Casual Connect

This session will kick off with a year in review and then will focus on predicting the next several years of social games. Who will be the winners and losers? What will the market dynamics be like and how will the games themselves look? Matt will walk through the next stage of industry evolution pulling [...]

    You’re missing your games’ true earnings potential by a long-shot if you have no advertising strategy or are relying on ordinary banner ads. Premium advertising that engages players will reap you greater brand loyalty and revenues because your players are more likely to get involved with relevant, quality advertising. Why settle for ineffectual [...]

    For generations, the advertising business has been about two things: reach and frequency. In other words, How many people can I interrupt how many times? But all that is changing. Social game developers intuitively understand something that Madison Avenue has yet to learn: the power has shifted, and users will no longer tolerate [...]

    In 2011, there were more than 500,000 smartphones sold worldwide, and 70M tablets sold, a +260% jump from 2010. As price-points lower for devices, content becomes richer, and payment systems more integrated, a wider, more addressable audience emerges. This is particularly the case for games, the most popular mobile app category. And over [...]

    Zynga’s Chief People Officer Colleen McCreary will speak about the importance of attracting and retaining talent. Topics include building a company where people can build a real career, uniting the employee base through core values and connecting the world through games. Delivered at Casual Connect Seattle, July 2012. DOWNLOAD SLIDES Colleen McCreary From [...]

    Games are no longer simply consumer packaged goods, they’re live services. With games constantly growing, evolving and reacting to player behavior and feedback, player’s expectations have been forever changed. And the stakes have never been higher, as designers look to engage gamers for years, not hours. But radical change demands radical change – [...]

    DoubleDown Casino, rated 4th best game on Facebook by the guys that run Facebook, built a company (not a studio) and in two years converted it into a $500 million sale. How you view your team—as developers, a studio or a company, will drive who you hire, who you partner with and your [...]

    To become a master designer, you need to break past a slavish devotion of past forms and create vibrant, new experiences. This design talk covers practical techniques for reinventing game genres. The goal is the invention of a unique and highly differentiated customer value proposition that makes both strong business sense and is [...]

    Making social games that actually have strategy has been a challenging problem. What can be used from traditional games and what has to be morphed to work for social games? How can you make a game where the strategy isn’t just “more is better” but is still compatible with social play patterns? How [...]

    If not guns, trolls, and kidnapped princesses, then what? A pink land of smiles and rainbows? (Spoiler: No!) As more and more people are playing games, the CONTENT of games—the style; the world; the deco sets; and, yes, even the hairstyles—is more important than ever before. This panel will pull from developers with [...]