The Gaming Insiders Summit for 2015 is taking place in San Francisco on September 24 and 25 at the Intercontinental Hotel. The event is packed with sessions for everyone interested in the game industry, and we’ve highlighted some of the sessions of particular interest to game marketers.
Making Google Play the Home for Games (at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday) brings Jamil Moledina, Google’s Strategic Games Lead, to talk about how Google Play is becoming the world’s digital marketplace for games and apps. He’ll share success stories from major, PC, and console-based partners, and indies on Google Play. This is going to be excellent information for any marketer hoping to have products do well in the Google Play store.
Peter Levin, head of Lionsgate Interactive Ventures and Games, discusses State of Affairs: Hollywood & Gaming, where he will talk about the increasing overlap and cooperation between games and film or television projects. He’ll talk about the studio’s cooperation with publishers, turning games into feature films, and investing in game development. If you’re interested in any of the intersection between these entertainment media, this is a session you have to attend.
In a related vein, Scopely CEO Walter Driver will discuss Is it possible to create authentic games for entertainment brands , in a fireside chat with yours truly. We’ll go into detail on how Scopely addressed the challenge of turning The Walking Dead into a best-selling mobile game, and what strategies companies can use to capture the essence of an entertainment brand in a mobile game. It’s a game design challenge and a marketing challenge, and Scopely has shown it can handle both aspects exceptionally well. Marketers should get a lot of valuable information from this session.
If you are interested at all in mobile advertising (and who isn’t, these days ), the panel discussion on Monetization RTS FTW!: How not to hack and slash your way through the mobile ads ecosystem will give you the best strategies from execs at Electronic Arts, Zynga, and Facebook on what they’ve learned about mobile ads. The depth of expertise in this panel is immense, so it’s a great opportunity to learn from people who are living this issue every day.
Rounding out the day is a look at App Distribution a Year From Now, with a panel of experts from Scopely, ironsource, and TUNE to talk about the big changes ahead for how apps are going to be found and installed. Changes have been announced that will affect developers, tracking companies, and ad networks, and marketers need to be ready.
The second day of Gaming Insiders Summit also offers a great deal of insights for marketers, kicking off with Alternative growth strategies for mobile games. The panel includes execs from Storm8, Rovio, Seriously, and Space Ape Games, exploring the different avenues outside of performance marketing that leading game developers are using to drive installs. The panel will explore the use of television advertising for mobile games, influencers, and more.
If you’re looking for insights on VR, there are several sessions for you. The Business and Monetization of Virtual Reality, by the co-founder of Otherworld Interactive, will talk numbers: the size of the market, adoption rates, and revenue potential. In particular, where is the money coming from right now to build VR content If you have VR in your future, this is the kind of information you need to have.
Several of the afternoon sessions are important ones for marketers, from ASO Best Practices (dealing with App Store Optimization) to Behavior-based Cohorting (how to find your most engaged users) to The Future of Mobile Attribution (how to understand the value of a mobile game marketing channel).
The Gaming Insiders Summit will have immense value inside the sessions, and of course the networking opportunities may be even more important. Marketers should come away from this conference armed with new insights, new data, and new connections for improving business.
