Posts Tagged ‘games conference’

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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New York Games Conference Agrees: Microtransactions are the way to go.

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

While the New York Games Conference came to a close last week, there were a number of great discussions and roundtables that kept us all informed and entertained.  One ‘Debate Club’ discussion that really stood out to me was the “Get a (Virtual) Life! The Challenges and Opportunities for Monetizing Virtual Worlds and MMOGs” talk.

Coming directly from the nygamesconference.com site:

Get a (Virtual) Life!  The Challenges and Opportunities For Monetizing Virtual Worlds and MMOGs
The lines between social networks, virtual worlds and games are blurring – so how do you monetize these new social gaming environments?

This panel will discuss the relative effectiveness of premium subscriptions, sales of music, video and virtual goods and ad supported content. What is working and what isn’t? How are brand marketers and their agencies navigating this new space? How do advertisers measure ROI and the effectiveness of these new and relatively untested campaigns? How do you handle license and rights issues as well payments effectively? This group of panelists will share their experiences with different business models as well as give advice for how to make smart marketing investments in this ever-changing landscape.

Panelists
Craig Sherman, CEO, Gaia Online
Matt Palmer, EVP & GM, Stardoll
Andrew Schneider, President & Co-founder, Live Gamer
Rob Uhrich, Senior Director, Digital Markets, PaymentOne
Sean Kane, Attorney & Consultant, Drakeford & Kane LLC
Jeff Freedman, Dir of Strategy and Bus Dev, Millions of Us / Virtual Greats

Moderator
Eric Goldberg, Managing Director, Crossover Technologies

While the topic is always certain to bring up a whole slew of varying opinions, all parties involved did manage to agree on one thing: microtransactions are the future of gaming.

Some highlights of the talk include an interesting discussion regarding young people and why they are an ideal market for microtransactions.  Games allow this group a freedom of expression and creativity within their own world.  Stardoll was used as an example whereby users can create a MeDoll, an in-game avatar that is based on an actual picture of the user.  These users can design and buy items for their rooms and personal clothing – thereby providing said outlet for individual creativity and expression – at a cost.
How to pay for it all was another interesting bit.  The panel discussed pros and cons of each side of the pre-paid cards vs. paypal argument, including the often tricky question of ‘Users are often under the age of 18’ question.  By being under 18 years of age, users are technically not able to enter a legally binding contract.  That and not too many 14 year olds that I know have a credit card.

While pre-paid cards and paypal were discussed, I think it was actually an over exertion of a very simple question: How do we actually handle and implement microtransactions?  Clearly a paypal method can work, but has tons of room for errors and problems (think fraud chargebacks), and pre-paid cards are good, but don’t allow for what most game publishers are looking for: an instant transaction, while gamers are looking for an instant gratification.  In other words, even if you’ve purchased a pre-paid card, that doesn’t always mean it’s fully loaded and ready to go for that super swanky 2008 NY Jets Brett Favre jersey Tommy from Wisconsin wants to dress is avatar in.

fatfoogoo is the answer to this debate topic.  By integrating a fully functional and real world tested in-game economy, publishers, producers, and operators can simply skip steps 2, 3 and 4, and start implementing their own microtransaction method today, not 9 months from now.

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