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USA 2018 Video Coverage

Fundraising for a Successful Gaming Business | Casual Connect Video

May 2, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

Almost every entrepreneur will at some point need funding. This is especially true in the game industry. If you are in this situation, you need to know there are many tools to raise funds. Don’t be in a hurry to assume raising venture capital is your road to success; despite glorification from the tech publications, too often it can be the wrong instrument for the job.

Casual Connect USA 2018 brought together a panel of experts to help you understand what your options really are. The panelists included founders and investors whose perspectives from both sides brought valuable information on why, when and how to think about funding your business for the best results.

The panelists were:

Cesar Mufarej, Co-Founder and CFO at Fanatee, a company focused on casual mobile games. Fanatee has had more than 25 million downloads and is responsible for successful word games CodyCross and Stop. Cesar is responsible for monetization strategies, developing distribution and monetization partnerships and taking care of financial and legal matters.

Kamran Ansari is Venture Partner at Greycroft Partners. Kamran has been a venture investor and operator at Pinterest, Facebook, Venmo, Braintree, MyYearbook/MeetMe, Boxed Wholesale, Vungle and more. He served as Head of Corporate Development at Pinterest from early 2015, where he led nine acquisitions, including Jelly, Instapaper, URX, The Hunt and Highlight.

Mike DeLaet, Co-Founder and CEO of DOD Media Group, a full-service consulting firm focused on publishing, including BD and other digital distribution of mobile apps and games on the Apple App Store, Google Play and Amazon and more. Mike has also served as SVP of Global BD and Licensing at Kabam and SVP of Global Publishing at Glu Mobile.

The moderator of the panel was Mark Loranger, a serial entrepreneur with experience in a variety of technology startups. Mark is now Co-Founder of Braavo Capital. He has raised money from angel investors, banks and venture capital, but have also spent time on the other side of the table. Prior to Braavo, Mark was the founder of GraniteMade Ventures.

To learn more about options for funding your business, watch this video of Casual Connect session The Right Tool for the Job – Fundraising Strategy and Tactics for Building a Successful Gaming Business.

USA 2018 Video Coverage

Maximizing Revenue with Mobile Apps | Casual Connect Video

March 27, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

Producing the revenue you need for a healthy company is a constant concern is a constant concern for most developers. If maximizing the revenue you can generate from mobile apps is something you want to know more about, the session at Casual Connect USA 2017, The Next Phase of Mobile App Monetization: What Developers Need to Know to Maximize Revenue, offered some important information.

Presenters at the session were Adam Carey and Boris Logvinskiy. Adam Carey, Senior Director of Ad Monetization at Sega Networks, is a specialist on ad operations, ad product, data and marketing with 18 years of experience in digital advertising. You will be especially interested to learn that he is an expert in helping companies adopt and adhere to digital advertising best practices. Boris Gogvinskiy specializes in monetizing mobile apps and heads product management for all MoPub products at Twitter. Previous roles included product management at Demandforce, which was acquired by Intuit in 2011.

New kinds opportunities have been emerging for monetizing mobile apps. Don’t miss learning about them; watch this video of the complete presentation from Casual Connect USA 2017.

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USA 2018 Video Coverage

Coming Soon in Esports | Casual Connect Video

March 18, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

Esports is one sector of the game industry that is evolving especially quickly. Are you someone who is interested in developing or publishing in this area? Then you are also concerned with keeping up with the latest developments; you need to know what directions the industry may take next.

At Casual Connect USA 2018, Geoff Keighley hosted a Fireside Chat, Esports Evolving – What Can We Expect to See Coming in Esports. The guest expert was Mike Sepso, Senior Vice President of Activision Blizzard Media Media Networks. Mike launched this division with Steve Bornstein; it is dedicated to creating the best esports experiences for fans across games, platforms and geographies.

Geoff is a video game journalist, television presenter and the producer of the annual Game Awards event.

In the Fireside Chat, they provided an up close and personal discussion of Mike’s insights and the trends esports are taking. If you would like to know the next big thing Mike sees coming in esports, don’t miss the chance to watch the video of this Fireside Chat.

USA 2018 Video Coverage

David Rogers: Designing for Fun | Casual Connect Video

March 16, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

Everyone wants to feel like a wizard - David RogersClick To Tweet

Delivered at Casual Connect USA 2018, David Rogers, Lead Designer of inXile Entertainment spoke about the problems inXile discovered while building the core mechanic of The Mage’s Tale, that is, throwing fireballs in VR. While they initially thought this would be relatively straightforward, it turned out to be much more complicated. David would like to help others avoid the long iterative process they had to go through before getting it right.

USA 2018 Video Coverage

Natalie Portier: Succeeding With Mobile Games for Kids | Casual Connect Video

March 10, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

Succeeding With Mobile Games for KidsMobile gaming for kids is one of the fastest growing sectors of the gaming industry, now worth $2.2 billion. Not surprisingly, many of us may want to participate in this market. But when you start, you quickly discover there are tremendous challenges, including specific regulations for children’s apps, promotion and monetization.

Natalie Portier, Mike Arkin, and Mike Hines at Casual Connect USA 2018, photo by Emily Baker

At Casual Connect USA 2018, Natalie Portier presented a session designed to help you by the name of Overcoming Pitfalls of Launching Kids Apps. Natalie is Chief Operating Officer at the ad mediation company Appodeal. They joined this rapidly growing company at its beginning, and is using their ten years of experience in business operations and tech development in fueling their passion for innovation and quality game development.

In this session, Natalie brought together insights from successful publishers of apps for children, legal experts and marketing agencies to help developers avoid pitfalls and succeed with the mobile games they offer for children. To learn more about the opportunities and pitfalls in mobile gaming for kids, be sure to watch this video of Natalie’s session at Casual Connect.

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For more about Natalie’s insights and career, see this exclusive article from Casual Connect Europe 2017 in Berlin.

USA 2018 Video Coverage

Martin Price: Transforming the Way Audiences Grow | Casual Connect Video

March 8, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

Every developer knows how critical user acquisition is to the success of a game. But the mobile app landscape evolves at lightning speed and new challenges constantly arise. So how do you keep up? Fortunately, new solutions are also coming to deal with the latest problems.

Martin Price, Vice President of Product at Vungle, is one of the best people you could ask about user acquisition challenges. Martin runs Vungle’s product team and, as well, is responsible for roadmap planning, research and development, user experience and product design. With over fifteen years experience leading product teams, Martin also has had executive roles at Yahoo!, Vdopia and OpenX and strategy roles at Vodafone and Nokia.

At Casual Connect USA 2018, Martin presented the session Tricks of the User Acquisition Trade: How Advertiser Tools are Changing and What You Need to Know to Drive More Revenue. They discussed what today’s user acquisition challenges are and how creative optimization plus data give the opportunity to transform the way audiences are grown. And they described the ways creative optimization and self-serve advertising tools help to empower a new kind of mobile advertiser. Be sure to watch the video of this presentation to learn more.

USA 2018 Video Coverage

Katrina Wolfe: The Challenge of Getting Everyone Coordinated | Casual Connect Video

March 7, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

Figure out your own style for keeping track of everything. There is no correct answer. - Katrina WolfeClick To Tweet

Katrina Wolfe, Producer at Kongregate, knows a thing or two about working with IPs. At Casual Connect USA 2018, Katrina gave insight into the balancing act of working with IPs from a production standpoint. This includes building relationships with the IP holders, tactfully working with them to create your game, and managing expectations around production schedules. Tune in to the video of her full lecture below.

USA 2018 Video Coverage

Caspar Gray on Maximizing the Success of Games | Casual Connect Video

March 5, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

The quality of people assigned to your game as producer & brand manager is much more important…Click To Tweet

While speaking about negotiating with publishers at Casual Connect USA, Caspar Gray of The Arsenal Agency advised, “Think carefully about what you want before you start the process. Identify your pressure points and think about what their pressure points are.” In his talk, Caspar gave details about how to zero in on a good idea, get people excited about it, negotiate smartly and sign a fair contract. To learn more, see the full lecture below.

USA 2018 Video Coverage

Anatoly Ropotov: Esports and Mobile | Casual Connect Video

March 3, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

Are you a developer interested in the esport sector of the game industry? And, especially, do you want to expand the audience for your game? Could esports attract casual gamers while at the same time interesting pro-gamers and esports enthusiasts? These are difficult questions for developers; casual gamers and pro-gamers are at opposite ends of the gaming spectrum.

Anatoly Ropotov, CEO of Game Insight, has some solutions. Game Insight is one of the world’s leading mobile games companies. It was the first company to develop hidden object and tycoon games for social networks and mobile platforms and has since developed unique game experiences in a variety of genres. As CEO, Anatoly leads partner and platform relations and is also closely involved with game development, leading key games for the company.

Game Insight demonstrated the advantage of using a mobile-first mindset with the development and successful release of Guns of Boom, which solved the problem of creating a first-person shooter for touchscreens. Now they have turned their attention to making esports for smartphones.

At Casual Connect USA 2018 Anatoly presented the session Bringing Esports to Mobile. In it he shared his insights into creating a mobile esport game that will satisfy casual gamers as well the intense esport enthusiasts. To learn more be sure to watch the video of this exciting session.

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USA 2018 Video Coverage

Finding Success as an Indie | Casual Connect Video

February 26, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

You know the mobile games market is saturated, with many games coming out every week. And the gigantic companies have a huge advantage; everyone knows who they are and what they can do. So how can you, an indie developer, succeed in this market? And can you do it while staying true to yourself and what you want to create?

There are indie developers who have found ways to compete and succeed. At Casual Connect USA 2018, a panel of these developers shared their experiences in the session Ask the Developers – How Indie Devs Can Compete with Giants and Remain True to Themselves. Here are the participants:

Josh Nilson, CEO and Co-Founder of East Side Games, the studio that created Trailer Park Boys: Greasy Money. This game was a top 100 game in more than 100 countries and had great player reviews.

Julian Erhardt is Producer at Fluffy Fairy Games. He began as one of the first employees one year ago. Now he owns the full release process for all updates of Idle Miner Tycoon and all platforms. He makes sure the millions of players get new content and optimizations every week.

Eiso Kawamoto is Head of Product, Monetization and User Acquisition for Metamoki, the studio that developed and published Mob Wars, Fruit Pop and Tap Mafia. Eiso spearheaded business development and game publishing in a partnership with Warner Music Group, building and successfully launching Wiz Khalifa’s Weed Farm on 420.

The Panel Moderator was Sean Webster, VP of Business Development at AppLovin, a mobile marketing platform that helps developers expand their businesses. Sean brings in new publishers from around the world to a company that processes more than fifty billion ad requests every day.

The panel discussed questions of urgent importance to indie developers, such as: should you take funding and when, and what are the common pitfalls. They also described unique stories from successful indie developers. If you are concerned about how to succeed as an indie, these are the answers and experiences that could help you. Be sure to watch the video of this session!

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