After having moved, I'm finally using my desktop again and I found this blog post I forgot to post in the desktop folder on my computer. It was the original version of the "delta h con is a mess" blog post that I wrote, before I edited it to make it focused on why delta h con was a disappointment instead of about how it made me feel.

delta h con made me depressed as hell

On Sunday, July 7th, I found myself in a panic. The laptop I had planned to use suddenly experienced a hardware failure. In fact, the problem turned out to be a faulty mainboard, a component in my laptop that is not easily replaceable (though certainly, it is wonderful that it's replaceable at all -- thanks, Framework!). This was a big problem, because I was going to use my laptop to show off my game at Delta H Con the following weekend. In fact, I was planning to driving out to Houston that Wednesday, so there wasn't any time for a replacement part to be shipped to me on time.

I was coworking with DemureSoft at the time, and @jennraye reminded me of the fact that I could just show off the game by putting it on a Steam Deck. It wasn't long until I managed to put together a working setup with a Steam Deck and an external monitor.

In fact, I made plans to make it possible to have more than one person playing at a time, so after borrowing some hardware from people I ended up with enough hardware to have two computers running the game at once. This is wonderful, I thought, as I realized I could mirror the external monitor onto the Steam Decks for me to look at. This meant I'd be able to watch people play the game from behind my table instead of awkwardly hovering about behind the player or twiddling my thumbs like I did at Staple.

All in all, the unfortunate situation was surprisingly beneficial to me. I had to put in a lot of work, driving around town to borrow hardware, and figuring out how to set up all the hardware, but I felt prepared and ready for the upcoming event. Unfortunately, I was not prepared for what would happen.

power

Even before it started, Delta H Con was a surprise (derogatory):

Delta H Con wants YOU to spotlight your Indie Game on our convention floor! Get the chance to interact with convention goers, exhibit your game, and so much more!

But when I tried applying for this free indie table, I found that the form did not work due to cross-site origin errors in Firefox and Chrome. I tried applying on different computers to no avail. Thankfully, the contact form worked and I sent them a message about this issue on April 10th. They never contacted me back.

It wasn't until June 24th that I suddenly received an email out of the blue saying that I've been accepted as a vendor at Delta H Con. For some reason, my company name had been spelled as "Exo Drifter" instead of "exodrifter" as it was on my application. Strange. But stranger still was the following phrase on the email:

If you need power, it is a $100 charge from the hotel. You can purchase this as a straight pass thru on our website

Wild! Free tables for indie developers, but there's no power. I didn't recall seeing this stipulation when I applied, but it was indeed mentioned on the website when I applied -- I had simply missed it. Remembering how buggy their site was, I didn't feel comfortable paying it online and I decided to borrow battery power from my friends instead.

weather

Hurricane Beryl passed through Houston just a few days before the convention and as a result many people in Houston were left without power. However, Delta H Con sent an email that Wednesday saying that the convention was still on, claiming that the hotel had been checking for storm damage since Monday and found none.

I came to find this claim dubious when I arrived at the convention, as an acquaintance had found themselves with a leaky ceiling above their table and my sister told me about another artist staying at the hotel who didn't have a working AC. In fact, the room that the artists and dealers were in was so humid that some people got water damage on their prints as they warped from the moisture. This humidity was not an issue at previous events even when it rained.

In any case, I think these problems are on the hotel rather than the convention organizers. Some of this may have happened because the hotel was also in the process of getting a new roof, but I don't know if that's related for sure or not.

open questions

Many things were not made clear before the event started, so when I was there I found myself asking the staff to clarify things.

One of the things I didn't know was what the hours were for the convention. It was pretty easy to find hours for the attendees, but I didn't know when the floor would be open to exhibitors. I didn't know when the room I was in would be open and when it would be locked up. I found a staff member who didn't really seem sure about the hours at all, making educated guesses to the hours despite literally having the key to the room, saying that it should be open one hour before the event started at 9 AM and that it would be locked at 9 PM, two hours after the event ends at 7 PM. However, I found out in the convention magazine that there was an event being held in the room after 7 PM and that the room I was in specifically was stated as being open until midnight!

I also didn't know if we were allowed to sell merchandise. Artists and dealers had their own rules and I knew that there was a convention-wide rule that food could not be sold. I knew that San Japan has a rule explicitly forbidding indie developers with free tables from selling and that 2D Con doesn't have any free tables, but it explicitly granted permission to indie developers to sell. Given that the tables at 2D Con were technically free, I wasn't sure what kind of rule the convention would have.

I had brought copies of Gender Dysphoria to sell, and I showed one of these copies to staff when I asked them if I could sell it. They all said that they didn't see why not, but when I mentioned what San Japan was doing they directed me to ask the head organizer of the event, Sarah. And where was Sarah, exactly, so I could ask her? Nobody seemed to know. I walked around asking staff at random until I found someone who did.

I shared the question I had with her, and I noticed that she was considering it when I remembered that I should probably share all of the relevant details. This was a mistake on my part because as soon as I mentioned San Japan's rule of not allowing sales for free indie game developers, she immediately decided that Delta H Con should have the same rule.

I was so stunned and disappointed by the lack of care and consideration that I accepted this without argument. I went back to tell the other indie game developer that sales would not be allowed, as they had also optimistically produced physical copies of their game to sell.

offline games

There are actually two gaming rooms at the event. There's the Electronic Games room and the Offline Games room. The Electronic Games room had arcade cabinets (including a rare F-Zero AX cab) and a bunch of consoles and computers set up for people to play. They also planned to hold gaming tournaments in that room. The Offline Games room, on the other hand was little more than a bunch of tables and a checkout counter where you could borrow tabletop games.

As it turns out, the indie game tables were all placed in the offline games room. Of the six tables that were supposed to appear, only three showed on Friday -- me, another indie video game developer named Ivan working on BioGun, and a indie tabletop designer named Caroline Brock who made Matchy Matchy and Feast of Olympians.

And I really need to take a moment here to explain that I love board games and I found the tabletop gaming selection to be really disappointing. It's not a joke when I say that out of the roughly 20 games they had for checkout, the best tabletop games they had available by my own measure were Chess, Catan, Scrabble. I don't even like these games very much, but I could certainly respect people wanting to play them. They're actually games compared to things like Battleships, Chutes and Ladders, and Sorry!, which are so close to decision-less voids, having little more than random chance and instructions. Why would anyone want to come here and play Chutes and Ladders?

There's something very special about the feeling you get when you work so hard for months on making something for people to play that is unique and interesting and personal -- only for people to show up and choose to Battleships, Sorry!, and Chutes and Ladders instead, without even exhibiting interest in having any amount of interaction with your table.

The floor on Friday was open from 10 AM to 7 PM for a total of nine hours. For nine hours, I sat bored at my table as I watched the occasional group come in to play, more often than not, Sorry! or Battleships. At one point, a group of three fully grown adults played Chutes and Ladders directly in front of my table for at least an hour.

To say that I felt utterly defeated is an understatement. I felt like an utter, abject failure. Why would I spend months trying to craft a meaningful experience for people... if people would rather play a game where you basically just roll dice and follow some instructions?

i fucked up the game

Of course, attendees aren't required to interact with me and I'm not owed their attention. In fact, it's understandable that most people who showed up would be interested in playing the tabletop games instead of doing anything else, because that's what the room was for. It was emotionally debilitating nonetheless. For the nine hours I spent on the floor, only three people decided to interact with my table. The first person started to play, before immediately refusing to upon realizing it has "computer stuff" in it and that they didn't feel like they were in the target demographic. The other two people played the game for a significant amount of time.

But, I found myself having to constantly explain how to play the game. I had been busy trying to improve the game by adding more puzzles as playtesters had suggested, but in doing so I had accidentally made the game quite difficult. It was so frustrating that for the two people that played the game, I couldn't even provide a good experience.

And these two people who played my game were only there because they had shown up for an event that was supposed to be held in that room but had been cancelled. The traffic I got was abysmal. In nine hours, I can get more people to learn about my game just streaming game development on Twitch (I stream most weekdays as exodrifter_). Without having to borrow hardware! Without leaving my home! Without having to drive from Austin to Houston!

going back home

Spending nine hours on the floor was exhausting for me emotionally. The poor traffic, the unprofessionalism and disorganization of the event, and the fact that people generally didn't seem interested in the indie game tables really wore me out.

Worse still, the trailer for BioGun was playing on loop with the volume on next to me the entire time the floor was open to attendees regardless of if the room was empty or not (and it was often empty). I'm happy for the developer and I don't have any hard feelings, but it wore me down more because it reminded me of a traumatic experience where I was stuck in the psych ward waiting room where the only thing to do was watch a short fish tank animation on loop for close to eight hours.

I felt pretty frayed getting back home. I don't want to get into it much, but I found myself getting into an argument with my parents who apparently thought that I hadn't given my decision enough consideration and tried to convince me to return to the convention on Saturday. They eventually relented and I drove myself back home alone that night.

I cried a lot on my way back. I invested so much energy and effort getting ready for the event despite all of the setbacks, but it didn't seem to matter. I started to feel the same kind of feeling I've felt many times throughout my life which is that no matter how hard I try, it doesn't seem to matter. I feel unsupported and set up to fail. I spent so much time working on no signal, to make something personal to me that people enjoy playing but is also emotional and can connect with people, but people will still want to play Chutes and Ladders for some reason and I have to be okay with that.

I'll get over it eventually, but for now I'm in a pretty bad place emotionally. I'll return to streaming and working on the game more as soon as I can, especially as I've got so much work cut out for me to improve the game and I've got more conventions coming up. I've gotten a replacement mainboard and I was able to restore my laptop to working condition. Things will get better.