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CONFERENCE  

|    Business
    BUSINESS, MARKETING & MANAGEMENT

The Business, Marketing & Management Track seeks to educate and inform developers about the business of game development and ways in which their business can be improved.

Arrow Search for all Business, Marketing & Management Track sessions

2013 HIGHLIGHTED SESSIONS

Building a Great Studio Culture on a Budget
Chris Charla (XBLA at Microsoft Game Studios)
Jake Kazdal (17-Bit)
Mike Mika (Other Ocean)
Nathan Vella (Capy Games)
 
Great studio morale and esprit de corps is essential to creating landmark games. You rarely hear about hits coming from studios where people hate coming to work! Some studios coughvalvecough can take everyone to Hawaii once a year, but for most of us that's not practical. So how do you build a fantastic studio culture on a modest budget? How can you make people excited about their workplace when there's no free soda, free lunch, or any of those dot.com perks so many bigger studios offer? What $250 investment can bring a studio together better than anything else on earth? Come get practical advice from successful independent developers who've built great cultures without huge budgets. Nathan Vella of Capy Games, Jake Kazdall of 17-Bit, and Mike Mika of Other Ocean share their culture building secrets!
Kingdom Age by the Numbers: A Postmortem
Aaron Bannin (GREE International)
 
Kingdom Age launched in the midst of increasing marketing costs and GREE's acquisition of Funzio. Despite these challenges, the game became the third multi-million dollar title from Funzio, the same studio that brought you Crime City and Modern War. During this presentation, we will review how GREE uses player data to deliver hit games that players love, while still maintaining long-term revenue to sustain the life of the game. We will bring you behind the scenes into our production debates over numbers, analytics, and how deceiving these numbers can be.
Free to Play, Pay for Stuff: Virtual Goods Win (Roundtable)
Daniel James (Three Rings)
Matt Mihaly (Iron Realms Entertainment)
 
Join pioneers of the virtual goods and currency sales models for a no-holds-barred, off the record conversation charting the strange secrets and dangerous waters of micro-transaction based business models for online games of all types. This will be the 9th successive year of this popular roundtable.
Your PR Is Broken: Journalists Speak Out
Alec Shobin (Subatomic Studios)
Ben Kuchera (Penny Arcade)
Alexander Sliwinski (Joystiq)
Eli Hodapp (TouchArcade)
Dan "Shoe" Hsu (VentureBeat)
 
Let's talk PR. You're doing it wrong. When it comes time to promote your game, journalists represent a key piece of the marketing puzzle. How can you work with them to get your message out? Let's ask! This panel brings together some of the most prestigious, outspoken journalists in the industry. Individually, they have the power to make or break your game. Collectively, they can share insight on how you can fix your broken PR strategy.
The Beauty and Challenge of Mixing Physical and Digital Games
Eric Hautemont (Days of Wonder)
Tom Chick (Quarter to Three)
Soren Johnson (Zynga)
Richard Garfield (Three Donkeys)
Joel Goodman (Playdek)
 
As more and more board and card games find success on mobile and other digital platforms, the line between physical and digital games is starting to blur. Video games are incorporating elements and conventions from board games while some new "board games" only exist in digital form. What defines the aesthetic of board games if they are no longer limited to a physical format? This panel will focus on the practical challenges and benefits of designing games that straddle the physical (real cardboard board/card games) and digital (mobile, browser, console) world.
Death to Downloads
Will Harbin (KIXEYE)
 
The demands of gamers are constantly evolving. Their appetites, budgets, and attention spans have become increasingly fragmented. Many gamers are looking to browser-based games to suit their needs, not for asynchronous cow clicking and crop harvesting, but for real gaming experiences. In this talk, KIXEYE CEO Will Harbin will aggressively debunk the misconception that gamers need a client download to provide a deep, immersive gaming experience. He will provide a crash course on how to free games from the tyranny of downloads. The talk will include real-world lessons on how to unlock long-term retention, engagement, and high monetization in a free-to-play business model. Along the way, he will provide specific examples that illustrate KIXEYE's evolution, successes, and failures.

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