Social Gaming Summit - LONDON

8:15 am

Registration Opens

9:00 am - 9:45 am

Opening Plenary Discussion: The Power of the Graph Join Owen O'Donoghue, Facebook’s Gaming Marketing Solutions, as he highlights how the Web is reorganizing around people and social design and how Facebook as a platform can help your business accelerate and leverage the scale of what is now over million users.

Owen O'Donoghue Gaming Marketing Solutions, Facebook

9:45 am - 10:15 am

26 Minutes: 26 MORE Ways to Make Money from Your Game Last year at the Social Games Summit, Nicholas Lovell, founder of GAMESbrief, free-to-play consultant and author of How to Publish a Game, gave a quick-fire talk giving game makers 26 practical pieces of advice that would help them make more money from their games. This year, in the same quickfire format, he will give 26 new ways to make money from your game in just 26 minutes. You’ll walk away with your head spinning with thoughts on how you could make your game more successful as soon as you leave the session. We'll also leave plenty of time for Q&A so you have an opportunity to ask all those tough questions.

Nicholas Lovell Founder, Gamesbrief

10:15 am - 10:45 am

Morning Break

10:45 am - 11:15 am

East Meets West: Monetisation and Service Ops Best Practices from Japan Japanese online gaming companies are renowned for their extremely high monetisation metrics. Some of the reasons are culturally unique to Japan, but others should definitely be examined for possible adaption by Western developers. Crucially, Japanese games are very much in the 'software as a service' model - and make a major effort in continually expanding content and events to keep their users engaged. This presentation will share the best practices learned through the testing and launch of MAQL's games in 2012. Attendees will walk away from this session with solid takeaways, case studies, concrete examples and specific steps MAQL Europe has taken to best localise, market, and operationalise these games.

Harry Holmwood CEO, Marvelous AQL

11:15 am - 11:45 pm

Why Synchronous Games are the Future of iGaming There has been a lot of buzz lately around the convergence of social gaming and online gambling. However, for a variety of reasons, traditional operators have been slow to embrace social and mobile gaming. In this session, we'll address what makes synchronous, multiplayer, social casino games the future and the bridge between mainstream social gaming and gambling, what's the real opportunity, and what the challenges are for igaming companies looking to 'get into social.

Hussein Chahine Founder and CEO, Yazino

11:45 am - 12:15 pm

Social Games Next Generation: Creating Player Affinity by Weaving Compelling Value into Social Game Design This session will examine the negative design traits that have prevented social games from achieving their full potential, yet, paradoxically, have so far defined their success. We’ll also identify those design principles which can bring real value to players and generate compelling profits - essential cornerstones to enable the next generation of social games to thrive and see even greater success. Attendees will walk away from this session with valuable insights into the limitations and strengths of the current generation of social games and some fresh ideas & practical suggestions on future social game design.

12:15 pm - 1:15 pm

Lunch

1:15 pm - 2:00 pm

Let's Play Together: Making Social Games Truly Social Many "social" games aren't that social at all. Asynchronous and synchronous multiplayer games are growing in popularity, however, leading to a new breed of game where players can truly play together rather than in parallel. This panel discusses the challenges inherent in developing a game where players can compete against one another while still remaining profitable. How do you monetize without taking the "pay to win" route?

2:00 pm - 2:45 pm

Case Study: How Draw Something Absorbed 50 million New Users, in 50 days, with Zero App Downtime Social and online games are a multi-billion market and one of the fastest growing sectors of the global economy. With the acceleration of social media, games can go from zero to millions of users overnight — the latest example being OMGPOP’s Draw Something, a Pictionary-like game that broke all records when it went viral and skyrocketed to more than 50 million downloads and billions of drawings within a few weeks of launch with no downtime. If you are planning to build and launch a web application – growth is what you should be concerned with and prepared for. So how exactly can you architect an application, without breaking the bank, while sustaining a snappy and compelling application experience across the scaling spectrum? In this presentation, Chris Anderson will focus specifically on the data management challenges web application developers face, and provide criteria for selecting data.

J. Chris Anderson Co-Founder and Chief Mobile Architect, Couchbase

2:45 pm - 3:15 pm

Afternoon Break

3:15 pm - 4:00 pm

A Global Comparison of Online Game Markets: Brazil, Germany, USA and Russia As a global business, publishing online games can still be a very local affair. Broadband penetration, consumer preferences, legal restrictions, and disposable income all are key factors in building a successful business. In this panel, four game experts share their experiences of running a game company in their respective home markets. We will hear what worked, what didn’t, and where it’s headed next. Anyone looking to learn more about international markets will not want to miss this!

4:00 pm - 4:45 pm

Insert 50p to Continue: Getting Users to Come Back Energy systems, limited currency, a certain number of episodes per day: most social games feature some mechanic to limit how much a player can play for free in a single session. This panel discusses the challenges in monetizing in this way -- how to engage players enough to want to come back and how to encourage them to "pay to play". We share good and bad examples of how to implement such systems into games, and discuss equivalent mobile titles, which often don't follow such a pattern.

4:45 pm - 5:30 pm

One Bet to Rule Them All: Wagering the Emergence of Online Gambling Before Zynga had Farmville, it was making a fortune with Poker. With recent announcements regarding the possible legalization of online gambling, a perfect mixture of social game mechanics and traditional casino games seems to emerge. But, are we there yet? IGT’s $500 million acquisition of Double Down may have been premature, especially considering the recent indictments of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and AbsolutePoker. This panel will discuss the likelihood of online gambling making it to mainstream social networks, the legal ramifications, and the necessary moral flexibility along the way.

5:30 pm - 6:00 pm

The Future of Social In this panel, we brainstorm where social gaming might begoing in the next 5-10 years. Will the social network landscape remain as it is today, or will a new pretender come to take Facebook's throne? How will mobile devices fit in? And will the upcoming new generation of games consoles have an impact? What about the impending collision of real online gambling and social-networking casino games? Join us for an insightful debate as we discuss whether Zynga’s seeming decline marks the end of the bubble or just the beginning of a new phase.

6:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Reception

Program

November 15