Posts Tagged ‘game services’

LA Games Conference features stellar lineup, April 28-29

Monday, April 27th, 2009

Kicking off tomorrow, the LA Games Conference features an outstanding collection of speakers and panelists from across today’s gaming landscape.  The conference is slated to have over 250 senior decision makers from games, media, entertainment and tech companies all under one roof.

lagc_logo_2009Held at the historic Roosevelt Hotel, in Los Angeles, California, this year’s conference features a number of presentations and talks by a number of industry leaders.  Featured keynote speakers include:

Nolan Bushnell – founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, CEO of uWink and Chairman, NeoEdge.

We’ve previously highlighted Bushnell’s innovative concept and use of microtransactions in the traditional ‘diner’ setting.  Bushnell is expected to talk about his thoughts on game consoles like the Nintendo wii and the new and emerging landscape of gaming (presumably with a heavy focus on microtransactions).

“Distribution of Games and Digital Media – A Glimpse of the Future”

Mike Yuen – Senior Director, Game Services, Qualcomm

Yuen is expected to give his thoughts on what drives the move towards digitally distributed content.  He’ll also be discussing Qualcomm’s investment in the new wireless 3G game console in developing countries, called Zeebo.  This new console targets middle class gamers in emerging markets including Brazil, Russia, India and China.  This console plays only downloadable games, combating the piracy of disc based games.

“Casual is the New Black – If You Want to Avoid the Red”

David Roberts, CEO, PopCap Games

Quickly becoming one of my personal favorite gaming destinations, PopCap Games’ CEO David Roberts plans on discussing the future where innovations in casual games help create the environment for tomorrow’s hardcore game experiences.  Roberts will lay out the PopCap vision of bringing games to the other 80% of the market that even the broadest appealing casual games have yet to reach.

“Finding Money in Games”

Mitch Lasky, General Partner, Benchmark Capital

Given the current economic situation, Lasky’s talk on the latest investment trends and opportunities in games and digital media, might just be the one not to miss.  A 20+ mobile gaming, new media, and interactive entertainment business veteran, Lasky has served as EVP of Mobile and Online at EA before joining Benchmark Capital.

Other top panelists and Moderators include:

John Kavanagh, SVP, Interactive / Head of Games, Paramount Pictures

Gareth Davis, Platform Manager, Facebook

Spencer Hunt, VP, Game Production & Digital Development, Sony Pictures TV Int’l

Kuk Yi, Managing Director, Best Buy Capital

Bill Young, Western Region Sales Director, Electronic Arts

Jason Oberfest, SVP of Business Development, MySpace

Robert Norton, Managing Director, North America, King.com

Jana Friedman, SVP of Worldwide Advertising Sales, Double Fusion

David Reitman, VP, Content & Ent. Practice, Switch and Data

Kate Connally, Vice President, AddictingGames/MTV Networks

Bill Kispert, VP, Interactive, NBC Interactive

Jesse Redniss, Vice President, USA Network Digital

Ned Sherman, CEO and Publisher, Digital Media Wire

Eric Goldberg, Managing Director, Crossover Technologies

Nick Williams, Director, Media &, Entertainment Insights, OTX Research

Jay Baage, VP of Content, Digital Media Wire

Anu Shukla, Founder and CEO, Offerpal Media

Scott Scherer, VP of Product Management, Hands-on Mobile

Michael Rubinelli, SVP of Game Development, Genius Products

George Kurtyka, 3P Account Manager, Nokia

Nash Parker, Director, Emerging Technology & Media, Alcatel-Lucent

Braden Moulton, Senior Manager, Partner Development, Massive (Microsoft)

Nichole Goodyear, CEO & Co-Founder, Brickfish

Michael Chang, CEO & Co-Founder, Greystripe

Vijay Rao, VP, Director of Open Planning, Optimedia US

Ted Cohen, Managing Partner, TAG Strategic

Kyle Laughlin, Senior Director, Yahoo! Games

Bob Ferrari, VP, Publishing & Bus. Dev., Sanrio Digital

Michael Cai, Vice President, Video Games, Interpret

Kyu Lee, President, Gamevil

Mike Vorhaus, President, Magid Advisors

Dave Long, CEO/Co-Founder, Exponential Entertainment, Inc.

Matt Palmer, EVP & GM, Stardoll Network

Jim Drewry, Executive Director of Marketing, Turbine

Michael Rosenberg, COO, Future Ads (Owner and Operator, Gamevance.com)

Teemu Huuhtanen, President, N.A., Sulake Inc. (Habbo)

Matthew Bellows, VP, Consumer Strategy, Vivox

Ryan Barkan, Senior Director, Advertising & Video Games, Primary Wave Music

Mark Friedler, Partner, Worlds and Games LLC

Greg Short, Executive Chairman, EEDAR

Tim Chang, Principal, Norwest Venture Partners

Bjorn Book-Larsson, COO & CTO, K2 Network

John Canning, Principal, MediaSherpa

Dennis Fong, CEO & Founder, Raptr

Alex Hackford, Head of A&R, Sony Computer Entertainment America

John Hayase, Exec. Director of Development, Sony Online Entertainment

Steve Hoffman, CEO, RocketOn, Inc.

James Hursthouse, Bus. Development Director, Japan/Korea, BigWorld PTY

Dave Laux, Global Executive, InterActive Media

Nicole Lazzaro, President, XEODesign, Inc.

Calvin Ng, CEO & CSO, iLemon

Ken Rutkowski, President/Host, KenRadio

Tommy Tallarico, President, Tommy Tallarico Studios, Inc.

Dan Yue, Co-Founder & CEO, Playdom

David Zemke, Director of Marketing, Glu Mobile

Ethan Titelman, VP Media & Ent. Group, Penn, Schoen & Berland (PSB)

Jon Snoddy, Co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer, Big Stage Entertainment

Ron Williams, CEO, The Zeev Exchange (Zeevex)

Stay on top of the LA Games Confernece at www.lagamesconference.com

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Three top VC’s weigh in: Free to play the way to go

Monday, August 25th, 2008

Wagner James Au from Gigaom recently talked with three top VC’s about the gaming industry.  His goal?  To find out what the people with the money are looking at, and where this rapidly changing economy is headed.

The quick and dirty shakes out like so: Free or alternate funded games (i.e. microtransactions, in game advertisement, etc.) are poised for explosive growth, and a top-to-bottom transformation of how games are played, developed, and deployed.  One VC in particular takes an alternate look at the casual gaming market and predicts an imminent backlash.

Mitch Lasky of Benchmark Capital (Second Life, Gaia Online, Red 5, Vivox, Riot Games and JAMDAT) says in an email to Wagner, “I’m sensing that we are on the verge of a casual games backlash.  The space is so ridiculously over-funded, the barriers to entry are so low, and the media models require such high traffic to generate meaningful revenue, that I think there has to be a shake-out. I think the sites with traffic, like MiniClip, will benefit, because everybody is going to be buying referrals from them.”

While Lasky gives credit where credit is due, he also sees top beneficiaries of the non-casual gaming market as middlemare producers.  “I read a recent analyst report that showed almost 90 MMO’s, virtual worlds and online game services scheduled to come to market in the next 18 months,” he said. All that activity is “going to benefit the platform companies — we’ve been seeing tremendous customer growth at Vivox, for example, which provides high quality voice services to online games.”

Speaking to non-casual games, Lasky also added, “I’m increasingly interested in more gamer-oriented online games, not based on subscription billing models. Our investment in Riot Games grew out of this thinking. We’ve seen strong evidence that this combination works in the Chinese and Korean markets, but it’s been slow to take off here. It is going to take the right game to unlock this market, but it could be huge.”

Lightspeed Venture Partners Managing Director Jeremy Liew confirms Lasky’s opinion about the rise of free-to-play.  He’s predicting a massive shift away from the subscription model, echoing developments in Asia.

“Free-to-play gaming and virtual worlds (monetized through up-sold virtual goods and subscriptions) are gaining increasing traction in the West,” he said in an email. “Companies like K2, Nexon, Gaia, Habbo, Neopets, Runescape/Jagex, Gameforge, Eve/CCP and Bigpoint all doing revenues now in the tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars. But gaming, like media, is not a winner-take-all business, and there are many up and coming companies building free to play experiences and growing fast.”

In Liew’s view, companies that can help with player acquisition, billing, fraud and player management/game mastering are those poised to profit the most.

Liew’s not only in his thinking, as Susan Wu a former VC at Charles River Ventures agrees.  “With the death of retail and the greater accessibility of games in the hands of an order of magnitude larger audience, free to play with some premium components becomes the most logical conclusion. Then of course with alternate billing models comes alternate payment systems.”

Wu is now in the drivers seat at what she terms “a groundbreaking, stealthy new online gaming company.”   While Wu’s no newcomer to the party, she sites Susan Choe’s Outspark, Acclaim, and Nabeel Hyatt’s Conduit Labs (Loud Croud) as projects she’s followed closely, and sees them as integral parts of a netwide transformation.

While Wu notes that the web has always been changing, she’s quite surprised at the rapid pace of change, particularly accelerated by the acceptance of social networks as entertainment platforms.

In addition to this acceptance, technological innovations and game development abilities have jumpstarted this change.  With flash becoming a viable platform for games (think iPhone), and even industry giant Blizzard producing hardcore games (and likewise devoted followers) despite super flashy graphics.  Wu also takes a step back to view a psychological factor as game industry driver.  “With social relationships as primary catalysts for game playing; we’re moving back to the playground where games reinforce and create social bonds.”

So while one VC sees an impending backlash verging on the horizon, all three separately agree that the age of subscription is a dying breed, with free to play titles gaining more and more ground each day.  As Lasky points out, with over 90 MMO’s, virtual worlds, and online game services coming to market within the next 18 months, this is bound to become an increasingly competitive space.  Bringing the product to market quickly and effectively may be the winning strategy for developers.  Wouldn’t it be a shame for them to have a great title, but be weighed down by their own development of primary and secondary economies?  Enter stage right…..fatfoogoo.

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