Greetings captains and crew,
Now that PAXWest is in the rearview mirror, and we’re back in the development groove for a while now, it’s finally time to sit down and write a recap of our experiences at PAX.
We were really excited leading up to PAX, as it marked our return for the con for the first time in over a decade. The last time we were at PAXWest, Guns of Icarus: Online had just released. I remember sitting in a bar with Jesse Cox when we got the news that we had just won the Unity Awards. Call me nostalgic and sentimental, but Pax West would always have a special place in my heart.
Going to Pax West was a significant commitment for us. Hefty costs of the booth, travel, and lodging aside, we also lose quite a bit of time collectively. However, the feedback and insights we gained and the interaction with people who stopped by our booth were invaluable. PAXWest was also the first time we’ve ever demoed Stars of Icarus to the public, so it marked a significant milestone in development for us.
For the booth, because we had decided to be at PAXWest quite late in the process, we were only able to procure a 10x10 booth more on the periphery of the show floor. We were still able to have a corner booth at the last minute, which helped with visibility and traffic quite a bit. Traveling from New York, we had to streamline our setup and pack light. Over time, we had gotten these lightweight and small footprint con kiosks that were flexible enough to support both desktops and laptops for displays. We wanted to at least demo 3v3 gameplay, but we only had 4 of these kiosks, so we had to order a couple more pretty last minute. The upside is that, going into PAXEast and MAGFest, which we plan on showing, we would be well equipped. We also had to replace our big banner with a new Stars of Icarus graphic, and the turnaround ended up being pretty tight. We had cards printed with a serialized redemption code for people to redeem at the booth if they gave the game a try. We’re happy to report that the cards we brought pretty much ran out!
The kiosks, banners, and collateral we carried with us in our suitcases, which meant that we had no room to carry anything else. This in turn meant that we had to find a solution for PCs, networking gear, and displays that could either be delivered to us or acquired locally. For PCs and displays, we rented from Rentacomputer.com. For peripherals, Razer was incredibly able to sponsor us, which was absolutely amazing. Plus they were able to collect the gear on the show floor on the last day after the show floor closed. We could not have had as good of a set up as we did without Razer’s generosity, for which we are grateful.
Booth setup took quite a while, and we had to scramble at the last minute to purchase some networking gear. As it turned out, ethernet cables were in white hot demand. I managed to snatch up the last few remaining on the shelves anywhere in the Downtown Seattle area. We had to tweak our booth configurations a bit just to work with the mishmash of cables of varying lengths, but we made it work. While I was scrounging for networking gear, Alex, Matt, and Jen were busy setting up the booth, wrestling with the host of networking challenges that invariably arose with every con. Our online multiplayer behaved poorly when we took away the Internet - so poorly we couldn’t host matches at first. Some last-minute hacking was needed to get the booth’s server to work correctly. We try to have one or two of the technical members of the team (namely Matt and Alex) at the booth for these events, because there are issues like this they can diagnose and fix more quickly. And that's even more pronounced when bringing a game to the show floor for the first time! For the first day in particular, we always had one of the programmers present at the booth - just in case something further went wrong. So if you saw someone at the booth hunched over a laptop in the back, they were probably adjusting something or other for a smoother experience.
Teamwise, besides Jen, Alex, Matt, and I, we had 2 incredible volunteers. Tobias was local, which was invaluable for us in more ways than one. With 6 people, we were able to rotate, take shifts, and specialize at the booth, which made it way less stressful. This was certainly better than the 12 hour days with 2 people holding down a booth at PSX for instance.
The turnout at the booth was quite good despite our location. There was a constant stream of traffic throughout the long weekend, and we pretty much had people shooting at spaceships constantly. With a server and LAN setup, we were also able to make quite a few modifications to the game build on the fly. To open the curtain behind the scenes a little, show builds tend to be balanced a little different than the final game. We turn down the health of things, tune up the damage, and make sure people get to blow things up and see as much of the game, in as short a time as possible on the show floor. Nobody wants to spend all convention in tutorials.
We were really there to engage with people, and to learn. One thing that surprised us was how many people knew about and had played Guns of Icarus. Alex estimated that 50% of the people who stopped by mentioned Guns. The one thing we could have done better was to draw an immediate and direct association between Guns and Stars of Icarus. A lot of times, the start of a conversation at the booth went something like, “Stars of Icarus, that sounds like Guns of Icarus! Is this what you guys are working on? A sequel to Guns?” While that was a great segue and launch point into an intro for Stars, it usually took a bit for people to make the connection. For the next show, we would probably add some Guns signage, mention, or display on the booth banner adjacent to the Stars of Icarus logo.
We learned a ton just observing how people interacted with and played the game. Overall, piloting single-seat fighters felt relatively intuitive for people. For crewing, especially for those who played Guns of Icarus, people tended to pick up the game quickly. Captaining the larger ships was harder for people on the show floor. People had very limited time to engage with the game, and to grapple with the complexity of captaincy. We learned some lessons and had good ideas about how to streamline the piloting experience overall, and we will do a better job next con to display the controls on the kiosks so people could pick up the game themselves easier. Another takeaway was map selection for conventions. The map we decided to demo with was still a bit too large and too filled with cover. Because we demoed with less than the intended and designed full match experience, which was 5v5 at minimum, when people flew larger ships, they would at times circle around each other and not discover their opponents readily. This is something we aim to address for our next show.
Overall, the responses have been amazing. People loved the flexibility and asymmetry of team composition, to the point where we realized that the ability for people and teams to take multiple sizes and classes of ships into battle was a more powerful feature than we weighted in our game descriptions and pitches. People loved that crewing ships felt more hectic, with more things to do. The fighter controls had positive responses as well. Before the show, we had a bit of reservations about how Guns of Icarus players would perceive the art style transition from Steampunk to 80s-90s anime. To our pleasant surprise, people loved the art style. People were also really understanding and cognisant of our efforts and intent to try something new for a new game in a vastly different setting. We were grateful for everyone’s support.
For upcoming shows, we aim to be at MAGFest, Taipei Game Show, and PAX East in 2026. For PAXEast, we’re aiming to expand the booth footprint hopefully to 10x20. It’s more expensive, but we’ll be nearby and will save money on travels. It’ll be nice to have more space to showcase a full match for a change.
In the meantime, we’re hard at work to prepare for the upcoming alpha tests. Yes, we are in alpha now!! If you have a minute, go join our discord if you haven’t already! We’ll be posting announcements of alpha testing and show attendance there.
See everyone in a debris field in space,
Howard for Team Muse