The Year in Social Games: 2008-2009 | Steve Meretzky, David Rohrl, N’Gai Croal

Slides/Audio (100 MB) A Siskel & Ebert-esque survey of the best, most interesting, most ground-breaking social games of the year. What games introduced new features and gameplay not yet seen in a social game; what new methods of virality have appeared; what new twists on monetization; and what games raise the bar on production quality and polish? The most unique and interesting content is not always the most successful – but is often a leading indicator of tomorrow’s killer app. Delivered at Casual Connect Seattle, July 2009

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Steve MERETZKY (email) Steve is VP of game design at Playdom, a leading social gaming companyand the largest game developer on MySpace. Steves contributions to the industry began in 1981 at the legendary adventure game company Infocom, where his titles included Planetfall, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (a collaboration with Douglas Adams), Leather Goddesses of Phobos and Zork Zero. Prior to joining Playdom, Steve co-founded Boffo Games and held senior creative posts at Blue Fang Games, Floodgate Entertainment and WorldWinner.com. Over his prolific career, Steve also consulted with teams at Activision, Blizzard, Disney, EA, Harmonix, Hasbro and Legend, to name a few. A former board member of IGDA, Steve is co-organizer of the annual Casual Games Summit at the GDC and the annual Game Designers Workshop. Steve holds a BS in construction project management from MIT, but otherwise assures us that he did not waste his four years there.

David ROHRL (email) David Rohrl is the Executive Producer at Playdom who oversees the studio focused on new intellectual property. Rohrl has over 15 years of game development experience and previously occupied senior production and game design roles at Zynga, PopCap, EA/Pogo and The Learning Company. He has produced more than two-dozen published titlesmost notably, Word Whomp and Tumble Bees and has served as managing producer on a dozen more. A respected industry thought leader, Rohrl oversees the annual Casual Games Summit and speaks regularly at major industry events.

N’Gai CROAL (email) NGai Croal is the founder and principal of the consulting firm Hit Detection. Prior to that, he served as the senior writer for technology at Newsweek, where he wrote about consumer technology since joining Newsweek in 1995. In 2006, he launched Level Up, a videogame blog hosted by Newsweek that quickly became an industry must-read. He continues to write a monthly column called Playing In the Dark for the acclaimed U.K. magazine Edge. N`Gai currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.