PAX East 2015 Update

Summary
PAX was amazing! I’m just beginning to recover from this three-day high-energy event. I met so many great people, did three or four interviews with various news sites, and received pages and pages of great feedback about the game.

Player Reactions
Players were having a lot of fun shooting other ships and blowing things up in the outer-ship view, but my favorite part was the reactions on their faces when they saw that you can go inside the ship and control individual crew members. When they found out it was Massively Multiplayer on top of it they seemed awe-struck.

I got a lot of “This looks like Star Control meets FTL plus multiplayer!” Some people replaced Star Control with Escape Velocity (or a few other games I’ve never heard of), but no matter which game they quoted they were excited. Another comment I received was, “This is a little like EVE but really easy to get into,” which was reassuring to hear.

Some of the tweets during the show
Fairlight ‏(@FairlightEx) Support good games! Starship Empire looks impressive and is being made by literally one guy. Definitely my favorite so far. @BantamCityGames

Charlotte Armstrong (@scifichar) Really impressed with @BantamCityGames Starship Empire demo at #PAXEast2015. Check it out and help make it a reality

Chris Plath (@name404) Definitely check out @BantamCityGames Starship Empire. Twas very awesome and I must have it. #PAXEast

Some coverage on OnRPG and MMOHuts
http://www.onrpg.com/articles/editorial/pax-east-2015-day-1-recap-trion-worlds-dreadnought-indie-games-and-cosplay/5/

Great Player Feedback
Not all of the players’ comments were positive, but even the critical comments came with great suggestions on how to improve the game. The most frequent complaints were the Diablo-esque clicky-ness (is that a word?) in the outer-ship view and the expectation of RTS-style controls in the inner-ship view. Needless to say I’ll be fixing these things right away in addition to a number of other great suggestions.