i went to a furry convention the weekend of March 16-19th, 2023, to sell some merch and show my game to a very targeted audience! a badge was $70, and tables were $20/day in the artist alley. i went Friday and Saturday.
my big plan was lead magnets in the form of stickers. i gave stickers of various characters made from my character creation game to anyone who wishlisted on steam and/or gave me their email; steam’s 2-factor made it hard for people to log on easily enough on the spot, so i set up a little email collection Jotform on my old phone to keep things moving if they were having trouble.
Friday I got a spot in the middle, facing the middle thoroughfare. Saturday I got a spot next to my friend Kiiyame, facing the dealers den entrance. both days had similar levels of traffic.
getting in Saturday was way more chill. since I knew I had a spot already, I dropped my bags off first (the alley operators was kind enough to keep an eye on it for me) before parking, to save me from dragging my luggage over a block of concrete.
i didn’t have a good chance to let a whole lot of people actually play, there was not quite enough room for keyboard and mouse. i only had 4 ft of allotted space! esp on satuday when my table neighbor stayed, instead of Friday, when my neighbor left 10 minutes in and I spread out just a little, haha. but most of the people who did get to play were very excited about it, so that was nice 😀 one person was even a little upset that i set a timer on them to keep things moving because they really wanted to spend more time on creating something. sorry buddy D:
i got a pretty hoarse voice from yelling to be heard through both the crowds and my respirator, so Saturday i hooked up my old phone to a Bluetooth speaker with a loudspeaker app and earbuds mic to make a voice amplifier. it worked decent: definitely helped save me from yelling and getting more hoarse. but there was a bit of a delay (which was very distracting). and I couldn’t turn it up loud enough for some people to hear without causing a feedback loop, despite trying to stuff fabric in front of the mic and placing the speakers as far as i could away. i went ahead and ordered an actual voice amplifier and tiny mic to have on hand whenever i need to do something like this again. slowly turning into a cyborg, lol.
in regards to merch preparation, i ended up cutting out about 100 sticker sheets of around 18 different designs. i Thought this would be Plenty, but the display strat of laying the sticker stacks on the table for people to pick up to choose them was too powerful i guess! people were so hungry for sticker sets i had, i ran out of 3 designs and was low on 4 more, but i had used all the laminate i had on the initial stock. despite being really tired after teardown that night, i went ahead and swung by an office store to get more laminate and was able to churn out 25 more sheets or so, which was worth it cuz i sold out of about 3 or 4 designs again on Saturday.
i used a jackery 550 watt hour battery to run my monitor and laptop and charge my phone if needed. it lasted from 11 to 19 or about 8 hours each day, as i was able to charge it the night in between to 100%.
here’s all the creatures people made!!! some real good ones hehe
numbers all in, I got 52 wishlists and 40 people’s emails! I emailed everyone a week or so after once everyone recovered from the convention,and didn’t get many more wishlists at all. a relatively small number for the hours spent maybe? but since my attention was split between the game and selling stuff, i’m really pleased with the results! plus it was super nice to see everyone’s reactions to it. :3
