Casual Connect USA is about matching the creativity of the games industry with new media innovation and investment. There will be many talented speakers at Casual Connect USA 2016, and today we are giving you a glimpse of some the Growth track speakers.
It’s difficult to establish a new company or even to expand on an existing one, but the speakers in the Growth Track know all about those challenges. Whether you’re trying to get monetization right, balance multiplayer considerations or reach a whole new audience, there’s always something to improve on. These experts will help convey their knowledge about ins and outs of funding and distribution, helpful for neophytes and veterans of the industry alike.
Monetization for Game Startups
Christian Calderon currently serves as the Chief Revenue Officer for Ketchapp and Adviser to Dots. Their work mostly deals with econometrics and video games, helping to set up predictive modeling for freemium products.
Christian’s background is in economics, having served as an analyst at Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan before becoming an investment banker at Needham & Company with a focus on Internet and Digital Media, where he completed over 30 transactions totaling over $3 billion USD in value. They went on to be in charge of revenue at Kixeye before moving over to a similar role at Dots.
It was unthinkable until recently that start ups would be able to receive ad revenue, but it’s become important for many developers these days. Hundreds of titles have been launched by Ketchapp, allowing over a half billion people from around the world to play them. Christian will look at the ways start ups can monetize their games in more effective ways.
Tapping into Audience and Maximizing Revenues
Laura Grover is VP of Client Solutions at Symphony Advanced Media. Laura leads the customer solutions group to support Verto’s advertising, publisher and brand customers. With over 10 years experience at Nielsen in a variety of roles, Laura knows a lot about roles in advertiser effectiveness and social media analytics.
Laura’s session will highlight the most challenging aspect of mobile game marketing: discoverability and awareness. Given that the mobile games market is the most fragmented of all industries, Laura will give attendees a deeper understanding of successful audience acquisition strategies, as well as trends and the demographics of the core mobile gamer.
Growth Features That All Game Developers Should Know About
Aurora Klaeboe Berg helped found and is the current COO of Megacool. Previously, they were responsible for business development and marketing at Dirtybit, working in business strategy, marketing, community, user analytics, PR strategy, user acquisition, monetization and localization of Dirtybit’s popular game Fun Run.
Aurora has a background in entrepreneurship and loves helping game studios grow their user base in creative ways. They have won multiple awards, including One to Watch from the Nordic Startup Awards and DigIT 2014 Woman of the year.
It can be challenging for game developers to having their life time value for a product be better than their cost per install. Aurora will discuss various ways to boost growth using word-of-mouth in this session. All of the techniques discussed will detail growth methods that don’t use PR and user acquisition.
Text vs. Talking
Tomo Motoyoshi, Senior Director of Global Marketing for mixi, has worked on several mobile projects over the past nine years in global business development and marketing. At mixi, they work on expanding the appeal of Monster Strike globally.
Players use online communications such as chat, texting, and video calls often when playing games with friends. It’s a different experience, however, if that communication is done when friends are physically together, something increasingly discounted by the gaming industry. Tomo will discuss how Monster Strike flourished with face-to-face gaming.
Optimal IAP for Mobile
Speaking at this panel will be veteran game developer and producer Steve Sadin, Product Manager for Game of Thrones Mobile at Turbine. Game design consultant Tadhg Kelly who writes the What Games Are blog will also be there, along with Christian Calderon, Chief Revenue Officer of Ketchapp. Bill Grosso, CEO of Scientific Revenue, will lead the panel discussion.
In-app purchases is the main way that mobile games earn money, though its still a challenge to design a game with IAP in mind. Steve, Tadhg and Christian will discuss factors like UX design, virtual economy tuning and pricing economics and give advise for how to make a free-to-play mobile game without turning off a player base.
Casual Games on iOS and Usage
Fred Thuard is the CEO of Whally, having worked in advisory and executive roles at Youboox, Adictiz, App Annie and Musana. Loïc Jalmin serves as VP Product for Whally, having worked in marketing and product roles for Nodal Consultants and MXP4.
Color Switch, Subway Surfer (Kiloo), Hungry Shark world vs Evo (Ubisoft & FGOL) and Ketchapp all performed well this year, as shown by the Whally Index’s tracking of 430 million players on iOS and their daily usage. Fred and Loïc will look at these as the primary examples for how to build an audience to reach the top of the iOS Casual games over the course of a year.
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