Social & Online Games Summit

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March 9-10, 2010

Few areas of our industry have moved as fast as the rise of socially connected gaming. Today we see that many of the most popular games in the world are played on social networking services such as Facebook, MySpace, and hi5. These games are capturing tens of millions of mainstream users, people who do not consider themselves gamers–exactly the audience that was the growth path for the casual games market, which is facing challenges such as lack of innovation and decreasing price points.

The Social and Online Games Summit sits at the intersection of these converging trends, bringing together leading thinkers and businesspeople to provide the attendee a snapshot of the industry and where it is going. Attend to learn about the secrets of virality, the next generation of mass market multiplayer, the ways in which virtual worlds are changing to meet the demands of an ever-growing audience, and opportunities for new players in both mature and emerging markets.

Keynotes

The Relentless March Toward "Free"...And What it Means to the Video Game Industry
Kristian Segerstrale, Vice President and General Manager, Playfish

This presentation from the leading innovator in social games and one of the largest operators of free-to-play games worldwide will explore this move toward "free" and critically examine what the future holds for the creation, distribution and consumption models in video games and suggest what your company needs to do to prepare for the era of free. Read more...

How Friends Change Everything
Gareth Davis, Platform Manager, Facebook

In less than three years our friends have changed the way games are played and developed. The Facebook platform has been at the forefront of massive disruptions in who plays games, how games are discovered, distributed, designed and operated, and how games monetize and leverage device capabilities. Now that your friends are in the game, what happens next? Read more...

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Highlighted Sessions

Rapidly Developing FARMVILLE: How we created and scaled a #1 Facebook game in 5 weeks
Speaker: Amitt Mahajan (Zynga)
Why Are Gaming Veterans Flocking to Social Gaming?
Speakers: Steve Meretzky (Playdom), Brian Reynolds (Zynga), Noah Falstein (The Inspiracy), Brenda Brathwaite (Game Designer)
From Casual to Social Design: What to Pack
Speaker: Jeferson Valadares (Playfish)
From the Box to the Book: Bringing a Retail Franchise into the Social Gaming World
Speakers: Caryl Shaw (Maxis), Demetri Detsaridis (Area/Code)
Lessons from the Inside: Building and Optimizing a Virtual Goods Business
Speakers: Lee Clancy (IMVU)

View all Social & Online Games Summit sessions here.

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Advisors

Raph Koster

President, Metaplace
Summit Chair

Raph is the President of Metaplace, Inc. He got started in virtual worlds back in the days of the text MUDs in the early 90s, working on Legend. He was creative lead on the original Ultima Online and lead designer for Ultima Online Live and Ultima Online: The Second Age while working for ORIGIN and Electronic Arts. He then went on to be creative director on Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided, for Sony Online Entertainment. From 2003 to 2006, he served as Chief Creative Officer at Sony Online. He is the author of the acclaimed book "A Theory of Fun for Game Design" and somehow finds the time to write constantly on his popular blog.

John Welch

CEO, Making Fun

John Welch is veteran leader of the casual games industry and one of the early pioneers of digital distribution of entertainment. His new venture, Making Fun, is focused on connected, cross platform games, applications and technology for the web and mobile devices such as iPhone and Nintendo DSi. The Making Fun Platform provides user profiles, social graph, leaderboards, achievements, virtual items, virtual currency, telemetry, reporting, and other horizontal features critical to running modern game deployment and operation. The company’s first product, NFL Trivia Matchup, is a cross-platform web and iPhone game created under license from the National Football League.

Previously, as co-founder & CEO of PlayFirst, the casual games publisher famous for its best-selling Diner Dash brand, John was responsible for the vision, financing, strategic direction and operations of the company for its first five years. Prior to forming PlayFirst, he spent nearly five years building Shockwave.com into one of the Internet's top game portals as the company's Vice President of Games and Product. He was a key member of the Dreamcast Network leadership team at SEGA from 1998-1999. Previously, John spent several years running a small consultancy he co-founded, and he began his career at Andersen Consulting.

John has served as steering committee member and chair of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Online & Casual Games groups, and he is a regular faculty member of the annual Game Developers' Conference. John is an active member of the Golden Gate chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO). He holds degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science from M.I.T. and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Sebastien de Halleux

COO & Co-Founder, Playfish

Sebastien de Halleux is chief operating officer and co-founder of Playfish, one of the largest and fastest growing social games companies. Sebastien leads operations in Playfish's San Francisco office where he drives distribution, monetization and business development, as well as partnerships with Facebook, Google, Apple and MySpace.

Prior to Playfish, Sebastien was part of the team that incubated Nokia Ad Service, a business unit aimed at monetizing mobile traffic across Nokia's 850 million mobile devices worldwide. Sebastien also was an early team member of Macrospace Ltd., a company which merged with Sorrent Inc. to become Glu Mobile, where he was instrumental in building the sales and marketing functions of the organization. He later expanded Glu's distribution footprint in Europe, forged key partnerships with network operators Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange, and reorganized the company's financial planning and sales operations in preparation for its IPO on NASDAQ. Sebastien holds a Master's in Civil Engineering with honors from Imperial College London. He has resided in Brussels, Bangkok and London, and presently lives in San Francisco.

Sulka Haro

Lead Designer, Sulake

Sulka is the lead designer for Sulake Corporation's virtual world Habbo. He has been involved in building Habbo from the very early days, having joined Sulake back in 2001 when the company only had 10 employees. With around 15 years of experience working in award winning multimedia, games and web projects, he's been involved in projects ranging from mobile phone product launch websites to Habbo's 100+ million user online communities. In 2008, he was nominated as one of the Top 20 most influential people in the MMO Industry by the Beckett Massive Online Gamer magazine.

Steve Meretzky

VP of Game Design, Playdom

It's hard to have a serious conversation about gaming without mention of Steve. It's also hard to have a humorous conversation about gaming without mention of him. Steve's contributions to the industry began in 1981 at the legendary adventure game company Infocom, where his titles included Planetfall, The Hitchhiker's 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.

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