Our Experience at Develop:Brighton 2024

We went as exhibitors to Develop:Brighton for the first time in July 2024, hosted at the Double Tree Hilton Metropole hotel. For those unfamiliar, Develop is a conference and expo event for game developers. It gives exhibitors and speakers an opportunity to share new technologies and ideas with the wider game developer community. And we were there too, shouting, "Multiplayer! Come get your multiplayer! While it's hot!"

Getting to the Event

The Double Tree hotel is directly on the Brighton seafront, making it hard to miss. Since most of us were travelling from London, we took the Gatwick Express train from London Victoria, which was ideal for a quick journey and reliable return trips. If you are planning on going to Develop next year and are coming in from abroad, we would highly recommend coming into Gatwick Airport for a direct train to Brighton. Or there's also a slightly slower coach from Heathrow, which takes you right to the seafront next to Brighton Pier.

Arrival

Like many conventions and exhibitions, a default stand at Develop comes with a table, a power outlet, and a couple of chairs. They also offer extras like monitors and display stands at a cost. As always, it's cheaper to bring your own television and stand, but remember that whatever you bring you have to carry on the train/coach. We had all sorts of shenanigans carrying our TV through the streets of Brighton.

The event ran from Tuesday to Thursday. However, the expo hall was only open the final two days, so we used Tuesday as a chance to get set up. Of course that didn't prevent us from being there at 9:30 on Wednesday morning, still trying to assemble our display stand half an hour after the hall opened. I suppose this is the world we live in, where it takes longer to set up a TV stand than it does to create the foundations of a functioning MMO game.

When we arrived we were given lanyards to wear. These handy little pieces of card were far more useful than they would appear. Since everyone at the conference is provided with one and each of them has a name and their company/association, it was great for quickly establishing who you were talking to. They also acted as pseudo-business cards, as a quick picture of the lanyard made it very easy to keep a record of people you met.

Meeting everyone

We saw a lot of people. Despite being a relatively small expo hall, the spread of the visitors across the various conference rooms meant there were far more people there than it would seem at first glance. The warren structure of the hotel had meant that the expo hall wasn't completely heaving with hustle and bustle, but it still provided a constant stream of new people to talk to.

We met game developers from all walks of gaming: professional designers, programmers, animators, digital artists, and university students. As a game developer conference as opposed to a gaming convention, everyone treated each other with the respect of peers as opposed to players - considering not just what you had made, but how you had made it. There was a certain appreciation of the effort behind what was on display.

Success on a Indie Stall

We brought a lot of kit to spice up our stall space. Some of it was useful, some of it less so. Here's a breakdown of the different equipment we brought and in particular how it might be useful on a stall promoting an indie MMO.

Tablecloth, stickers, business cards, and pamphlets

Our table had a lot of stuff on it, which worked really well for us. For an indie game stall you would want to take most of this off the table in favour of having a demo of your game as the focus. That said, a few stickers of fun characters and cards with your website on it will go a long way on any stall.

Cutouts, foam banners, and roller banners

We had cutouts of our favourite little space bloke across the walls of our booth. Although he did not give any explanation of who we are or what we do here at Planetary Processing, he really brought the 'space' together.

The banners were a great way of conveying that important information about us and what we do. A roller banner is likely the biggest piece of promotional media you will have on any stand and I cannot stress enough how effective they can be. They are easy to read, easy to transport (if a little heavy), and great for giving people an at-a-glance look at what your game is about. Our little foam banners were also fine, but frankly dwarfed by the majesty of the roller banner.

Television and stand

For most stalls, some sort of digital display is important. For an indie game stall, a display is essential, because you should have a game demo running on it. Then ideally whenever it's is not in use, it can be used for promotional videos. As a software platform, we just used ours for a promotional video. Second only to the roller banner, a good promo video is the highlight of an engaging stand. The only reason it makes a close second to the roller banner, is because it is dynamic and not every frame of your video is going to convey all the information about your game perfectly. So unless someone decides to watch it all the way through, they might miss the key bit of gameplay which would have otherwise swayed them.

Lanyards

Not something we brought ourselves but definitely something worth highlighting as a useful tool both on the stand and while walking around the Develop expo.

A Youtuber

Also not something we brought with us but something worth highlighting from our experience specifically. We met up with Marnix from BiteMe Games, who was there in his role as an indie game content creator as well as a game developer. We did an interview with him on the second day of the expo, as he was covering the event in a Youtube miniseries on the BiteMe Games channel. Although he was not a fixture of our stand, I want to stress the importance of his role in our event. The fundamental benefit of an event like this is being able to meet people. As a studio based in Belgium, it is unlikely that we would have met anyone from the BiteMe Games team face to face, if not for us both going to Develop:Brighton. Expos and conferences breed an atmosphere of communication and collaboration, which is essential for an indie's success.

Behind the Scenes Blunders

Of course this was our first time at Develop:Brighton, so although we were well stocked with kit and camaraderie, there were a few things we missed. Two notable examples came from us being too close to the software to notice some glaring issues with our stand.

Firstly our banners were distinctly lacking in the words 'MMO' and 'multiplayer'. For those of you even remotely familiar with Planetary Processing - you know, that hosting platform we run for indie developers trying to make large scale multiplayer games - you can see why this was a problem. Thankfully this was not a major issue since most of the people who came to our stand were friendly and curious to know what exactly it was we did. Although it seems silly, if you are about to showcase your indie MMO game, it is worth double checking that your banners say massive, multiplayer, or MMO on them in as any places as possible.

The second issue was far more subtle, but compounded by our missing buzzwords. One of our foam banners used our tagline "Making Virtual Worlds a Reality" as general encouragement that our platform allows you to make the large game worlds of your dreams. Unfortunately the way the text lined up on the sign, put 'Virtual' above 'Reality', which at a glance read 'Making Worlds' and 'Virtual Reality'. We only realised this after a significant number of people had come up to us, asking about VR. I think it's very unlikely any of you running an indie multiplayer game stall will unintentionally spell out 'virtual reality', but sometimes lightning strikes twice. So I suppose the take-away is always try and get a fresh pair of eyes to check your promotional material before you display it publicly. Fortunately we support VR multiplayer, so crisis averted.

Challenges of Exhibiting an Indie MMO

Although we were at Develop:Brighton to showcase Planetary Processing, it made us consider what issues might befall someone trying to exhibit their indie multiplayer game. Being almost a new genre in itself, 'indie MMO' risks more pitfalls at these sorts of events than a normal single player indie title or even a small-scale indie multiplayer game. So we put together some advise to consider:

Conclusion

That about sums up our experience of Develop:Brighton and some lessons we learnt from the event. Hopefully some of the success we had and mistakes we made will have encouraged you to check out Develop:Brighton, or helped you plan around any potential pitfalls at your next expo.