with a bit of delay, i now have my tokyo game dungeon 3 report. good work to everyone who attended.

report

i showed a gameboy game at tokyo game dungeon.

tokyo game dungeon allows merch sales, so i prepped stuff for this opportunity. (other game events i've been to have various merch rules or don't allow sales at all, so this is nice of tokyo game dungeon!)

thank you to everyone who played my game demo & bought merch!

also, tokyo game dungeon does this every time, but i was happy to see my own trailer on the big projector!

things i did well

• merch sales!

  • when i exhibited at dejige haku last year, people were disappointed when i didn't have merch, so since then i've made sure to bring something at least. i had zines, can badges, & game dl keys, & i sold more than i expected so i more than covered the fees for attending! i'm happy a lot of people came by & picked up the merch.*

• split free stuff & paid stuff more obviously

  • last time i had my free goodies right by the paid stuff so it was confusing & some people thought some of the paid stuff was free, but this time i separated the areas so it was fine.

• brought a mini monitor

  • i wanted to be able to see how people were playing the demo so i set up a mini monitor to view from my side of the table

• added a pop-up message to say photos were ok

  • i saw other people doing this so i did it too, & lots of people took photos! i laminated the paper so i can reuse it for next time.

• made my poster & tablecloth prettier

  • i feel like having a colourful table is more eyecatching! i just printed the poster at 7-11 so it's cheap but it works. i printed it at a3 size (full colour 80 yen) then used the poster copy function (it prints 4 a3 papers to put together to become an a1 poster, so full colour 80 yen x 4 for 320 yen). it's a bit annoying to tape it together & obviously doesn't look as good as if you did it with a proper printing company, but you can do it at the convenience store & only costs 400 yen! it's good for if you haven't decided on the poster design until the day before the event (like me...)

things i want to improve

• prices hard to see

  • since i had some merch that was the same price i figured i could just use one price stand for it, but then people thought it was 2 for the price rather than 1 for the price... for next time i'll make sure to write 1 for xxx yen to make it clear.

• not many people actually used the non-cash payment method

  • i signed up for square to try using it at tokyo game dungeon, but in the end only 2 people used it. most people just brought cash, so maybe i need to make it more clear non-cash is an option if i want people to use it... maybe it'll change in the future, but at this point in time i haven't actually sold enough with the square reader to make up for the cost of getting it lol

next event: zine festival

the next event i'm attending is the zine festival on saturday. (in two days! i'm not done prepping!)

as you can tell from the name, this event is for zines & not games. it's the first time i've exhibited at an event like this so i'm a bit nervous.

it'll be at urawa parco. maybe a department store like parco will work better with non-cash payment? let's see!）

it's on august 19 from 10 am to 7 pm, so i hope if you are in saitama that you'll come by!