Agents,
Did you know that Blackout Protocol was announced at PAX West 2022? Well, we also have a new Closed Beta coming up and our desire to meet you in person didn’t change these last few months, so we also went to PAX East 2023!
To those of you who we met in person–a huge thank-you for standing in line for so long to play the game. And double thanks from the bottom of our hearts to those who not only came back but brought friends to play the game with them!
This time around, our setup was larger. 6 dedicated stations and 3 additional stations for the press as opposed to 3 dedicated stations and 0 press stations. But the line was very long this time around too, so the press stations were made available to everyone whenever the press wasn’t using them.
Although we had great success last time running a challenge event for PAX attendees to try and win our kickass mousepad, we wanted more players to walk away with goodies so 600 Blackout Protocol bags stuffed with a BP pin and coaster were given upon playing a session of 15 minutes and completing a super quick 5-question survey. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), our line got so long that we had to shorten each session to 10 minutes and exhausted the supply by day 3. Nevertheless, day 4 attendees happily lined up, played the game, and had fun, for which we were very grateful.
Why did we run the survey, you ask? Well, we wanted to capture at least a glimpse of what kind of players were drawn to our game at PAX.
And we learned a few things such as that the vast majority of the players play roguelike/roguelite games.
That a lot of the PAX players were really good at Blackout Protocol. (Much superior to my first few attempts, that’s for sure.)
That the look of the game and its art motivated people to stop by the booth.
Oh, and that we could do a little better job of telling people about the closed beta date.
We had plenty of our friends from the media come by to play the demo and talk to our Creative Director Dong Soo Oh and Production Director Jae Eun Park, and we were happy to see some familiar faces! We hope to see everyone in person again at our next con and in-game during Closed Beta. ;)
Despite the great fun and success we were having, we were all pretty much pooped and ready to go home by the final day. But that’s when it happened–the event that put the cherry on top of our already heavily iced cake–we won Best in Show award from Critrate for the house of Galabander. According to their categorization of gamers, Galabanders are gamers who enjoy multi-players and “thrive when playing with others,” so pretty much our target players! PAX attendees who took their 42-question survey at their booth voted us over Mario!
To say we were overjoyed and a little teary-eyed is not an exaggeration.
Watch the video capturing the moment we got the award and look at more behind-the-scenes photos on our IG account.
Well, that about wraps it up for PAX East 2023 and we are now counting down to CB2, which starts April 6th.
As fun as PAX was, we can’t wait to have even more players like you playing Blackout Protocol and give us feedback to help guide the game towards Early Access launch and beyond!
Onwards! …after a little break. We’re so tired.
See you next time,
ODS ThorThor
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