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USA 2018Video Coverage

Publishers Helping Brands Reach Players | Casual Connect Video

April 22, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

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Who is playing your games? As a publisher, you know there is a huge, diverse audience out there, actively engaged with a tremendous variety of games. And now, brands are discovering the value of this highly engaged audience. So brands want to reach them; they want to reach the players of your games. The game inventory is a perfect fit for brands, but how can publishers capitalize on this demand?

Casual Connect set out to find the answers, bringing together a panel to discuss this question at Casual Connect USA 2018. The participants included industry experts from all sides, including brands, mobile developers and monetization platforms, offering their perspectives on the present and future of brand advertising in mobile gaming. These are the participants:

  • Chandra Hill, Vice President of Monetization at MobilityWare. Chandra brings more than twenty years of experience in digital media and is responsible for monetization strategies at MobilityWare, including an in-app advertising platform that produces revenue streams for the company’s portfolio of mobile games. Before joining MobilityWare, Chandra filled executive positions at textPlus and MySpace.
  • Sameer Sondhi, Vice President and General Manager Business Development at InMobl. Sameer specializes in mobile monetization, display ads for mobile products, digital media business development, mobile advertising performance-based advertising, search engine and ad engine platforms.
  • Sally Lu, Senior Director, Ad Monetization at Jam City. Sally has managed ad campaigns from the ground up, growing them to over billions of ads served. She has also managed ad campaigns that reach more than 200 million customers each year and manages the ad operations team.
  • Andrew Gerhart, Chief Operating Officer of AerServ. After spending time as a marketer for multiple publishers, Andrew understands the complex advertising landscape with multiple ad networks and exchanges. He has been Chief Operating Officer for AerServ for five years, helping to build a world-class mobile app monetization and mediation platform. AerServ was acquired by InMobl in January, 2018.
  • Dave Edwards, Senior Vice President, Digital Marketing – Theatrical Films, Lionsgate. Dave is a news media enthusiast, entertainment industry operative and film lover. He has years of experience in high profile content creation, virtual reality and augmented reality, digital media and marketing, art direction and project management.

The Panel was moderated by Grant Cohen, General Manager of The Collective and Free App Analytics at Kochava. Kochava is the leading mobile measurement company providing analytics and attribution services across many of the world’s top apps. The Collective is a new business unit that utilizes data from Kochava’s Free App Analytics solution to deliver rich mobile audiences at massive scale over 2 billion devices globally through a self-serve UX.

To learn more about brand advertising in mobile gaming and what to expect in the future, be sure to watch the video of Getting in the Game: How Publishers Can Help Brands Reach Their Players.

USA 2018Video Coverage

Ad Monetizing in Mobile Games: Benefits and Risks | Casual Connect Video

April 12, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

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As everyone involved in the mobile game industry knows, ad monetization has become critical to monetizing mobile games. And without effective monetization, no game can succeed. So how can you learn the best ways to monetize your game. At Casual Connect USA 2017, the panel discussion, The Pain and Gain of Ad Monetization – Publisher Stories, offered some important information from the publishers’ perspective of what works and what doesn’t.

Publishers experienced with ad monetization for mobile games participated as panelists. They included:

Jarrko Rajamaki, Vice President Advertising at Rovio. This is Jarrko’s second commission in this position at Rovio, heading ad monetization over the entire Rovio game portfolio. Jarrko began his career in online advertising at AOL’s European business and still proudly uses aol.com as his email address.

Dave Yonamine, Co-Founder and Chairman of Mobilityware. Dave is the primary liaison between Mobilityware and other app developers and has the primary responsibility for the company’s strategic direction. Mobilityware is a leading mobile games developer and has more than 250 million downloads across its award winning portfolio.

John Boog-Scott, Chief Operating Officer at PeopleFun. John has spent the past five years growing PeopleFun, learning the hard way what succeeds and what fails with mobile games UA and monetization. PeopleFun builds five star casual word games. John has also been a lean startup founder in many other software and games companies, including Ensemble Studios, the creators of Age of Empires.

Karim Farghaly, Director of Business Development at Bandai Namco Entertainment America for mobile platforms. Karim manages external partnerships with development studios, licencors, digital distributors and advertising platforms. Prior to BNEA Mobile, Karim held a number of executive positions in the games industry, including at Scarab, Empire and Interplay.

The panel was moderated by Ayala Rudoy, Director of Strategic Customers at SafeDK. Ayala is passionate about helping game developers ensure the ads they serve in their games don’t affect the game’s user experience, retention or revenue.

This session discussed the benefits and best practices when monetizing with ads and described the issues and main risks of displaying ads in mobile games. Watch the video of this session to learn from these experts in monetizing with ads in games.

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USA 2017Video Coverage

Darion Lowenstein: Bringing Arcades Back to Life on the Casino Floor | Casual Connect Video

January 5, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

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Be the person everyone wants on their team. - Darion LowensteinClick To Tweet

As we witness casinos in the USA having a steady decline in slot revenue, companies must change their approach. That is why Gamblit Gaming has been launching new interactive touch screen hardward right on casino floors. In a talk entitled “Launching Video Games In Casinos: Gold Rush Or Bust?” at Casual Connect USA in Seattle, Darion Lowenstein talked about what it takes to gamblify games like Into The Dead, Catapult King, Jetpack Joyride and launch it on a casino floor.

USA 2017Video Coverage

Brandon Sheffield: From Online Comics to Indie Game Success | Casual Connect Video

January 1, 2018 — by David Radd

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Necrosoft is a company I formed – if it fails, it’s my fault. - Brandon SheffieldClick To Tweet

Although it is disheartening, when your game doesn’t sell, Brandon Sheffield, Creative Director at Necrosoft wanted you to know that this isn’t the end. Developers shouldn’t give up and think they missed their one shot. At Casual Connect USA 2017, Brandon stated that if you’ve got a game that’s portable to modern platforms, you’ve got a revenue stream. If not from consumers, it will come from platforms. By using examples from several companies, Brandon shared how Necrosoft sells versions of current or older games to new platforms in order to fund new projects in the session below.

USA 2017Video Coverage

Wibe Wagemans and Making Games More Social | Casual Connect Video

December 1, 2017 — by Catherine Quinton

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Is social casino a genre that interests you as a developer? Is this an area that will allow you to build a profitable business? If these are questions you are considering, you will need to know what makes a social casino game really social.

The Chairman of Huuuge Games, Wibe Wagemans, has the expertise and experience to help you find the answers you need. Wibe was, prior to coming to Huuuge Games, president at IndoorAtlas, SVP a Rovio and regional board member at Nokia, building brands like Angry Birds, Bing, Nokia and Gillette. This proven track record of driving results in startups includes being responsible for two dozen top ranked apps on iTunes.

At Casual Connect USA, Wibe’s session illustrated how Huuuge Games has approached the social casino genre with their emphasis on creating a real-time social experience. Their focus is on making social casino more social. Wibe considers this so important that he emphasized, “We don’t think in a few years the big players will be around without having some form of real-time multi-player platform.”

To learn more about how you can make create a more exciting social experience with your games be sure to watch this video of the full session from Casual Connect.

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To read more about Wibe Wagemans’ careern and insights, see this exclusive article.

USA 2017Video Coverage

Mark Beck on Succeeding in Today’s Social Casino Environment | Casual Connect Video

November 22, 2017 — by Catherine Quinton

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Are you someone who is interested in the social casino market? If so, you have, no doubt, noticed increasing competition as this market has been maturing. There are now many choices and the players are exhibiting greater sophistication in what games interest them, both in quality of production and game complexity.

If these are factors you must consider you would probably like to consult with Mark Beck, Vice-President of Strategy at Murka. Mark has helped to scale some of the largest games in the social casino genre, including Heart of Vegas, FaFaFa and Scatter Slots. Mark’s specialties are user acquisition, finance, business development and in-game optimization, all critical areas for successful social casino games. After ten years at Aristocrat Mark moved to Murka, where he is currently working.

If you would like to know how Murka has succeeded in becoming the then tenth largest and the fastest growing social casino company in today’s environment, you need to watch this video of Mark’s presentation at Casual Connect USA 2017 in Seattle.

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To see another lecture by Mark from Casual Connect Asia and learn about his career, see this exclusive article.

USA 2017Video Coverage

Mel Montano on The Best Publisher/Developer Relationship | Casual Connect Video

November 18, 2017 — by Catherine Quinton

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Publishers and developers, what is the state of your relationship? Is it great? Is it good but could be better? Or have you suffered through a miserable breakup? Whatever your relationship is like, you will enjoy the insights Mel Montano has to offer.

Mel Montano is the Senior Business Development Manager at Kongregate

Mel Montano is the Senior Business Development Manager at Kongregate where their work is focused on finding the best and most exciting games on mobile, PC, console and the web for publishing partnerships. Before coming to Kongregate, Mel spent four years as Business Developer at Humble Bundle. And before that Mel worked as an Environmental Scientist remediating pollution.

At Casual Connect USA Mel’s session on publisher and developer relations covered everything: breakups, both good and bad; ghosting; and even publisher/developer speed-dating (yes, really!) This session emphasized what you can do for better networking, how to create and maintain a good relations, and what to look for in a potential publishing partner. As Mel insists, “Consider your deal breakers in advance.” If you are concerned about maintaining the best publisher/developer relationship, be sure to watch the full video of Mel’s session.

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To learn more about Mel and also see a lecture from Casual Connect Europe in Berlin click here. 

USA 2017Video Coverage

Doug Pearson: Creating Truly Social Casino Games | Casual Connect Video

November 15, 2017 — by Catherine Quinton

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As technology evolves and tools become outdated, such changes can leave developers in the dust and struggling to convert to mobile. Join Doug Pearson, Co-Founder and CTO of FlowPlay, for a technical discussion on how and why FlowPlay tackled these challenges firsthand by transitioning Vegas World from a Flash codebase to Haxe. Doug will also discuss the cost/benefits of making the move, lessons learned, and future cross-platform strategy. This session took place at Casual Connect USA 2017 in Seattle. See the full session below.

Exclusive InterviewsIndie

Artem Savotin: Find a New Homeland in Sayri Adventure

October 26, 2017 — by David Radd

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Artem Savotin, a Ukrainian developer, is the owner of Vidloonnya Reborn. He says that he got into the IT business more than 12 years ago.

“Games and game business always were a hot theme for me. I’ve created my own game projects at school and in the university along with my artist friend. I was a developer,” said Artem. “After graduating from the university I was working on enterprise development and outsourcing, where I went from a developer to a leader of a German IT company in Ukraine.”

Artem Savotin is the owner of Vidloonnya Reborn

Artem says that #DevGAMM 2016 in Moscow where he really started to understand game development. “I’ve decided there that I want to work on premium games, not F2P, since the creation of a fully functional commercial product was closer and clearer to me,” he detailed. “After the Moscow #DevGAMM in May 2016, we’ve started to experiment, and the first idea was based on evolution theme. The first prototype wasn’t very successful, alas. We’ve experimented with the control methods, and that appeared to be a typical beginner’s mistake, though the idea appeared to be very interesting from first sight.”

Early on the development team was Artem and Vasyl. At the time, Vasyl was still working with Unity, but he was experimenting with Unreal Engine during evenings and weekends and pushed that it was much better.

DevelopmentExclusive InterviewsIndie

Distortions: A Journey of Self-Discovery Through Music

September 14, 2017 — by Catherine Quinton

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Distortions, the creation of the game studio Among Giants, is an unusual game that combines music with a journey of self-discovery in the making. CEO Thiago Girello describes the experience as “a piece of our lives during the past eight years.” Among Giants is the winner of the Best Brazilian Game at BIG Festival 2017, an Indie Prize Partner event, with their game Distortions. They competed at Indie Prize and Casual Connect USA in Seattle.

A Process of Experimentation

Distortions began with a group of close friends learning to express themselves through the media of games. They shared a love for games and experimentation but each of them brought a different background, including movies, literature, design, and photography. Their variety of backgrounds had the advantage of allowing new and fresh insights into their game project. As a result, the making of Distortions was a process of experimentation and talking about subjects rarely seen in games. And throughout the eight years they never gave up on the project because making the game was always a fun time with friends, although Thiago does admit that they often say he gets too excited and should choose less ambitious projects.

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