Mission: Exhibition

Expos and conventions are a big part of pop culture and a growing part of the culture surrounding the videogaming community and gamers as a whole. The stereotype of gamers as a solitary figure sitting in front of their PC or console in a dimly-lit environment, has really moved away from reality. Events like Supanova, OzComicCons (and their spiritual parents, the gigantic Comic Cons in the US), and of course PAX have shown that gamers, geeks and nerds are nothing if not social creatures. Albeit they are more interested in coming together in support of games and pop culture than putting on their football team’s colours and watching a match.

Conventions and expos have gone from being small events with a few hundred people to often being gigantic affairs with tens of thousands of people heading to a location for a few days. You will see everyone from people who will embody every classic nerd stereotype, to brightly-coloured cosplayers* sporting spectacular costumes of their favourite game or film characters, to geek parents raising another generation around them (who are often scampering around in Wonder Woman or Spiderman costumers).

This is not a backyard or underground scene anymore. This is huge business with hundreds of thousands of dollars spent at events. 

It is also the epicentre of a community and provides companies who market to various fandoms with a concentrated market opportunity where the density of people who are likely potential customers is very high. But it is that- a community, that if you want to generate custom for your business, you have to look after, respect and feed.

This community is also filled with highly sceptical people born from Gen X and beyond. They grew up in a world where everyone is marketing to them. Often they will know and understand that the owners of their favourite fandoms are in the business of marketing directly to them for financial gain. They have no illusions around the fact that purchasing their prop swords or box of collectible card game expansion packs is generating revenue for businesses, it is part of the landscape and to be expected.

The worst crime a producer of fandom product can commit is to make their customers feel exploited. The quality of products for sale has to be good, it has to satisfy the needs of that particular customer and they have to feel valued. I have had no small exposure to this world myself and as a consumer of my own fandom interests, I really dislike it when I feel like I have been coerced into paying for something I don’t feel was good value. I am happy to pay for quality, but feeling like I have been ripped off for the sake of completing a collection (for example) is not a good emotional response for me to carry.

This is why when Stirfire Studios goes to a convention or expo, we want each one of our (potential) audience who choose to spend time with us out of their day on a bustling expo floor to feel valued. We want them to talk with their friends about that game Symphony of the Machine, or what else we are exhibiting at the time. We want them to talk about how they got to personally engage with the developers and ask questions. We want them to remember they got the chance to talk to us when they see our games on a YouTube stream or hear someone talking about one of our games on a podcast.

We are born of our community and we exist to service our community. As a studio we tend to focus on making our products beautiful and that for the time you spend playing there is nothing wasted- gameplay is fun and engaging for every minute and there is nothing boring or overly repetitive.

We know that each time we make a game, we touch new customers but we want to make sure that even when we make products for a different platform or of a different genre, that anyone who plays through the games knows that it’s us and that the feel is a signature style to our studio. This is also to reassure our existing customers that although we grow, evolve and change all the time, that if they play a Stirfire game that they know they are getting something they should recognise and have a welcome familiarity with.

We go to expos to show off our latest works to the vendors, YouTubers/streamers and content creators and the gaming public. We do it to keep ourselves grounded and it is always great to talk to people who have played previous games and to get their feedback on what we are working on at the moment. We do it because we are part of this community and will always be as long as we are in this business.

Photos above from PAX AUS 2016.

*Cosplayers: A portmanteau of "Costume Player". Cosplayers are hobbyists who can invest innumerable hours and serious cash in their hobby of portraying their favourite characters in costume form.