Link to the Show / Show Notes
The LA Games Conference, held in Hollywood, was a great event. I had 10 key takeaways from the show. If you want to learn more, click through to see the video.
- The strong financial performance of the game industry continues despite the bad economy
- The rise of free to play - see FreeRealms.com as an example
- The power of virtual currency, goods, commerce to monetize play and turn communities into economies (Got to wonder when will Facebook and Myspace figure this out?)
- Apple doubled the mobile games market almost overnight
- Phones will become one of the interfaces for games
- Mobile applications are emerging as a new ad unit
- The mobile game/iPhone application market is creating a huge merchandising problem
- Integration of games/real world - See Nolan Bushnell
- Rise of electronic Distribution - Steam
- Emergence of cloud based distribution - Onlive