There’s a nice industry event in Moscow that builds bridges between East and West - The White Nights Conference or #wnconf. And King went there with a booth, gold sponsorship and a set of cool initiatives - all donated to the talented indies of the region for good.
Look at this gorgeous booth space in central part of the expo area. It features screenshots from games #MadeWithDefold. We also had ads printed in the conference brochure and leaflets in the handbags - all featuring games crafted with Defold game engine. Finally we launched a set of sponsored posts on Facebook with same #MadeWithDefold idea.
This was all targeted at the indie crowd using Defold, at their games and activities so no huge focus on King or Defold. After all, Defold engine is as good as games #MadeWithDefold are. So we donated our marketing budgets to indies instead of displaying ads about our engine. We did it to nurture the industry, help indies be successful, make better games and well, market King and Defold brands. Or philosophies, if you will.
And we loved it! The Defold booth felt more like indie arena with rising stars showing their games and spreading a good word about us. It sure did attract attention of other indies to talk about Defold and industry experience. Then publishers and ad networks showed up to leverage the saturation of developers. Same for platforms and app outlets who are always hungry for new cool games.
Games!
We had awards ceremony for Defold Game Jam on the ball room as part of the official White Nights indie awards ceremony. You’ve seen these games already. Guys and gals also had a dedicated expo space on the show floor.
On the Defold indie booth we hosted:
- Smash Bash by Rising Wave
- Robo by Sneaky Box
- Bring Me Cakes by Sunday Team
- Avarange by Royal Troupe
- Pipler by Cosmic Rhino
- Space Invaders by Insality and Freeda Meteora
Retrospective
White Nights developer conference is Moscow was:
- 1207 attendees - 65% developers (20% of those are indies)
- 70 boothes on the expo area
Our activities:
- Defold booth acted more like an indie arena with 6 teams showing their Defold games.
- Defold game jam awards ceremony with three iPad Pro devices from King and lots of other prizes
- HTML5 panel with top RU social platforms and HTML5 savvy devs telling Defold is cool
- @Oleg_The_Evangelist’s talk about Defold and King
- Christine, King BD, talking Defold may be a lever for business opportunities with King
Immediate results
- Appodeal decided to try make a Lua library and become the first ad mediation platform for Defold
- Moscow Scream School is arranging a master class on Defold to benchmark the demand - Nov 24
- Indie community in St Petersburg has arranged a dedicated event for @Oleg_The_Evangelist to talk Defold - Nov 17
- Teams were on their own business, I am not the one to comment. But I’ve seen Bring Me Cakes and Pipler get an soft launch opportunity with a large social network.
- I guess talk to @AGulev @Deividas_Krunkauskas @Rytis @Yaroslav_Kravtsov @GerodruS @nicloay @Insality (did I fail to find someone else on the forum?) to know more.
