SpyParty at Evo 2012 pics!

I’m back from Evo, and finally mostly rested.  It was a lot of fun!  I had no idea what to expect and so I went in with no expectations, and that’s good, because it turned out to be quite different from previous playtests. The show floor was a small part of the overall event, and the main focus was obviously on the competition, so attendees were able to enjoy the Indie Showcase titles without the long lines that always happen at PAX. For SpyParty, this meant people could play for longer, come back more often, and explore more of the game’s depth. I had the same booth setup as PAX West 2011, with the three stations, and it worked out pretty well. People seemed to enjoy the game and the stations were almost always full, and as our voices gave out,1 we had attendees train other attendees, which I particularly like because it starts to get to some of my future goals for mentoring modes.

I have to admit, I was slightly worried we’d get beat up or something, but actually my first experience with the Fighting Game Community was really positive, and they really seemed to appreciate the depth of the game and what I’m going for.

I want to thank Tom and Tony Cannon, and Seth Killian for making this possible, it was a really great time.

Below are a ton of pics.

And, speaking of mentoring, here’s a video recorded by some hilarious Soul Calibur folks who became big fans and who played for hours on the last day, and then invited two more from their crew over and dropped them right into a game, even though I tried to make them practice first! Warning: there’s some mature language in the vid!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ut580Ecg9c

I did a few interviews at the show, so I’ll update this post when they show up.

I particularly like this first picture…zoom in until you see the wall of people down the hall.

  1. The show floor hours were 8am to 12am!!! Holy cow that’s exhausting…PAX hours are like 10am to 6pm! []

16 Comments

  1. LowTierSteve says:

    My favorite part of that video is “awww $%$ banana bread!!”. Haha. That’s the hypeness of the FGC at work. That kind of fun is exactly why I can’t wait to play this game. It looks like EVO was a blast!

    • checker says:

      My favorite part was “why y’all keep shooting the black people?!”, which was especially funny given that the guy talking and recording the video was black, and how amazingly racially diverse Evo was.  I hope to make SpyParty the most diverse game ever, in terms of gender, race, ability, age, orientation, and whatnot, so I expect a lot of discussion when I release stats on who gets picked and who gets shot.  :)

    • Keith says:

      My favorite part is when she was sniper and was going to shoot the guy but she couldn’t get the scope on him quickly. You get her reaction and struggle to pin him down, and you get the spectators chiming in, and then she gets a shot off. There’s that brief moment of “did she get him?” . And then YEAHHHHH!!!

    • Keith says:

      God my explaining skills need some work.

    • Cleetose says:

      Are you going to have one of the party guests be in a wheelchair?

    • checker says:

      Yep, one in a wheelchair (assuming I can get the pathfinding code working), one with a cane, etc!

  2. Aqua Snake says:

    http://cdn.spyparty.com/wp-content/gallery/evo12/dscn1539.jpg

    Haha! There’s me in the Nike shirt most likely losing a ton. :) That game was very fun, and I’m interested in play more of it when we can play the BETA! And the devs were pretty cool guys!

  3. Jobert says:

    This game has no players online the 10 times I’ve been online over the last month or so. Where do you go to play it?

    • checker says:

      I only show you having logged in twice, on May 26th and yesterday, and both times you missed somebody in the lobby by a few minutes. As it says in the banner at the top of the lobby page, you have to hang out sometimes due to the small player base. Also, there’s a thread in the beta forums that has a graph of the players in the lobby, and unfortunately both of your times are in the slowest period (after midnight PST). So, sorry you haven’t been able to find a game yet, but try logging in at a different time, or leaving the game running in the lobby in the background while you do other stuff, it uses very little CPU in the background and it’ll beep and flash the task bar when somebody else joins for exactly this reason! Also, hopefully this won’t be a problem for much longer as I get things scalable and invite more people in.

  4. Alberto Barrientos says:

    Hey dude, I was at Evo playing your game with Ramon, and Kayane. I am super stoked and looking forward to playing this game. I was wondering how long the wait for the beta is? I can’t wait to get my beta invite! Great work so far.

  5. Jack McNamee says:

    One of the most interesting things about Spy Party: The players interact directly once, and that ends the game. That’s really weird. I almost feel like it must be multi-player solitaire – but of course that’s wrong, because you’re always reacting against this invisible opponent. Such a strange competition.

  6. kmisterk says:

    I can’t remember which email address I used to sign up for the beta, is there a way to check?

    • checker says:

      Yeah, just sign up with the one you think is it, and it’ll tell you if it’s already signed up. If it’s not it, you’ll get a confirmation and just unsubscribe it, and then check the other one.

I have temporarily disabled blog comments due to spammers, come join us on the SpyParty Discord if you have questions or comments!