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Europe 2017Video Coverage

Bjoern Bergstein: The Best Monetization Model For Your Game | Casual Connect Video

April 2, 2017 — by Catherine Quinton

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No matter how good the games you develop, unless they turn a profit, preferably the highest possible profit of course, your games can’t succeed. So how do you best monetize your games? Bjoern Bergstein would be an excellent person to ask.

After studying Game Design and Game Production at Games Academy Berlin, Bjoern founded and ran his own game studio for a short time. Bjoern then joined Tivola Publishing GmbH, a company highly experience in games for families, and is now Head of Games, responsible for all in-house development.

Bjoern Bergstein speaking at Casual Connect Europe 2017, photo by Lera Polska

At Casual Connect Europe, Bjoern discussed the three monetization models: Premium, Freemium and Free-to-Play, and the pros and cons of each. The final decision about which method will be best to use depends on many different factors, so this is a complex decision. During Bjoern’s session Monetization for the Whole Family – The Long Way to Find the Right Monetization Model, Bjoern described Tivola Publishing’s journey to find the best model for their company and the insights they gained, as well as sharing helpful examples. To succeed as a new company he suggested “Don’t try to compete or copy big players.” Instead, find your own niche, “use the niche and be good at it.” To learn more, be sure watch the full video of Bjoern’s session.

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To read more about Bjoern Bergstein including a lecture from Casual Connect Europe 2016, see this exclusive article.

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10 Ways to Kick Ass at Conventions

February 27, 2017 — by Chris Natsuume of Boomzap

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View from the Marriott Marque Hotel in San Francisco, California, photo by Emily Baker

Let’s face it, conferences aren’t cheap. Hotels, flights, dinners… even a small 3 day show is quickly hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. When you factor in lost time for travel and preparation… You’re going to want to maximize the value of that commitment.

For this article, I am focusing on B2B conventions, where you are mostly interacting with other companies in your sphere of influence. Consumer-based conventions require different skills and strategies, but much of this will still be meaningful.

EventsNews

Indie Prize Europe 2017 Winners Revealed

February 10, 2017 — by David Radd

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Photo by Lera Polska

Casual Games Association has announced the winners of the Indie Prize showcase. The honorees were revealed during a awards ceremony at Casual Connect Europe in Berlin.

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, a tactical stealth game set in Japan’s Edo period by Mimimi Productions, won Best Game Design. Anshar Wars 2, a VR space shooter game by Ozwe Games, won Best VR Game. FRU, a puzzle platformer that that uses Kinect to make the player’s silhouette into a “portal” between two worlds by Through Games, won Most Innovative Game. Blink and Die, a VR rhythm title where the music defines the level by Sureksu, won Best Game Audio and Best Kids & Family Game

“Indie Prize is becoming bigger and bigger year by year – it is amazing and overwhelming to see indie talent and spirit growing so very strong all over the world,” says Yuliya Moshkaryova, Director of Indie Prize. “On behalf of Casual Connect and Indie Prize, we cordially congratulate all the finalists, nominees and winners, and are looking forward to seeing more games in the future.”

Photo by Lera Polska

Other winners include Figment, a 3D isometric action-adventure where players fight against the anxieties of a 40-year old man by Bedtime Digital Games, won Best Game Art. Empathy, an adventure game where you explore the memories from people of the path by Pixel Night, won Best Game Narrative. Lightfield, an omnidirectional racing game described as parkour with a space ship by Lost in the Garden, won Best Multiplayer Game. Super Pet Hero, a voxel game about dodging traffic and pet saving by Amused Sloth, won Best Mobile Game. Lastly CoverFire by 1MBand had the honor to win the Best in Show award which was voted for at the event. 

Indie Prize has partnered with many local game contests from around the world. This grants the opportunity for various regional winners to showcase their games at Casual Connect. All told, developers from 63 countries submitted 470 games for the international Indie Prize scholarship, an increase of 20 percent compared to last year’s Indie Prize Europe 2016. Forty-two judges selected the 130 indie games to be showcased in the Indie Prize area during Casual Connect Europe in Berlin.

Celebrating a well earned moment of triumph, photo by Lera Polsky

Fantastic Nominees:

BEST GAME AUDIO
Blink and Die developed by Sureksu
Guns, Gore and Cannoli 2 developed by Crazy Monkey Studios
The Long Reach developed by TLR Team
Beat the Game developed by Worm Animation

BEST GAME DESIGN
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun developed by Mimimi Productions
FRU developed by Through Games
The Adventure Pals developed by Massive Monster
Okhlos developed by The Adventure Pals

BEST GAME ART
Figment developed by Bedtime Digital Games
Vive le Roi developed by Seccia
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun developed by Mimimi Productions
Anshar Wars 2 developed by Ozwe Games

BEST GAME NARRATIVE
Empathy by Pixel Night
Lost Words developed by Fourth State
Code 7 developed by Good Wolf Studios
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun developed by Mimimi Productions

BEST MULTIPLAYER GAME
LIGHTFIELD developed by Lost in the Garden
Super Rocket Shootout developed by Oddly Shaped Pixels
Panoptic developed by Team Panoptes
Akuto: Mad World developed by Hut 90

BEST KIDS AND FAMILY GAME
Blink and Die developed by Sureksu
House of Languages developed by Fox3D Entertainment OU
Figment developed by Bedtime Digital Games
Trains VR developed by The House of Fables

BEST MOBILE GAME
Super Pet Hero developed by Amused Sloth
VOI developed by Yunus AYYILDIZ (gamebra.in)
unWorded developed by bento
Euclidean Lands developed by Miro Straka

BEST VR GAME
Anshar Wars 2 developed by Ozwe Games
Panoptic developed by Team Panoptes
The Biumbis developed by 3OGS
Wrath of Loki VR Adventure developed by The House of Fables

MOST INNOVATIVE GAME
FRU developed by Through Games
Lost Words developed by Fourth State
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun developed by Mimimi Productions
Panoptic developed by Team Panoptes

You can find the full list of Indie Prize Berlin 2016 finalists at indieprize.org.

Photo taken by Lera Polska

Join Indie Prize Facebook community to stay updated about Indie Prize https://www.facebook.com/groups/870174783048528/

The winners are supported by Unity (Platinum sponsor), Korean Game Developers Association (Gold sponsor) and the prizes for winners are provided by: Tenjin, Photon, Amazon Appstore, Appodeal, SpeedLink, ironSource and IBM.

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Competing German Indie Devs at Casual Connect Europe 2017

January 16, 2017 — by Yuliya Moshkaryova

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Thirteen German based studios will showcase their games at the international Indie Prize Showcase during Casual Connect Europe 2017 in Berlin this February. One hundred-thirty of the best indie games were selected from 470 game submissions by honorable judges and provided with Indie Prize scholarship to attend the conference. This includes free all-access passes, a spot to showcase the game along with the world’s best indie developers and free accommodation in the indie hostel during three days of conference in Berlin.

EventsIndustry

Casual Connect Pushing Casino Envelope in Tel Aviv, Berlin

November 28, 2016 — by Gamesauce Staff

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Casino-oriented attendees at Casual Connect Tel Aviv packed lecture hall 2 at The Charles Bronfman Auditorium earlier this month to dive into everything casino – from sweeping overviews of the social casino industry to detail-oriented lectures on building apps to ways non-casino developers can break into the casino industry.

Highlights included a social casino industry overview by industry leader Playtika’s Elad Kushnir in which he predicted casino operators will ultimately find it difficult to capitalize on social casino and will exit the market. Anatolii Henis of rising star Murka dove into how the company crafted a poker game for a younger generation. PlayStudios’ John Lin looked eastward and discussed how social casino is evolving in Asian markets.

EventsIndieNews

Best Indie Games Announced at the 16th Indie Prize Awards During Casual Connect in Tel Aviv

November 3, 2016 — by Yuliya Moshkaryova

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The 16th Indie Prize Awards Ceremony took place at Casual Connect Tel Aviv 2016. Casual Connect is a place where developers can foster relationships with other developers, gain exposure for your professional development team and beautiful games, and learn how to succeed in the new games ecosystem. The Indie Prize Showcase was bustling with developers from around the world competing and showing off their games. Find out who won and more information about their development process.

EventsNews

Indie Prize Games Representing Western Europe at Casual Connect Tel Aviv

October 13, 2016 — by Yuliya Moshkaryova

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The international Indie Prize showcase for independent developers will take place on Nov 1-3, 2016 in Tel Aviv. Sixty games from 21 countries were provided with Indie Prize scholarship by Casual Connect and will be showcased at Habima Square during three days from 9 AM to 5 PM at Casual Connect Tel Aviv.

The French developer of the award winning game - >Désiré - who won the Most Innovative Game and Best Game Design at Indie Prize Singapore 2016 are coming back! This time Sylvain Seccia will present two of his projects: Désiré and a new game Vive le Roi.

USA 2016Video Coverage

Itamar Benedy and the User-Centric Approach to Advertising | Casual Connect Video

September 5, 2016 — by Catherine Quinton

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Itamar Benedy is the General Manager and VP Israel of glipsa

Effective advertising is essential for anyone trying to get the word out about their product, and game developers are no exception. A huge amount of data is available about users through their smartphones, but developers are seldom effectively utilizing it, leaving users confronting irrelevant and intrusive ads at the same time as they are worried about safeguarding their privacy. So developers are getting less ad revenue while advertisers fail to connect with their market.

Itamar Benedy, General Manager and VP Israel of glipsa, offers a solution: switching to a user-centric approach. Transforming ads into personalized user experiences will take advertising to the next level, Itamar emphasizes.

While managing the ad tech M&A activities at Market Tech Holding, Itamar acquired glipsa, then opened the Israeli office and now heads it. Itamar focuses on glipsa’s key partnerships, M&A, and their app incubation project.

To learn more from Itamar’s marketing experience and the user-centric approach, watch this video of the full session given at Casual Connect USA.

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For more about Itamar Benedy, see this exclusive article here.

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Ellipsis: premium, no text, no ads, no IAP

June 29, 2016 — by Industry Contributions

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Ellipsis is an award-winning action puzzler with retro-styled visuals and absolutely zero text. Designed from the ground up for touch devices, it was released on iOS in February 2016 and for Android on June 16th. Its intuitive concept is easy to understand but you soon uncover a deep and challenging universe of ever-evolving levels. Ellipsis is a polished game experience, developed with a bit of idealistic, opinionated approach. Released as a premium game, it features no text, no ads, no IAP. The developers headed by Yacine Salmi explore how these decisions impacted our development and release.)


ContributionsDevelopment

Lessons Learned from Goodgame Studios’ Major Reorganization

June 21, 2016 — by Industry Contributions

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Lessons Learned from Goodgame Studios’ Major Reorganization:
Increasing Production by Organizational Change

The following is a field report written by Robin Kiera, Inhouse Consultant at Goodgame Studios, sharing his experiences from change projects in traditional and tech companies.

Sometimes it’s the Structure:

After the reorganization of Goodgame Studios, the number of releases and game development projects has increased.

Lunch at Goodgame Studios
Lunch at Goodgame Studios

At the beginning of 2015, Goodgame Studios, the leading German games developer and producer of Goodgame Empire, Empire: Four Kingdoms, and Big Farm, reorganized its game development departments from an integrated matrix structure into an autonomous studio structure. At first glance, there seemed to be no reason for this, considering that 2014 was a record-breaking year with tremendous growth in revenue and a doubling of the company’s size to 1,200 employees. Nevertheless, only one new game was released during that year. After an in-depth analysis, management decided to improve the company’s game production structure to ensure future success.

Today, one and a half years later, the company has already seen significant benefits: their live games continue to generate very healthy revenue, and the number of new releases and games in development has increased. There are currently several games in the soft launch phase, and the company has a full product pipeline. Clearly, the reorganization unleashed the potential of a company that had been limited by a structure it had outgrown. And it was thanks to their passion for the company and the selfless behavior of so many people that the incredibly fast process was successful and even possible.

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