The DeanBeat: Welcome to the Battle Royal

On day two, Kenny Rosenblatt of Arkadium and Justin Saint Clair of Microsoft will open the day with a talk about the underdog: Windows gaming. Sean Ryan, the head of game partnerships at Facebook, will convince us that the social network has adapted to the age of mobile gaming and that there is still plenty of life left on the desktop when it comes to social games.

We sincerely hope that Will Wright, creator of SimCity, and Victor Kislyi, CEO of World of Tanks creator Wargaming, will entertain us with witticisms about the addictive nature of World of Tanks and other big free-to-play online games. And Julie Uhrman, the CEO of Ouya, will try to convince us that the age of indies and Android microconsoles in the living room has arrived. Publishing has been turned on its head, and self-publishing will be the norm.

Our breakout sessions will drill down on the revolution for gaming in Asia, how to avoid the high costs of user acquisition, the rise of indies, the disruptive nature of video livestreaming, and the coolest emerging game technologies. Kevin Chou of Kabam will describe the hat trick of shifting from social to mobile, while Tony Tamasi of Nvidia and Mark Rein of Epic Games will lead us to the future. Clive Downie, CEO of DeNA West, will have the last word on how to engage players on mobile devices.

Startups galore

We wouldn’t be VentureBeat if we weren’t paying attention to the little guys. On Monday, we’ll announce the finalists of our fifth-annual Who’s Got Game Innovation Showdown. Seven lucky startups will go on stage to describe their businesses before our panel of veteran judges. The judges will select a winner, who will win a cool prize and some much-needed recognition.

We’ll also highlight startups in both the monetization session and emerging game technology breakout. During lunch, we’ll have roundtables where people can discuss the evolution of game tech. And we’ll have Quick Connect sessions where startups can meet VCs.

We’ll also have an all-star crew of journalist moderators and a full retinue of press to give those startups the attention they deserve. As I write this, I’m getting more and more excited about GamesBeat 2013. I hope you are too. It’s going to be a Battle Royal for attention.

Register here.

Thanks to the following industry leaders for supporting GamesBeat 2013 as sponsors: Ad2Games, AppLift, Games Analytics, NativeX, Renren Games, and Tapjoy as Gold Sponsors; Flurry, Kontagent, Playnomics, Storm8, and LifeStreet Media as Silver Sponsors; AppFlood, Twitch and Slashdot as Event Sponsors; Akamon Entertainment, Arkadium and OnLive as contributing sponsors. If you’d like to become a sponsor, please send a message to sponsors@venturebeat.com.