Posts tagged with “fans”

We just got back from PAX, and the response was absolutely incredible. We got a mention on Penny Arcade, we were interviewed by Gamespot, we got a ton of press, and my panel on indie games went amazingly well. We couldn’t have asked for a better show.

However I need to take a step back and say that ALL of that pales in comparison to getting to spend three days on the showroom floor with real gamers playing Slam Bolt Scrappers for the first time. The PAX community is unbelievable; you guys came and literally attacked our game, and watching the gigantic smile on your face when you built up that 4×4 mega death laser of doom was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. We saw parents and their young kids teaming up with young and old couples eager to take on giant robots and flying chicken riders, and I couldn’t even keep up with all the amazing feedback we were getting. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; PAX is my favorite show because of the fans.

So THANK YOU, everyone who came to good ol’ booth 3834 and played SBS this past weekend. If you’re here for the first time (and who am I kidding? You probably are) be sure to check back over the next few days, we’ll have daily posts with pictures from the show, video and art from the game, and of course slides from the talk I gave with Dylan, Robin, Andy, and Nathan. If you can’t wait and want to see pictures NOW then I highly recommend checking us out on the facebooks and the twitters, where a lot of this stuff is up already.

Man, I miss Seattle already! Can’t wait to see you in 6 months on our turf!

Here they are! Pictures of our new found fans playing Slam Bolt Scrappers for the first time. There are a TON of pictures, so click on the More button and go through them all to see if you can find yourself! Also be sure to post snarky comments for us, we want to know what you think!

Apparently I took way too many drugs at the conference, because that looks like a chicken.

And Ezio certainly can’t stay away from our game either.

Follow the “More” link to see the rest of these awesome pics!

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OK. Honestly? We’re freaking out a little bit. Stephen Totilo, deputy editor and all around awesome guy, just wrote this review of Slam Bolt Scrappers in Kotaku. It’s one of the biggest video game news websites out there, perhaps you’ve heard of it?

Thanks for the love! To all of our fans, thanks for the AMAZING support over the past three days at PAX East, you made the conference really amazing. We’re going to start a forum and mailing list soon, stay tuned!

Soon to come: Pictures of some of the awesome PAX types playing our game on the expo floor.

Last weekend I took part in the Heavy Metal: Amped on Wind Power challenge at the Boston Museum of Science. It’s an incredible one day engineering challenge in which high schoolers from all across the US meet up, are randomly broken into teams, and have to rapidly design, prototype, test, and build a huge mechanical structure to lift a giant metal trash can three stories into the air using nothing but wind power. The competition was a ton of fun, and I was assigned as a mentor to Team Steel, the most hard core group at the event. As such I gave them guidance and advice for what to do, but the team actually came up with and implemented the awesome device you see above. And it’s a good thing too, since they had much better ideas than I would have ever had.

We had few materials (mostly cardboard, duct tape, and pvc piping), and our only power source were two giant fans blowing hurricane gusts. After a lot of discussion and failed designs the team settled on the waterwheel device you see above. The cups on the bottom would catch the wind, spinning the whole device around an axle made out of two cardboard tubes coated with torn up trash bags to decrease friction. As it spun it would wind up a rope which was attached to the trash can through a pulley, hoisting it to the ceiling.

So how’d we do? Pretty damn well! We raised the trash can the full 27.6 feet in only 83 seconds earning us 5th place out of 32 teams. Only 11 teams raised the can the entire distance, so it was quite an accomplishment (the winning team shattered the previous record, finishing in 29 seconds. Wow!). The most impressive part in my mind though was how the team iterated on design after testing, and how quickly they settled on an idea to try instead of debating endlessly. Hopefully some of these super talented kids will wind up getting interested in game development!