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Casual Games Summit - AGENDA |
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Note: Presentation materials submitted by speakers are linked inline below and are also listed on this page.
Dave Rohrl, Day 1 Organizer – [link to presentation]
What exactly is a casual game? Just who plays casual games and who buys them? Did they suddenly emerge from nowhere over the last few years to take the gaming world by storm, or is there a deeper history? These and other questions are pondered as a way of setting the groundwork for the Summit.
Nick Fortungo (gameLab) – [link to presentation]
What things must any casual game design take into account to be successful? What design approaches are kisses of death in this space? What is the audience willing to swallow? And how does working in the try-and-buy model impact your design decisions? This session tackles these and other tough questions of casual game design.
What art styles work for casual games? When, where, and why does 3D make sense in a casual game? What themes do the casual game audience love, and which are off limits? Can you ruin your game by pandering excessively to the audience or do all women just really, really love fairies and unicorns?
Bookworm Adventures was released in November 2006 after more than two years in development. This session discusses how the game evolved over the course of its development, and gives a peek at some bits that were left on the cutting room floor.
Over the last few years, platforms like Flash, Java and Director have matured and new platforms like the Torque Game Builder have emerged. At the same time, C++ programmers have many new frameworks to choose from, including PlayFirst's Playground SDK and the PopCap Framework. This panel of technologists tells you why their platform or framework rules the roost, along with a demo to prove it. Each panelist has used the same art assets and game design to build their own version of a casual brick-busting game developed in their platform of choice.
A variety of business models have emerged, each offering new ways to monetize widely varying audiences. This panel features leading lights in the world of try-and-buy, advertising, subscription, and micro-transactions. Panelists will offer insight into how their business model works, and also why they think that model is critical for the future of casual games.
Before 2004, most companies that were creating casual games served as their own publishers – shouldering development costs and managing marketing and distribution. Over the last 3 years, publishers have emerged as an important force in the industry, working with developers to: fund their projects, distribute and promote them to portals; provide professional QA, help with localization, represent games to licensees like mobile publishers, and a variety of other services. The portfolio managers of the major casual game publishers spend an hour in the hot seat fielding questions from the development community, as well as telling you why you should bring your next game to them first.
New entrepreneurs and seasoned vets from the casual space discuss the current climate for startups and how it is better and worse than it was a few years ago. Panelists will speculate on unique opportunities that are ripe for the taking today.
John Welch, Day 2 Organizer
Casual games have finally come to the consoles. How is each platform unique? What are the opportunities and challenges for casual games developers on each platform? How will the platforms evolve over the next year or two?
Heidi Perry (PlayFirst) talks about ways to leverage existing casual game intellectual property to turn a hit title into a hit franchise, and discusses some of the critical choices made on the Diner Dash franchise. Lee Crawford (Twofish) speaks about raising venture money to start a casual game company in late 2006. Jim Greer (Kongregate) speaks about a user-generated casual games site as well as fund raising.
This panel will discuss innovative game features that require client/server interaction whether done anonymously (e.g., high scores) or by creating user accounts and the impact on portal acceptance; multiplayer gaming; community features; micro-transaction models; the impact on the evolving relationship between developers, publishers, and portals; and predictions for what to expect over the next few years.
What's the value of a license and what are you getting into when you sign that deal? How do we appeal to new markets beyond the typical "soccer mom" demographic? In this session, hear success and horror stories dealing with licenses and licensors.
This panel will look at what works and what doesn't. Who are the players and what are the opportunities? How do you build a product for worldwide appeal?
Although the casual game market has shown that it will swallow large numbers of me-too products that precisely imitate their predecessors, it has also shown us that it reserves its greatest rewards for games that are truly new to this category – especially those that can appeal to existing customers while reaching new market segments at the same time. This panel of blue-ribbon casual game designers discuss where the next generation of opportunities for growing the market through innovation lies; what are the genres and niches that aren’t yet being served by the casual game market, how can we reach them, and how will that change the market and our view of casual games as a whole?
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