There’s just days to go until the leading b2b conference for the mobile games industry descends upon the West Coast for networking galore, insightful discussions and good times – the anticipation is building! We could not be happier to share with you some of the incredible speakers that will be joining us to share their wisdom and expertise at our upcoming Pocket Gamer Connects Seattle next week.

This May 9-10, we are welcoming hundreds of the game industry’s finest speakers to share their expertise with us on 16 diverse topic tracks covering the most pressing issues facing the industry today. You can view our stellar speaker line-up so far here to get an idea of the level of incredible talent that will be joining us in Seattle. The immense wisdom and insight that our talented speakers bring to our conference is a major part of what makes ours the number one b2b mobile gaming conference. To give you a sneak preview at what you can expect from our conference, we are spotlighting some of our most highly anticipated speakers to showcase the fantastic talent and top-tier businesses that will be sharing their insights with us next week.

We recently spotlighted PeopleFun’s Chief Executive Officer, Lead Game Designer and Manager of User Research. You can catch up on our speaker spotlights so far here.

Next up in our spotlight series is the Chief Executive Officer at Kooapps, Chun-Kai (CK) Wang. CK Wang is co-founder and CEO at a mobile gaming studio called Kooapps. Kooapps has made over 30 titles including Snake.io and Pictoword with over 200MM downloads. Prior to Kooapps, CK was a software developer at Microsoft Research where he built large-scale NLP web services. CK has a BS in Electrical Engineering, a MS in Computer Science from Stanford University, and teaches server-side web development at the University of Washington.

Join us at PG Connects Seattle on May 9-10 to see Wang discussing designing your game with multiple ad formats in mind, indie survival tactics and creating games and monetising in Asia as an American publisher.

PocketGamer.biz: Where are the next big opportunities in the mobile games market?
CK Wang: It's user generated content and mods. Mobile games have traditionally not have a lot of UGC because of the small screen form factor but Roblox has become the envy of all gaming studios from nowhere on the app store charts 5y ago and now consistently top ranked. It's really opened a whole new space of possibilities we're super excited about. I guess we also call this the metaverse.

What is the single biggest challenge facing the mobile games industry today?
Too many games depend on specialized targeting on the user acquisition side, mostly targeting in-app purchase whales. As the world moves toward a more privacy centric environment, monetization will need to shift towards a more unified approach (ads + iap + subscription).

Is hypercasual gaming here to stay?
Yes, definitely, there will always be a time and place and audience that want a short chewing gum experience just like chewing gums never go away! Hypercasual space is much more competitive than it was 3-4y ago but we would say the same has happened for other categories in mobile as well (casino, mid-core, etc).

What do you enjoy most about working in the mobile games industry?
Designing for everyone. Mobile is the only form factor where your audience is truly all ages and all cultures. This comes with a rare opportunity to create experiences that really connect the world, ex: old grandma playing games with their teenage son.

What was your first-ever mobile phone?
TapDefense, it's sooo classic, first ever strategy game in the modern smartphone. UI, mechanics, all pretty antiquated and they never released a second version but gosh, this game really set the stage for a huge amazing industry that mobile games is today.

Meet the experts in-person
There’s no place like Pocket Gamer Connects Seattle to connect with incredible industry leaders like CK Wang. Don’t miss out on attending our West Coast conference – secure your seat now and get early access to our meeting platform to schedule all the meetings and see who all will be joining us in Seattle come May.