Wow, it’s been a while since our last blog post in August 2023! We’ve been heads down prototyping Waves of Jeju, giving demos and gathering feedback to validate the story concepts and core interactions. There are so many exciting updates to share, so I’ll jump right in:
In December 2023, Waves of Jeju was featured at the Oak City Indie Games Showcase in Durham, NC. The event was held in the Triangle Interactive Arts Collective (TIAC) co-working space in the Research Triangle Park (RTP). We did a Twitch interview with Stream Raleigh, and received incredible feedback from our first public demo of the game. I want to give a big thanks to TIAC and Oak City Indie Games for organizing and hosting the event (and providing us a free table). I also want to give a shout out to Brittany Barnwell for taking some amazing photos (below right), as well as thanks to Malik Walker and Anna Schecterson who saved the day by assisting with demos when the line became overwhelming!
In March 2024, we had a very busy month of travel! Waves of Jeju was submitted to Just Play: A Game Jam for Justice earlier in the year, and was selected as one of 4 existing games to be featured at the Just Play SXSW Creative Industries Expo Booth! We had an amazing time gathering feedback at the event in Austin, TX, and are so thankful for the recognition and the support of the Just Play team and event staff who helped us run demos. Their hard work freed our team to network and make connections during the conference, and we had the great fortune to meet many Korean tech companies and game developers at the Korean Metaverse pavilion. Our favorite encounter was with the Devs United Games team from Seoul, who tried out our game and shared their input.
After we wrapped up SXSW, we didn’t have time to rest because we planned to attend GDC in San Francisco and had a demo scheduled at a game developer mixer event. We made so many amazing connections during GDC and the mixer event was a huge boost to help find playtesters and potential collaborators. The events confirmed for us that our game concept is something people are excited about, not just in our local area but across the US and Korea! As we raise funding for Waves of Jeju, we also plan to begin the process of forming a worker-owned cooperative at Old Hara Studios. We were so inspired seeing a workshop at GDC where Montreal-based KO_OP talked about their experience as a worker-owned indie game studio.
In May we had another huge month, when Waves of Jeju was recognized with Honorable Mention in the Unity for Humanity grant announcement. We are so grateful to be showcased along with the incredible winning games, as well as one other honorable mention. There were nearly 500 applicants and it is such an honor to have made it into the top 10. You can check out the full list of games selected in Unity’s official post! We give a big thanks to Unity for giving us such amazing exposure and support, and for funding so many indie games.
Later in May, Waves of Jeju was also showcased at the inaugural MeaningfulXR 2024 conference in Palo Alto, CA on Stanford’s campus. Our advisor Danny Pimentel from the University of Oregon ran the demos at the event and collected even more feedback for us to incoporate into the game to improve the experience. We give a huge thanks the MeaningfulXR organizers for creating this new opportunity to highlight creators working on social and environmental impact!
What’s Next
That’s not all, folks! The Waves of Jeju tour of the US continues this Summer, and the next stop is June 18th-20th in Long Beach, CA where we will be giving demos of the game at the University of Oregon expo booth at AWE. After that event, we will be attending the Games for Change Festival in New York City from June 27th-28th! We won’t have an official demo table, but Karen will be around the conference giving demos to anyone who is interested.
Our team is growing fast as we meet more like-minded creators who are passionate about sharing the incredible stories and culture of Korea and Jeju Island. Curry Du has supported with spatial design, demos and social media posts, while Yunji Johanning is serving as project manager, artist and community builder. We’ve also met some incredible new advisors with direct connections to the haenyeo on Jeju Island, and plan to collaborate heavily with them. Finally, we are starting to work with an indie game studio in Seoul to lead our character, environment and prop design and help ensure cultural authenticity. Stay tuned for updates as we progress!
To wrap things up, our team will be laser focused on gathering feedback on demos, improving our prototype and fundraising so we can build out the full version of the game. We are very excited about the progress we’ve made so far and the momentum we’ve built in the last few months, and can’t wait to see where the project goes!
To stay in the loop, follow us on Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok (@oldharastudios) as well as join our Discord community! If you have a Quest headset, you can try out the prototype here and share your anonymous feedback in this form. Feel free to share bug reports and feature requests directly in Discord!
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