Why do we need the games media?

That was the question posed at Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki 2014 to our panel of video game journalists and mobile moguls, who had taken on the difficult task of detailing the ins and outs of the mobile media, while also explaining how developers and publishers can use the press to their advantage.

"The journalist's role is to unearth interesting content from the huge amount of stuff that's on the various app stores now," explained Pocket Tactics' Owen Faraday.

"There are so many games now, you wouldn't be able to discover them all without media people like us."

We are the curators

It was a sentiment echoed by all of the panelists, who agreed that, thanks to the overwhelming volume of games that hit the app stores on a daily basis, the press now has to take on the role of a curator.

"The word I always come back to is curation," added PocketGamer.co.uk editor Mark Brown.

"Unlike in the console era where we'd talk about one PlayStation game a week, there are now hundreds of games to choose from, so it's about finding people that can play as many games as possible and pick out the stuff that's actually worth talking about."

Balancing that content is a huge challenge, so if studios want to get their game covered they need to go the extra mile to make it stand out from the crowd.

Firing off a few bogstandard PR emails and hoping for the best just doesn't cut it. The games press want to cover the most unique, interesting, and enjoyable titles, and developers need to ensure that theirs fits the bill.

"I think the challenge for media in this space is handling the huge amount of content that's coming out every day," said Playground Publishing's Wilhelm Taht.

"There's something like 200 iOS games launching every day, and I don't think the media covers all of them, it probably doesn't even come close.

"It probably only covers 5 to 10 percent of the games that come out every day, and that's still a sh*t load."

You can see all the video presentations from Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki 2014 here.

Pocket Gamer Connects is the biggest mobile games show in Europe, which brings together the best speakers and delegates from across the industry and from all over the world.

To-date, Pocket Gamer Connects has been held in London and Helsinki, and the show will be heading back to the UK in January 2015.

To find out more about the latest show, head on over to www.pgconnects.com.