Business
It's all very well making a great game, however without some commercial know-how and a sensible business model then you won't get very far in today's hugely competitive games industry. Our Business track brings together some of the smartest brains in games to share real-life case studies, practical advice, and best-practise tips so you can run a truly successful business as well as make great games. Also covers the challenges of game production, funding and marketing.
Business sessions
The Challenges of Attracting and Retaining a Paying Audience
All games need paying players to grow. Finding them is only the start of the challenge. This session will cover methods for exploring the right product-market fit for your games, the strengths and weaknesses of different UA channels, and the importance of optimising your campaigns and games for both paying and free players. Relevant metrics and case studies will be included.
Takeaway
- Learn from experiences organising production and business for Gaming-as-a-Service.
- Be inspired by trends in organisation and leadership to organise your teams for the future rather than the past.
- Get best practices around building culture, managing distributed teams, and tools tips and tricks.
Life in the Fastlane – Taking Creative Risks in Game Design
After launching several successful build-and-battle games, Space Ape set its sights on making the next genre defining hit game on mobile. The team decided it was time to break away from what was safe and inject a dose of innovation and adrenaline into every aspect of its latest release, Fastlane: Road to Revenge. From taking creative risks with game design, to implementing a first-of-its-kind influencer campaign that drove hundreds of thousands of installs and creating a holistic new approach to ad monetization and UA that has tripled revenue and DAU, it’s safe to say that the developer’s innovations have found success and helped them push the boundaries of game design. In this talk, Space Ape’s COO Simon Hade will pull back the curtains on the entire development process, breaking down key learnings from this new approach and demonstrating how they will have a lasting impact on the company’s strategies moving forward.
Come for the Game, Stay for the Community: How Empowered Players Become Invested Players
Through 17 years of operating one of the world’s largest free to play MMORPGs, Jagex has gained first-hand experience of how a focus on elevating the importance of player engagement and empowerment can drive an increase in loyalty and retention – RuneScape’s average active player lifetime is over seven years. Jagex’s CEO, Phil Mansell, will discuss how to nurture player engagement to drive player investment and how to bond a community of players through shared experiences for long-term retention.
From the winners of the Community Management Award at the MCV Awards 2018, discover how to cultivate fandom within a gaming community, how to stoke its passion, and the essential ingredients, both inside and outside of the game experience, that contributes to player loyalty.
Takeaway
- How to transform a live game service into a living game.
- How to support and encourage your most enthusiastic fans.
- How a deeper emotional connection between game makers and players delivers more advocates.
- How to scale community engagement and empowerment, no matter what size player base.
Team Organisation, Culture, Leadership and Tools in an Area of Games-as-a-Service
In this live fireside chat, three production veterans will share experiences and ideas around how Games-as-a-Service affects team organisation, leadership, culture, and tools. The panel will address challenges of distributed development, scaling large productions, and new challenges brought by developing for VR/AR.
Takeaway
- Learn from experiences organising production and business for Gaming-as-a-Service.
- Be inspired by trends in organisation and leadership to organise your teams for the future rather than the past.
- Get best practices around building culture, managing distributed teams, and tools tips and tricks.
Five Stars – The Best Video Games of 2018 (so far)
2017 was a bad year for the world but a great year for video games. So how does 2018 compare, so far? How does what we’ve been playing from Jan to June reflect the current state of the video games industry? And is it just us, or have there been even more reboots/remakes/remasters than usual these past few months?
Join Jordan Erica Webber for an incredibly subjective take on what she considers the best five games of 2018 so far, and how she thinks (or hopes) they reflect the direction in which video games are headed. Place your bets now, so you can enjoy the smug satisfaction of having already guessed half the games on her list, or the pleasant surprise of learning about something new.
Keeping and Re-engaging Players (long) After Your Game is Out
Fractured Space went into Steam Early Access in November 2014 and yet, without spending any significant marketing money, it has been playable 24/7 ever since and has a vibrant community of players and a loyal core following. This talk will be about what Edge Case Games has done across these years which has made this possible. James will also talk about what the future plans are to not only continue, but to grow the player base, and what he has learned from recent trends in this space.
Takeaway
Listeners should be able to takeaway actionable ideas that they can apply to their game and communities, for live games and also upcoming titles.
In Plain English: How to Create and Scale Your Mobile Free-to-Play Game
David went from years of running console studios to building and then selling a mobile free-to-play company. Now part of the mighty MAG Interactive, he's gone from knowing next-to-nothing about mobile F2P games to hundreds of millions of installs in the space four years. David gives an overview what he's learned in a way that anyone can understand and talks about best practice in current and future games.
Cryptocurrency in Gaming: Today and Tomorrow
Fig helped make equity-based crowdfunding successful and turned traditional games publishing on its head. Now they are helping developers understand the value of cryptocurrency in gaming. Join Alex Amsel, Head of Blockchain Development at Fig, for this informative session, which will begin with a primer on blockchain technology, then dive into cryptocurrency and the birth of Bitcoin. Amsel will show developers the importance of Ether, smart contracts, and ICOs, and provide some use cases for blockchain in games. He'll wrap the session by taking a look ahead and offering some opinions on the future of cryptocurrency and its use in the games industry. Anyone curious about blockchain and cryptocurrency for their next game project will want to attend this session.
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Romero Games
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Twitch
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Barry Meade
Fireproof Games
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