IndieCade was first game conference in which I participated in US. I chose to be a photography volunteer, because I wanted to spend my time looking around, observing how people playing and doing. Actually, I found several things which were interesting and different from what I saw in China. I want to share two of them here.
One thing I paid some attention to was that many children played very well, and some of them were about seven or eight years old. Since consoles had been forbidden in China for fourteen years, and games were widely treated as bad things for long (it’s better now but still not so good as in US), we can barely find children in game festivals. This is really a bad thing for us, which means we are losing the foundation of future game developers. I can still remember playing SFC with my dad when I was six, and this was a very important reason for me to dedicate into game industry. Seeing American children playing consoles expertly, thinking Chinese kids lost their chances to get in touch with great games, I felt worried about these.
Another thing I concerned was that American players were more patient and had willing to spend more time in one game. In Chinese games show, players usually stayed in one game for five minutes; if they could not get fun in such a short time, they’ll leave. This kind of habit drove Chinese developers emphasized in first five to twenty minutes of game experience, and you can barely see games with good emotion or with complicated narrative. But in here, US, I could see players were more patient. In fire station, I stood beside game Gemini’s desks and watched more than ten players playing this game. The pace of this game was relatively slow, and players might be wondering around in the dark for more then ten minutes. Seven of them insisted to the end of the game. In China, this number might be like three or four. It means that American players might be able to enjoy more on games which were more slower than Chinese players (at least for those who came to game shows).