Taking The Walking Dead as the core premise, Jori Pearsall, Dan Murray, and Job Stauffer discuss the art of making IP work long-term and across mediums.
Grit: Real stories from the smallest studio in the top 25 mobile grossing charts
Oliver is the CEO of Pixelberry Studios. Their game, Choices: Stories You Play, is one of only four games launched in 2016 to end the year in the Top 30 Grossing Games in the US.
Hear real, behind the scenes stories from a team that started in a living room, failed, rose again, grew, sold, was sold again, got laid off in multiple waves, and came back to launch a Top 25 game.
Learn from real mistakes and hear how to keep a team together through adversity. Be challenged to think beyond the day to day to a larger picture of the impact that your games can have.
The best, worst and funniest pitch stories in games
In what’s now become something of a PGC tradition, Oscar Clark finishes the track with a ‘lighter’ panel that sees panelists swap their ‘best’, ‘worst’, and ‘funniest’ pitch stories – and get judged on them, competition style. It’s fun and quirky, but always laced with a serious side (the point here being that developers get a real sense of what to try and replicate or avoid when showcasing their game to publishers, investors, and platform holders).
An indie survival guide to self-publishing in the mobile free-to-play world
To self-publish or not to self-publish, that is the question. The mobile F2P space is more competitive than ever. Millions of existing apps already in the app stores, thousands of new games launching each week and the costs of user acquisition keeps increasing. Should developers partner with a publisher or launch the game on their own?
This session explores the case of self-publishing versus working with a publisher. It explores the pros and cons for each one, questions the developer should be asking themselves and their potential publishing partner.
Moreover, it covers best practices for self-publishing, common mistakes to avoid to maximise your success. This will include best practices for improving retention, IAP monetisation, ad monetisation and virality.
Storytelling In mobile and VR – The new narrative landscapes
Eric “Giz” Gewirtz, co-Founder and CCO of Seismic Games and industry veteran, explores the unique challenges of telling stories in VR and mobile games, through the lens of how it differs from traditional media and console/PC platforms.
The talk will focuses on the specific audience expectations for VR and mobile, as well as how to apply learnings from previous and current VR and mobile games.
Viewers will come away with key pragmatic approaches to tackle their next narrative-driven project, as well as new trends to look out for storytelling in games.
Eastside Games' indie lessons learned from Trailer Park Boys
Want to learn to make money in mobile? It’s as easy as licensing a niche IP, building an awful game, nearly cancelling the project, bringing in an outside team of firefighters, overrunning your budget and schedule, and then setting revenue records in your genre.
In this talk you'll learn the true stories behind Trailer Park Boys: Greasy Money and come away with a few learnings that will help make your game successful.
Quick to market – One game every eight weeks
How three triple-A developers plan to disrupt the F2P mobile market for indie devs: QuickByte Games aims to disrupt the mobile market by creating games that look and feel like they had a much longer development cycle then our self imposed eight weeks.
To achieve these goals, it needs to compact everything in a much shorter period. Discover the team's milestones, creative, monetisation, QA and localisation strategies, each necessary to achieve these results.
Design versus data in game development
A fascinating discussion with Silicon Studio’s Head of Game Data that centres on the reasons why game designers should work with data scientists, what the role of data scientists can bring to the design process, and why designers need to be informed by the data they’re provided in order to create better games.
Discover more at Pocket Gamer Connects in person
Want to get more information and analysis from the experts about the latest games industry trends?
As well as these videos and constant coverage on the PocketGamer.biz site of course, we're bringing Pocket Gamer Connects to plenty more cities around the world!
Craig Chapple is a freelance analyst, consultant and writer with specialist knowledge of the games industry. He has previously served as Senior Editor at PocketGamer.biz, as well as holding roles at Sensor Tower, Nintendo and Develop.
