In anticipation of this year’s Casual Connect USA conference in San Francisco, Clark Buckner from TechnologyAdvice.com (they provide coverage on gamification, customer loyalty software, employee engagement platforms and much more) spoke with the content director for Casual Connect, Tennille Forsberg, to discuss some of the exciting things that are happening in the casual gaming industry and the conference.
As the content director of Casual Connect, Tennille began at Casual Connect in 2009, just three years after Casual Connect was founded. Tennille is responsible for finding some of the best speakers and content from around the world, and bringing those to the Casual Connect conferences each year. For this year’s Casual Connect USA conference, Tennille and team brought together over 300 speakers. These speakers will be focused on several different tracks within the conference, which include mobile games, free-to-play games, development, business of games, and casino games.
In order to stay on the front edge of the rapidly changing casual games market, the team at Casual Connect is placing a large emphasis on supporting independent game developers. While Tennille admits that they cannot be certain what the future holds for casual gaming, they feel confident that investing in creative, independent developers now will pay off in the longterm. As Tennille puts it, “It could be said, games are more important than TV now”. A bold statement no doubt, but one that seems to carry more weight with every step forward in the gaming scene.
And for Tennille, the conferences are all about bringing together the best minds in casual gaming, and cultivating an atmosphere of collaboration and networking. She sees this as a crucial step to take towards the future of the industry. With four major conferences around the world, and a slew of smaller, tandem events that follow each, Casual Connect is certainly engaged in the industry, and invested in its future.
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