Sessions Listing
 All Tracks
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Business/Legal
Programming/Technical
Research/Education
Design
Globalization
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Lecturer: Bruce Woodcock, MMOGCHART.COM
MMOGs are now over 10 years old. What is the size of the MMOG market? Who are the market leaders? How has the market evolved over time, and where is it going in the future? This session will attempt to answer these questions by presenting ongoing subscription data tracked by MMOGCHART.COM.
Format: Lecture
Track: Research
Date/Time: Wednesday, 10:30 AM,
Room: Seaport
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Lecturer: John Erskine, NCsoft
In today’s International Online Gaming environment, building a successful service organization is a key to long term success. This session will explore the integrative approach to managing important Studio Services throughout the lifecycle of a project. How should these processes fit together with each other, and how should each integrate with the overall development process? What is the right time to start each process? How should they even work? Please come with questions and share from your own experience.
Format: Lecture
Track: Community
Date/Time: Tuesday, 5:00 PM,
Room: Salon F
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Lecturer: Mike McShaffry, MrMike
What should you prepare before you pitch your game to a publisher? During the pitch, what should you say? More importantly – what should you never say? Mike McShaffry has seen projects die on the vine or get signed and has a great formula for “The Pitch.” This lecture will cover preparation, pitch materials, what you should expect at each meeting, and what you should do afterwards.
Format: Lecture
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Wednesday, 2:00 PM,
Room: Salon B
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Moderator: Marty Poulin, Social Sage
Panelist: Bridget Agabra, Acceleration Studies Foundation
Panelist: Erik Bethke, GoPets Ltd.
Silicon Valley and Big Media companies like Disney, Nickelodeon, MTV, and IBM have committed to spend over $1 billion in the last year and have been putting a lot of fire under new start-ups and initiatives in virtual worlds and casual games. Where there is smoke there is fire and the next generation of opportunity is upon us.
Format: Panel
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Thursday, 3:30 PM,
Room: Harbor
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Moderator: Jason Roberts, 38 Studios
Panelist: Steve Danuser, 38 Studios
Panelist: Darius Kazemi, Orbus Gameworks
Panelist: Scott Hartsman
Panelist: Osma Ahvenlampi, Sulake
The panel covers many of the prime considerations and questions related to improving or adding content and features to a currently running MMO in an effort to grow a subscriber base without offending the current audience. It is targeted at how to identify weaknesses in the game from all disciplines and how those need to work together to resolve problems with the released game.
Format: Panel
Track: Design
Date/Time: Wednesday, 9:00 AM,
Room: Harbor
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Moderator: Wanda Meloni, DFC Intelligence
Panelist: Tom DuBois, Electronic Arts
Panelist: Charlie Hite, LucasArts
Panelist: Rick Lambright, Sierra Online
Leading publishers discuss the trends in console games online. Come hear representatives from EA, LucasArts, and
Sierra Online.
Format: Panel
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Tuesday, 2:00 PM,
Room: Harbor
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Lecturer: Jess Lebow, Carbine Studios
The days of Pong are long gone. Our games are larger. Our worlds are bigger. And as we've grown, so too has the role of the content team. Come listen to Jess Lebow talk about how to get more out of your content—from drawing in your community, to creating great demos, to getting past the ESRB.
Format: Lecture
Track: Design
Date/Time: Thursday, 10:30 AM,
Room: Salon F
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Moderator: Jason Wonacott, Wonacott Communications
Panelist: John Young, Slipgate Ironworks
Panelist: Robert Ferrari, Turbine, Inc.
Panelist: Won Il Suh, Neowiz
Panelist: Min Kim, Nexon America
Can Eastern and Western gamers co-exist, or will the markets always need to be segregated? Together game industry leaders from Asia and the U.S. explore the potential of a global MMOG marketplace.
Format: Panel
Track: Globalization
Date/Time: Tuesday, 9:00 AM,
Room: Harbor
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Lecturer: Sara Jensen Schubert, Spacetime Studios
If you're making a content-heavy game with business model that relies on continual play, long-term maintainability is an essential concern. The infrastructure systems that support handcrafted content like items, abilities, quests, and NPCs are the most important systems in the game. Learn how to design these systems for maximum efficiency and quality over the lifetime of the service.
Format: Lecture
Track: Design
Date/Time: Wednesday, 5:00 PM,
Room: Salon B
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Lecturer: Rick Buonincontri, Solid State Networks
This lecture will address the underlying value of the Game Acquisition Experience – what that means and why it is vital to the success of your game. The Game Acquisition Experience starts when a gamer clicks to download a game file. What happens in the time it takes to acquire the game through the time the game is installed has a significant impact on your bottom line.
Format: Sponsored Lecture
Track: Design
Date/Time: Thursday, 9:00 AM,
Room: Salon F
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Lecturer: John DeMargheriti, BigWorld
Lecturer: Phil Adam, BigWorld
For developers that are considering distribution of their online titles within the South East Asia and other emerging markets, this session will provide unique insights from those who have experienced them first hand. From outlining the existing and emerging markets, discussing the types of deals on offer, the administrative and legal requirements for western developers planning to move into these regions. This session will provide attendees with the potential pitfalls, affectively avoiding them and achieving positive outcomes and affective distribution channels.
Format: Lecture
Track: Globalization
Date/Time: Wednesday, 5:00 PM,
Room: Seaport
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Moderator: Jay Moore, The Strategery Group
Format: Special
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Thursday, 7:00 AM,
Room: Grand Ballroom
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Moderator: Jay Moore, The Strategery Group
Format: Special
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Tuesday, 7:00 AM,
Room: Grand Ballroom
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Moderator: Jay Moore, The Strategery Group
Format: Special
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Wednesday, 7:00 AM,
Room: Grand Ballroom
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Lecturer: Todd Northcutt, GameSpy (A subsidiary of IGN Entertainment)
This session will discuss interesting new game features, enabled by using the relationship information the buddy list provides to a developer. Examples of released games will be use to illustrate these concepts along with relevant examples of functionality from other application (web or otherwise.).
Format: Lecture
Track: Design
Date/Time: Tuesday, 10:30 AM,
Room: Salon F
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Lecturer: Mike Goslin, Disney Online
This course discusses ways to use the power of traditional linear storytelling to make open-ended world-based games more dramatic, exciting, and engaging.
Format: Lecture
Track: Design
Date/Time: Thursday, 10:30 AM,
Room: Seaport
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Moderator: Erin Hoffman, Philomath Games
The Better EULA Project is an initiative to explore virtual rights in the context of human and property rights throughout history, and the potential business and ethical advantages of offering real world modern standard rights to citizens of virtual spaces. The Project asserts that the next step in the evolution of online spaces is the establishment of rights to property and self-government by users, for the development of stabler communities and greater retention.
Format: Roundtable
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Thursday, 10:30 AM,
Room: Salon E
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Lecturer: Simon Hayes, BigWorld
Lecturer: Gavin Longhurst, BigWorld
This session will discuss some of the current and future technical and design hurdles that are and will be faced by developers of MMOs and Virtual Worlds. Attendees will take with them an overview of current and future issues relating to network latency, shared physics and user created content propagation, developing for multiple platforms as well as server-side security requirements.
Format: Sponsored Lecture
Track: Programming
Date/Time: Thursday, 9:00 AM,
Room: Salon B
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Lecturer: Robert Mitchell, Sony Online Entertainment
The audience will participate in a demonstration of the ActionScript game framework that SOE uses to prototype online mini-games. Your ideas will be used to build a playable prototype as if you were one of our designers. The goal of the session is to explain why a framework is essential to rapid prototyping, to share some of our observations and feedback, and to provide enough foundation to guide the creation your own game framework. The information presented will be applicable to any scripting language, just biased by our adoption of Flash.
Format: Lecture
Track: Programming
Date/Time: Wednesday, 3:30 PM,
Room: Salon B
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Lecturer: Nour Khrais, Maysalward
Despite its linguistic and cognitive discomfort; Glocalization empowers niche developers and publishers by augmenting their roles in the game business value chain. The Lecture will journey the audience through the impact of Glocalization in game design evolution and explore the main building bricks to prepare for it. Bringing into the discussion real stories from the Middle East and Latin America where Glocalization played a major role in Games successes.
Format: Lecture
Track: Globalization
Date/Time: Tuesday, 2:00 PM,
Room: Salon B
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Lecturer: Alexander Macris, Themis Group, Inc.
Hardcore gamers may be gluttons for AAA games, but they love to snack on short-session interactive entertainment, too. See the evidence for the popularity of “gamer snacks” and how to design mini-games that can capture the core gamer’s attention, advertise traditional titles, or directly generate revenues.
Format: Mini Lecture
Track: Design
Date/Time: Wednesday, 5:00 PM,
Room: Salon F
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Moderator: Osma Ahvenlampi, Sulake
A discussion of best practices for agile product management in an online environment, where constant updates are not just possible, but expected by users.
Format: Roundtable
Track: Programming
Date/Time: Thursday, 3:30 PM,
Room: Salon E
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Lecturer: Isaac Barry, Sierra Online
This session will introduce the concept of affordances, as defined by Gibson and popularized by Donald Norman. Examples will illustrate several ways in which careful design of affordances can lead to more effective interfaces and satisfying mechanics.
Format: Mini Lecture
Track: Design
Date/Time: Wednesday, 5:30 PM,
Room: Salon F
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Lecturer: Dillon Seo, Korea Game Industry Agency (KOGIA)
Korean online game industry has been one of the world leaders in setting up an online game trend in various ways with its advanced infrastructure and online game contents. However, with the saturation of the local market and failure of killer contents, the growing momentum has been stagnant. This lecture will examine why the Korean game industry chose the online game space for its growing momentum, what the current industrial situation is like and what the expected changes in the industry are in the future. Also, it will briefly discuss why the foreign MMOs were not successful in the Korean online game market and what kind of social networking is happening with respect to the virtual world.
Format: Lecture
Track: Globalization
Date/Time: Wednesday, 10:30 AM,
Room: Salon F
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Lecturer: Joseph Ybarra, FireSky
In this session, Joe Ybarra will address the growing content divide between on and offline games and how they each follow a separate content model that can be related to Hollywood’s two primary content delivery outlets: movies and television. Joe will reveal details of the model that will be used by the upcoming massively multiplayer online roleplaying game from FireSky, Stargate Worlds, to illustrate that the television model is the best option for MMORPGs.
Format: Lecture
Track: Design
Date/Time: Wednesday, 10:30 AM,
Room: Salon B
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Lecturer: Bill Fulton, Ronin User Experience
The fun of a multiplayer game comes from two sources: the fun from gameplay itself and the fun from social interactions between players. However, most multiplayer games appear to treat social fun as an afterthought rather than an opportunity. It is as though ‘multiplayer’ is viewed primarily as an engineering challenge and not a design challenge separate from gameplay design. This talk will define ‘social design,’ disentangle it from game design, and demonstrate how principles of social psychology can provide insight into creating the social fun that is essential to player acquisition and retention in multiplayer games.
Format: Lecture
Track: Design
Date/Time: Wednesday, 9:00 AM,
Room: Seaport
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Moderator: Adam Boyden, Xfire, Inc.
Panelist: Patrick Ford, K2 Network
Panelist: Andrew Sheppard, Outspark
Panelist: Karl Mehta, PlaySpan
Panelist: Chris Early, Microsoft
Panelist: Bharat Vasan, EA Online
Virtual item sales are becoming one of the most important elements of MMO communities as companies look for new revenue streams surrounding their games and develop new business models to support running an online game. In order to support virtual item sales companies are considering a number of novel solutions introduced by these new business models. Supporting microtransactions, selling items in a primary market, and dealing with exploitative secondary markets are all challenges that need to be addressed when introducing an item based economy. This panel will discuss the challenges associated with harnessing an online game for profit, and the many solutions to incorporating a microtransaction system while preserving the community's fantasy appeal.
Format: Sponsored Panel
Track: Design
Date/Time: Thursday, 9:00 AM,
Room: Harbor
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Lecturer: Brandon Reinhart, Spacetime Studios, LLC
This talk provides tools to aid the expression and visualization of game vision. Using narrative tools and concept collaboration, the designer will learn to identify the aspirations of the player and reflect them in his characters and conflicts, visualize his world, and fire the imagination of the audience.
Format: Mini Lecture
Track: Design
Date/Time: Wednesday, 4:00 PM,
Room: Salon F
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Moderator: Scott G. Warner, Garvey Schubert Barer
Panelist: Eric Goldman, Santa Clara University School of Law
Panelist: Rob Lanphier, Linden Lab
Panelist: Troy Hewitt, Flying Lab Software
Game developers, advertisers, media companies, and community sites are making use of User Generated Content (UGC) on an unprecedented level. While UGC can be a valuable resource, using UGC is not without risk, particularly when it is incorporated into a product – a game, website, advertisement, etc. This session will explore how (and why) companies use UGC, the legal risks and practical issues of doing so, efforts to establish industry rules for UGC, and practical suggestions for using UGC while minimizing risk.
Format: Panel
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Wednesday, 5:00 PM,
Room: Harbor
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Lecturer: Charles F. Manning, PLAYXPERT
Online gaming is an intensely social phenomenon, with millions of young adults around the globe interacting constantly, collaborating together, communicating with one another, and sharing information.
In an effort to create and maintain user communities, next generation online games and game services have to adapt to deliver integrated, mash-up experiences for players (both in and out of game). Chat and matchmaking are no longer enough; modern users demand identities in place of anonymity, intelligent matchmaking, friendship development mechanisms, award points systems, and productivity tools to facilitate community which extends outside of the traditional gaming boundaries.
Format: Lecture
Track: Community
Date/Time: Tuesday, 9:00 AM,
Room: Salon B
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Lecturer: Daniel Ostenso, Illinois Institute of Art
Nearly two billion children in the developing world have little or no access to education. Now, the One Laptop Per Child Foundation's "XO" is being mass produced, to be distributed to millions of children world-wide. As such, the XO stands to become a significant platform for Serious Games and Online Multiplayer Games, reaching large, untapped markets. However there is much confusion surrounding this low-cost, yet high-tech computer. In this session, Professor Daniel Ostenso will demonstrate the new XO and discuss its potential as a serious game platform. Warning to right-wingers or the mentally unstable: <em>DOOM</em> may be played during the demonstration.
Format: Lecture
Track: Research
Date/Time: Tuesday, 5:00 PM,
Room: Salon B
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Moderator: Peter Freese, ION Game Conference
Panelist: Erik Bethke, GoPets Ltd.
Panelist: Scott Jennings, NCsoft
Panelist: Damion Schubert, BioWare Corp.
Panelist: Bridget Agabra, Acceleration Studies Foundation
What will the online games space look like in five years? What new technologies, social revolutions, and cultural shifts will bring about momentous transformations in the way people play and pay for online games? What changes are already taking place? This panel of industry luminaries, mavericks, critics, and cynics all share their views of what to expect in the year 2013.
Format: Panel
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Wednesday, 2:00 PM,
Room: Harbor
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Lecturer: Tom Edwards, Englobe Inc.
Given the strength of the global gaming industry as a viable economic sector, as well as the great attention and growth accorded to online games as a new social force, it’s increasingly necessary to examine the broader issue of how online, globally-exposed game content addresses the geocultural context in which the games are both played and developed. With the ample use of real game examples, this engaging lecture will provide an overview of the primary issues and concerns in developing content for an online, multicultural and international community.
Format: Lecture
Track: Globalization
Date/Time: Tuesday, 3:30 PM,
Room: Salon B
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Lecturer: Steven Klebe, Danal, Inc. (BilltoMobile.com)
This session will focus on the fundamentals of the payments world, where the gaps exist in addressing the needs of the Online Gaming business and how to separate the facts from the fiction in terms of emerging solutions.
Format: Lecture
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Tuesday, 2:00 PM,
Room: Salon F
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Lecturer: Joe Ludwig, Flying Lab Software
It took five years, but Flying Lab Software has finally launched its Age of Sail MMO. Come hear the ups and downs of the project and all the things the team learned along the way. All of the successes and failures encountered while building a new MMO with a new team are presented.
Format: Lecture
Track: Design
Date/Time: Thursday, 3:30 PM,
Room: Seaport
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Moderator: Jay Minn, AristoDigital
Panelist: Isaiah Cartwright, ArenaNet
Panelist: Toby Ragaini, Big Fish Games
Panelist: Mike Sellers, Online Alchemy
Panelist: Osma Ahvenlampi, Sulake
Free to play with microtransaction revenue generation is a new and emerging model for MMO and Virtual Worlds. Will this be the new model that replaces the subscription model? How about advertising? How can designers weave the money making as part of the design process? As game designers take on the role of economists, we need to examine the player motivators, gold farming, MUDflation and other critical design issues that can make or break our projects. Our panel of designers with experience from the trenches of current online game projects will share their thoughts on this critical topic.
Format: Panel
Track: Design
Date/Time: Tuesday, 5:00 PM,
Room: Harbor
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Moderator: George Dolbier, IBM
Panelist: Grant Wei, Cryptic Studios
Panelist: David Hoppe, Access International Law Group
Panelist: Erin Hoffman, Philomath Games
Panelist: Mike Doyle, THQ Canada
It's time for a change. Many online game and virtual world EULAs violate basic human rights standards. Many in the industry are passionate about this topic, this panel will bring some of them together to discuss recent litigation, and discuss how the industry needs to change.
Format: Panel
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Wednesday, 3:30 PM,
Room: Harbor
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Moderator: Dave Elchoness, Association of Virtual Worlds
Panelist: Erik Bethke, GoPets Ltd.
Panelist: John K. Bates, Mindark / Entropia Universe
Panelist: Craig Sherman, Gaia Online
Panelist: Rob Lanphier, Linden Lab
Why are Virtual Worlds so often viewed merely as esoteric play spaces? What is missing that keeps them from being far more broadly accepted, now? We will examine language & definitions, usability issues, payment models, branding, bringing play & tasks that are fulfilling, and we'll broach the question: Are virtual worlds games? Should they be? Are they social networks? Should they be? What Virtual Worlds learn from MMOs, from social networking, and from other virtual worlds?
Format: Panel
Track: Design
Date/Time: Tuesday, 10:30 AM,
Room: Harbor
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Lecturer: Osma Ahvenlampi, Sulake
An overview of how Sulake shifted its product development to high gear using Scrum and learned how to update a community working in 31 local markets each month. As a result, Habbo has went through several major redesigns with continuous focus on the desires of its global teen audience. Agility now permeates not just development processes but throughout our management methology. Session covers lessons learned on development team formation, user participation in product design and business performance measurement.
Format: Lecture
Track: Programming
Date/Time: Thursday, 2:00 PM,
Room: Seaport
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Lecturer: John Smedley, Sony Online Entertainment
Reinventing the MMO
Format: Keynote
Track: Design
Date/Time: Wednesday, 12:30 PM,
Room: Grand Ballroom
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Lecturer: David Ryan Hunt, Flying Lab Software
A look at various game systems – some old, some new – and relationships between them that improve a game’s ability to retain players.
Format: Lecture
Track: Design
Date/Time: Tuesday, 9:00 AM,
Room: Seaport
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Lecturer: Paul Boustead, Dolby
Lecturer: John Griffin, Dolby
As social interaction increasingly becomes an important part of online games and virtual worlds, voice communication is emerging as a must-have feature. Dolby interactive voice technology enables developers to go beyond basic channel-based chat to deliver an immersive, high-quality 3D voice experience that opens up new online experiences and game play possibilities.
Come to this session hosted by Paul Boustead, Director for Interactive Voice technologies at Dolby Australia and John Griffin, Director of the Games Market Segment at Dolby to learn about this exciting new technology.
Format: Sponsored Lecture
Track: Design
Date/Time: Thursday, 9:00 AM,
Room: Seaport
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Moderator: Marty Poulin, Social Sage
Panelist: Larry Mellon, Larry Mellon Consulting
Panelist: Victor Jimenez, Northrop Grumman
Panelist: Joe Ludwig, Flying Lab Software
Regardless of what online game you serve, scaling will be critical if you are at all successful. While creating the killer game is first priority, not far behind is making sure your success won’t kill you.
To engineer great systems on a budget we have to master the art of system integration and code re-use. By combining open source and middleware solutions a company can derive infrastructure to meet a games needs in months instead of years.
Format: Panel
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Thursday, 10:30 AM,
Room: Harbor
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Lecturer: Brian Robbins, Fuel Industries, Inc.
As the online games market continues to mature, brands and marketers will become an increasingly viable source of funding for games. The most successful developers will be the ones who know how to meet the needs of advertisers while still creating compelling games. This session will provide in-depth information on how the branded content business works today, and how developers can position themselves to take advantage of this space in the future.
Format: Lecture
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Wednesday, 9:00 AM,
Room: Salon F
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Lecturer: Adam Martin, NCsoft
Learn how to writing secure code cheaply and effectively - and how to accurately predict the development costs of achieving a given level of secureness.
Format: Lecture
Track: Programming
Date/Time: Thursday, 3:30 PM,
Room: Salon F
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Moderator: Dave Weinstein, Microsoft
A free-flowing roundtable discussion about the role of security in game development.
Format: Roundtable
Track: Programming
Date/Time: Thursday, 2:00 PM,
Room: Salon E
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Moderator: Dave Weinstein, Microsoft
Panelist: Dan Kaminsky, IOACTIVE
Panelist: Jason Larsen, IOACTIVE
A series of “lightning” talks on the state of computer security as it applies to games, followed by panel discussion and Q&A.
Format: Panel
Track: Programming
Date/Time: Thursday, 10:30 AM,
Room: Salon B
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Lecturer: Won Il Suh, Neowiz
Format: Keynote
Track: Globalization
Date/Time: Tuesday, 12:30 PM,
Room: Grand Ballroom
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Moderator: Anne Toole, The Writers Cabal
Panelist: Sande Chen, The Writers Cabal
Panelist: Sam Lewis, Cartoon Network
Panelist: Katie Postma, FireSky
Narrative designers, a systems designer, and a community director debate the importance of player story versus game story in MMOs. This session explores ways to combine these elements in a way that is most compelling to the player and the player community.
Format: Panel
Track: Design
Date/Time: Thursday, 3:30 PM,
Room: Salon B
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Moderator: Craig Dalrymple, Sony Online Entertainment
Panelist: Victor Wachter, Cryptic Studios
Panelist: Katie Postma, FireSky
Panelist: Alan Crosby, Sony Online Entertainment
Panelist: Meghan Rodberg, Turbine, Inc.
This panel will explore the panellist’s thoughts on how best to respond to various and sundry crises that can arise within a community.
Format: Panel
Track: Community
Date/Time: Tuesday, 3:30 PM,
Room: Harbor
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Moderator: Steve Danuser, 38 Studios
Panelist: Victor Wachter, Cryptic Studios
Panelist: Craig Dalrymple, Sony Online Entertainment
Panelist: Katie Postma, FireSky
Panelist: Meghan Rodberg, Turbine, Inc.
Communities form around MMOs long before the product launches. Harnessing the energy and enthusiasm of potential players is an intoxicating prospect for community managers, but must be handled properly to ensure the long-term health and growth of the community. This panel focuses on laying the groundwork for the right kind of environment before a game launches and how to build upon the established foundation to welcome a new audience after the game goes live.
Format: Panel
Track: Community
Date/Time: Thursday, 2:00 PM,
Room: Salon B
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Lecturer: Brian Pass, Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP
Lecturer: Shawn Foust, Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP
The terms of service is a central piece to the development of any online world. This contract defines the relationship between the gamer and the company administering the online world. The expanding audience for successful online games requires a strong terms of service contract to minimize the potentially astronomical liability online game companies may face arising from game related disputes. This presentation will offer strategies on how to strengthen your terms of service in five areas: (1) intellectual property; (2) digital transactions; (3) rules of conduct; (4) downtime disputes; and (5) protecting the company's control over their digital community.
Format: Lecture
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Tuesday, 9:00 AM,
Room: Salon F
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Lecturer: Hermann Peterscheck, NetDevil
Lecturer: Scott Brown, NetDevil
As the playing field for MMOs becomes more and more competitive, going after a large market share becomes a more critical component which both producers and designers must consider. This talk details specific reasons to consider lowering your minimum spec, the tradeoffs and necessary considerations and the potential implications on product success. We will also discuss past and current games from the point of view of visual appeal and minimum spec and demonstrate that sacrificing the high end technology does not mean making an inferior game experience.
Format: Lecture
Track: Design
Date/Time: Tuesday, 3:30 PM,
Room: Seaport
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Lecturer: Yat Siu, Outblaze
Mr. Siu’s keynote will focus on the integration of social networks, casual gaming, and massively multiplayer online games, and will examine three very important trends in gaming.
Format: Keynote
Track: Design
Date/Time: Thursday, 12:30 PM,
Room: Grand Ballroom
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Lecturer: David Whatley, Simutronics Corporation
Lecturer: John W. Ratcliff, Simutronics Corporation
As the size of development teams is exploding, and the range is becoming more geographically diverse due to out-sourcing, the traditional development process has become increasingly difficult to manage. A new forward-looking paradigm is that of massively collaborative game development and authoring techniques. This talk discusses the challenges in switching from the old to the new paradigm, and the new types of tools that are required to be successful.
Format: Lecture
Track: Programming
Date/Time: Wednesday, 9:00 AM,
Room: Salon B
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Lecturer: Alex St. John, Wild Tangent
In this session WildTangent co-founder and CEO, Alex St. John, author of Microsoft’s DirectX technology, will discuss the blue sky opportunities provided by the PC/online gaming model, and highlight the challenges the console market will face moving forward. The discussion will closely examine key differentiators between the two platforms, and the role that community and social gaming play in the equation. He will also demonstrate the economics for making premium games free online, supported by advertising, and how this model can really generate more revenue than retail models. Attendees will walk away questioning their current business models, but with the right strategies and tools in mind to help them survive and profit from this apparent shift in the gaming business.
Format: Keynote
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Thursday, 5:00 PM,
Room: Grand Ballroom
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Lecturer: Allison Luong, Pearl Research
Pearl Research’s Phoenix Generation study focuses on the lifestyle and behaviour of Chinese youths between the age of 16 and 30. Through the study, Pearl Research identified emerging trends, attitudinal shifts and hot products in China’s Internet, games, technology and entertainment industries. In addition, the study provides insights and actionable recommendations for companies to effectively reach young consumers in China.
Format: Mini Lecture
Track: Research
Date/Time: Wednesday, 2:00 PM,
Room: Salon F
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Lecturer: David Lakritz, Language Automation, Inc.
This session will take you on a trip around the world with stopovers in the countries and regions that make up the top global markets in online gaming today. In each locale, we'll look at factors affecting the growth of online gaming, typical demographics, major languages that should be supported, and cultural issues and content restrictions to be aware of. Before returning home we'll look at how games and infrastructure might evolve to deliver content that spans culture, as well as language.
Format: Lecture
Track: Globalization
Date/Time: Tuesday, 10:30 AM,
Room: Salon B
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Moderator: Larry Mellon, Larry Mellon Consulting
Panelist: Marty Poulin, Social Sage
Panelist: Darius Kazemi, Orbus Gameworks
Panelist: Brian Hafer, TubeMogul, Inc.
Online games are long-term businesses with recurring production cycles and live consumer services. With a need for audience retention, rapid iteration for new content, system stability and cost control over years of operations, the need to automate costly, repetitive tasks and improve the user experience is clear. But where to focus your improvement efforts is less clear in the complex world of an online game. This panel discusses metrics-driven development in online games: setting actionable measures of success against measurable long-term goals and tracking monthly progress via your game, player and operational data sources.
Format: Panel
Track: Programming
Date/Time: Thursday, 2:00 PM,
Room: Harbor
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Lecturer: Edward Hunter, comScore Inc.
This session will provide important insights into the behavior and attitudes of the casual and pc-based online gamer: who they are, what they do online, and where to find them online. comScore will answer key questions such as: How do light gamers and heavy gamers act differently online? Where can light and heavy gamers be found online, and what other online activities are they likely to engage in? How do consumers search for games and gaming information? comScore will also give an overview of larger online gaming trends: worldwide adoption of online games, and stats of the leading sites and games.
Format: Lecture
Track: Research
Date/Time: Tuesday, 3:30 PM,
Room: Salon F
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Lecturer: Geoffrey Zatkin, Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR)
Accomplishment systems, such as Xbox 360 Achievements, have created new ways to launch explosive marketing campaigns and increase community interaction across every gaming genre. Direct-to-consumer marketing through digital storefronts, such as the PlayStation Store and the Xbox Live Marketplace, has given game companies new methods to distribute marketing material and extend the long tail of game title’s sales. Gain insight into how Accomplishments and Downloadable Content effect sales through best-in-class examples, backed up by detailed statistical analysis. Learn how to implement highly effective strategies such as viral marketing and community building using these emerging technologies for your portfolio of game titles.
Format: Lecture
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Wednesday, 3:30 PM,
Room: Seaport
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Moderator: Kirk Soderquist, Perkins Coie LLP
Panelist: Don McGowan, Microsoft Corporation
Panelist: Neal Black, Live Gamer, Inc.
Panelist: Sean F. Kane, Drakeford & Kane LLC
This presentation will look at MMOGs and virtual worlds to examine virtual property and the intersection of real money in a virtual world. We'll look at several issues such as: What is virtual property and who owns it? What is the legal status of an in-game currency? What is the future of virtual property and the exchange of virtual goods. How does the exchange of virtual property impact the relationship of publishers, developers and those companies providing a market for the exchange of virtual property? What regulatory issues are impacted by buying and selling virtual property? What are some of the business issues in hosting MMOGs, virtual worlds, and marketplaces for the exchange of virtual property? How do real-world legal issues like gambling and illegal lotteries play out in an interactive world?
Format: Panel
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Wednesday, 10:30 AM,
Room: Harbor
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Lecturer: James E. Dunstan, Garvey Schubert Barer
Next generation MMOG designers face significant challenges as games morph from “dungeon crawls” to sophisticated virtual worlds complete with their own economies and telecommunications infrastructures. As games evolve away from a monthly subscription model, designers are looking for new ways to monetize game content, everything from in-game advertising to microtransactions to sale of goods. And with MMOGs now part of mainstream entertainment, governments are stepping in to apply some real world regulation to virtual worlds. This session will tease out some of these issues and provide some practical approaches for dealing with “the man.”
Format: Lecture
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Wednesday, 2:00 PM,
Room: Seaport
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Lecturer: Steve Augustino, Kelley Drye & Warren LLP
Lecturer: Dr. Andreas Lober, SchulteRiesenkampff
As virtual worlds continue to develop and evolve, so do the legal issues and liabilities affecting developers. Join presenters Steve Augustino, a United States-based attorney, and Dr. Andreas Lober, a German attorney, as they navigate the differing approaches of the U.S. and the E.U. Presenters will provide an overview of the emerging trends in virtual world law from U.S. and E.U. perspectives. Focusing on the service provider relationship with its end-users, presenters will discuss societal obligations and provide a cross-jurisdictional review of legal liabilities in the U.S. and Europe.
Format: Lecture
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Tuesday, 2:00 PM,
Room: Seaport
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Lecturer: Adam Martin, NCsoft
Why is Web 2.0 more than a buzzword, and is there anything concrete in there that we can use to make more money from our games? How do you embrace the new development models, the new technologies, and above all the new monetization models? All this and more...
Format: Lecture
Track: Business/Legal
Date/Time: Tuesday, 10:30 AM,
Room: Seaport
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Lecturer: Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign, Inc.
Think WOW players get emotional from whacking trolls? Think again. What gamers like most is how games create emotion from decisions players make. WOW attracts 9 million paid subscribers. Facebook has 50 million free ones. Is social play one of its secrets? To find out XEODesign's new study compares the emotion profile for WOW and Facebook. Beyond fiero and schadenfreude emotion rich verbs drive participation in Web 2.0 from Flickr to Facebook in ways that usability cannot measure.
Format: Lecture
Track: Design
Date/Time: Tuesday, 5:00 PM,
Room: Seaport
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Lecturer: Dana Hanna, Microsoft Game Studios
What happens when you take a cult-classic pen-and-paper RPG and turn it into the first ever cross-platform shooter for Vista and Xbox? Shadowrun caused an all-out torches and pitchforks battle among RPG purists, console gamers, and the PC shooter community. The game is also a great example of how traditional MMO community management practices are increasingly relevant to console gaming.
Format: Mini Lecture
Track: Community
Date/Time: Wednesday, 3:30 PM,
Room: Salon F
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