalist, was flattering, and put me in company I felt lucky to be a part of. The awards ceremony put the entire diverse crowd inside of a single room and some truly meaningful works of passion won well deserved awards. In the words of [<NAME>](http://ramiismail.com/)

> A Dutch-Egyptian developer handed out the Grand Prize of a major games event to an Iranian-Canadian developer, for the creation of a game about the history of a Middle-Eastern country.  –  [source](http://ramiismail.com/2016/10/indiecade-awards-2016/)

And ultimately it feels great to be at an event where that happens.

Nick and I both decided that these kinds of events are definitely worth attending, so feel free to let us know some of your favorite game festivals that we should be at in the comments.<commit_msg>Updated Our First Indiecade Experience<commit_after>---
title: Our first IndieCade experience
date: 2016-10-24 13:03:00 -04:00
---

This blog post is about to be as cheesy as it sounds. Two weeks ago, I got to go to IndieCade for the first time ever, and I absolutely loved it. Everything about the 4 days (3 main festival days) could not have been more enjoyable... well, there was one thing, but I'll get to that.

![FractureIndieCade2016.jpg](/uploads/FractureIndieCade2016.jpg)

First of all, I would like to thank the hundreds of people who not only came out to IndieCade, but in a festival full of video games, said, "sure, I'll try this cyber futuristic board game." Secondly, I would like to thank [<NAME>](http://www.northeastern.edu/camd/gamedesign/people/celia-pearce/), for her game design skills and some helpful poking and prodding to actually submit to IndieCade.

**Hands-on collaborative prototyping**

The festival started off with a handful of tool building workshops, from starting a company and grant writing to making table-top games workshop. Almost feels like this festival knew what I needed. On day one I met some wonderful developers and designers including [<NAME>](https://twitter.com/gritfish), with whom I helped design a cooperative version of UNO (I'll lovingly call Deton-ocho, written Deton8, documentation is in the works). In the span of 15 -30 minutes, we had deconstructed a game and reconstructed it together, adding mechanics and balancing the game on the fly. Another wonderful reminder that hands-on, tactile table top games, are incredibly fun to prototype, an aspect of AutomaTiles I look forward to others experiencing. (Note: Fracture originated out of a session like this, where the original concept from Celia Pearce and Mechanics of Mike Lazer-Walker came together)

**Time flies when you're having fun**

With my good friend and talented game designer, [<NAME>](http://lazerwalker.com), by my side, we hit the ground running. The first day of the festival only allowed for \~2 hours of playing Fracture, but I ended up extending to 4 hours and packing up only when the staff kindly let us know we needed to leave. The events of the day nearly convinced me that I should buy a ticket for Nick to fly out and join us, I was having so much fun and time was flying. If this was going to be how each day was, I wasn't quite sure how I would sleep, but the answer to that is with a big smile on my face.

**The stuff of dreams**

Each day continued to build on the previous one, with one amazing player even exclaiming that he had dreamed about playing Fracture again the night before and coming back to see if he could reign champion (which he did).

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JajZLRV4laY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Some players approached the game out of the gates with heavy analysis and found the game to be long lasting as they each played defensively, preventing a win condition one move at a time.

> Image of people focussed while playing

Others worked collaboratively to achieve a Super Win, a rule invented once again by Celia Pearce, to encourage more cooperative play. The idea for this is that if in a single move, every tile can be put in a happy state, everyone wins, and the person who figured it out, extra wins :)

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6SYrYEp3CE8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Lastly I want to address two topics that were not as happy, but are important and meant a lot to me.

1\. I spoke about Fracture as a "competitive game towards diversity"... I would love to keep this conversation going, please share your thoughts on the matter (respectfully).

The point was brought up that it seems hypocritical to have a game mechanic that suggest segregating others to make yourself more diverse, and call it a game towards diversity. I agree that game mechanics are often the way in which we learn behaviors, and to have mechanics inconsistent with the theme or message of a game is misleading or possibly upsetting. I am curious to discuss this more, as I think the cooperative version of this game still shows promise, but I can also change the language around the game, as it really has become simply a strategic abstract game.

2\. A person playing a game at our table was acting in a way that made another player uncomfortable. I very seriously said that Move38 provides safe-spaces, and that behavior was not allowed, as it compromises someone else's safe-space. This person stopped their behavior, but I want everyone to know that this is a core value of our company and one we will always stand by. There are respectful ways of treating each other no matter how big the disagreement, and we hold our players to the same standard we hold ourselves.

All in all, the trip to Los Angeles, my hometown of 26 years was wonderful. The hour and half commute each way from the valley felt like nothing when every morning I was excited to show new people something that has been in the works for quite a while.

The community of people at IndieCade is what really made the trip for me. The fact that Fracture was a finalist, was flattering, and put me in company I felt lucky to be a part of. The awards ceremony put the entire diverse crowd inside of a single room and some truly meaningful works of passion won well deserved awards. In the words of [<NAME>](http://ramiismail.com/)

> A Dutch-Egyptian developer handed out the Grand Prize of a major games event to an Iranian-Canadian developer, for the creation of a game about the history of a Middle-Eastern country.  –  [source](http://ramiismail.com/2016/10/indiecade-awards-2016/)

And ultimately it feels great to be at an event where that happens.

Nick and I both decided that these kinds of events are definitely worth attending, so feel free to let us know some of your favorite game festivals that we should be at in the comments.
{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.04806240563663815, 'fraction_numerical': 0.011575239053850024, 'mean_word_length': 4.3514362657091565, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 21, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 24, 'https://': 6, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 6, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
{'dir': 'git-commits-cleaned', 'id': '362960', 'n_tokens_mistral': 3082, 'n_tokens_neox': 2873, 'n_words': 1944}