Well, the first convention for the New Year has come and gone, and if it’s any indication of how well HSD will do this year, I think it’s going to be a knock out success. The HSD demo table was consistently packed with people at every time slot. While most events were cancelled due to lack of turn out, our HSD tables often had twice the number of players than seats. And from what I could tell, it seemed like everyone was really enjoying the game and the opportunity to beat the developer at his own game.
The demographics for the events were also very mixed, with a lot of female gamers and casual players. This is what really excited me, because that’s the audience I was trying to get when I designed HSD. As an example, a single table would include a diverse group such as an engineer, a gamer father and his teen-aged daughter and a married couple … with everyone having fun and getting involved in the banter and trash talking. The game was also very successful with high school and junior high school students. People often told me that the game should be targetted at this audience, but I was always a little afraid of the humor being lost on players who actually have to live the drama in their real lives. But all the girls seemed to have a blast with the game and were certainly savvy enough to understand the humor. I especially want to thank all the women that came to the demo tables to play the game with their friends and daughters. It’s nice to see that at least there’s one game out there where they don’t have to feel like gamer-widows. (more…)