Steam Next Fest is a digital event that happens on Steam every few months, where the focus is on upcoming games that have demos. I participated in this event with no signal and although I didn't have any particular expectations, I wanted to look at how this event went for me compared to the others I went to so far.
I do know that Next Fest was run a bit differently this year. Standalone demo pages were added, live streams were no longer a focus of the event, and more focus was put on showing games in the most random way possible at the beginning of the event in order to gather data on how to recommend the game later that week. Steam, in general, seems to be trying its best to make Next Fest into a meritocracy as much as it can.
plays
The plays during Next Fest over each day looked like this:
| Tu | We | Th | Fr | Sa | Su | Mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 66 | 63 | 52 | 59 | 81 | 56 | 57 |
no signal also got 870 wishlists over the course of the event and 147 of those wishlists came from people who also played the game during Next Fest. no signal now has 1,276 wishlists.
Compared to other events:
- STAPLE! Austin, 19 plays
- Delta H Con, 3 plays
- 2D Con, 39 plays
- San Japan, 44 plays
- Steam Next Fest, 434 plays
Steam is literally the largest digital games platform on the internet and it is not limited by the amount of hardware I can acquire and set up on a single table, so it makes sense that I had more plays come from Steam than any other event I attended in person.
It seems like a single day at Next Fest is 2-3 times as busy as an entire in-person convention in addition to being pretty much completely free to participate in. However, I imagine conventions would be more comparable if I had a demo that didn't take so long to play and with much more legible gameplay, as that would let me have more people interested and able to play the games at events.
conclusion
Next Fest isn't an event I normally participate in, but quite a few other game developer friends had their game in the event as well and I was able to check them out while the event was on. Here's a few of the ones I liked:
- Supurr Cat Cafe: Sandwich Rush by 2NerdyNerds
- Block Shop by Foolbox
Next Fest might be over, but it's always a great time to check out something new! I'm sure they would appreciate you taking a look as well.
If you played my game during Next Fest, thank you so much for playing. I've collected a lot of feedback and I'm back at work to try and finish the game before the end of the year (though a timely release seems dubious at the moment). I hope y'all can enjoy the game soon!