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The who’s who of gaming at GamesBeat 2013 (photo gallery)
Dan "Shoe" Hsu, editor-in-chief of GamesBeat, and Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat, opened day two of GamesBeat 2013 with a Halloween theme.
Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat
We aimed to get the best speakers we could at GamesBeat 2013. We were fortunate to have more than 50 CEOs among our 100 speakers. A total of 539 people attended, and 365,000 more viewed the proceedings on Twitch. You can view the video archives here.
Our theme this year was the Battle Royal, or the competition that ensues when barriers come down and game companies make the transition from physical to digital or from console to online and social to mobile. We gave our audience a slice of the state of the game business from many different views.
Check out the beautiful pictures taken by Michael O’Donnell for VentureBeat. Each picture has a description of the speaker mentioned. So if you watch our slideshow, you can get a quick glimpse of the content of our best game conference yet. And here’s a link to the stories we wrote from the event. Many thanks to everyone who attended and our sponsors, too.
GamesBeat editor-in-chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu trying out Virtuix’s Omni virtual-reality treadmill.
And this is what a real pro looks like, wearing the Oculus Rift virtual-reality goggles.
Dean Takahashi opened the event on day one with a talk on the Battle Royal.
Brendan Iribe of Oculus VR opened the event with a talk on how virtual reality will go mobile and create its own content ecosystem.
GTTV’s Geoff Keighley quizzed Sony Online Entertainment’s John Smedley on user-generated content in online games. Smedley said one 16 year old will get a surprise $8,000 check for a PlanetSide 2 contribution.
Of our three emcees, Shoe was the straight man.
John Smedley of Sony Online Entertainment at the GamesBeat conference in 2013.
Susan Choe introduced Visionnaire Ventures, the new fund headed by SoftBank’s Taizo Son, on a panel on the partners that gamemakers need for mobile-game publishing.
Jude Gomila of Heyzap, Zach Phillips of PlayHaven, Maria Alegre of Chartboost, and Kristian Segerstrale of Initial Capital debated whether you need a mobile publisher or not.
Owen Mahoney of Nexon tells Ian Sherr of The Wall Street Journal that game designers shouldn’t make junk.
We had more than 539 attendees, including 100 who signed up in the last couple of days.
Tim Merel of Digi-Capital, Sunny Dhillon of Signia Ventures, Raymond Yang of WestSummit Capital, and Lars Buttler of Madison Sandhill Partners asked why the profits are in Asia if the creativity is in the West.
Margaret Wallace of Playmatics oversaw a debate between Greg Richardson of Rumble Entertainment and Mark Robinson of Games Analytics on where to draw the line on creativity and consumer feedback.
Martin Rae moderated the session on game investments. His panelists noted the rise of Asia.
VentureBeat’s Christina Farr and Funomena’s Robin Hunicke
Meghan Kelly was serious on stage and dancing in the backstage green room.
Steve Wadsworth of Tapjoy talks about how brands can reach the right audiences on mobile.
Mark DeLoura, the White House’s former game adviser, has been an advocate of educational games for kids.
Brock Pierce of Clearstone moderates the e-sports panel with Mike Sepso of MLG, Caleb Fox of Wargaming, Mark Donovan of Xfire, and Wim Stocks of Virgin Gaming. They talked about the rise of pro game athletes.
Lots of networking going on.
Our familiar face Larry Chang with other attendees.
We’ll presume they’re happy because they’re GamesBeat sponsors.
The Virtuix guy stands out in a crowd.
Chelsea Howe of TinyCo, Caryl Shaw of Kixeye, Anna Kipnis of Double Fine, and Robin Hunicke of Funomena discussed how to make the game business better for women.
Part of the answer was making subtle changes in how everyone talks about gender roles, like not always referring to potential job candidates as ‘he.’
Mike Gallagher, the president of the Entertainment Software Association, said it was “1990s thinking” to suggest that Grand Theft Auto V was an embarrassment for the game industry because it was so popular.
Paul Thelen of Big Fish Games, Ken Murphy of GameHouse, Chris Griffin of Betable, and Vincenc Marti of Akamon talked about brands coming into their space and how they’re tired of regulation talk.
Dean Takahashi was befuddled by the Zen-like comments of Kleiner Perkins’ Bing Gordon and the rapid-fire analysis of Mayfield’s Tim Chang.
Simon Khalaf of Flurry came off as a motivational speaker when it came to talking about mobile’s potential.
Garrett McCollum of VentureBeat helped fill the room at the event. But he’s alone here because the conference hasn’t started yet.
In 2013, Dean Takahashi’s colleagues tricked him into thinking everyone would wear a costume on day two.
Ari Levy of Bloomberg quizzed Kenny Rosenblatt of Arkadium and Neil Sorens of Zen Studios on why they’re supporting Windows Phone games. Their answer: Windows is the biggest ecosystem.
John Riccitiello, the former CEO of Electronic Arts, predicted a resurgence of the consoles and a huge spurt for mobile games. It’s not a zero-sum game.
Facebook’s game partnerships head Sean Ryan said that
Graham Hopper (right), the former head of Disney’s game business, pitches Sunny Dhillon and Patrick Mork of Signia Venture Partners.
Will Wright asked how Wargaming’s Victor Kislyi made World of Tanks so engaging. Answer: By making tank battles fit in a 15-minute session.
Julie Uhrman said it was inevitable the big companies would publish on Ouya’s microconsole.
Tim Merel of Digi-Capital and Kyu Lee of Gamevil share a fun moment.
Making it big in Asia was the topic for Tim Merel of Digi-Capital, John Goodale of Unity Asia, Hans Kim of Renren Games, and Kyu Lee of Gamevil USA.
The rise of indies was the subject for Matthe Hannus of Sleepy Giant, Craig Allen of Spark Unlimited, John Graham of Humble Bundle, Steve Allison of Telltale Games, and Steve Peterson of GamesIndustry.biz.
Livestreaming is conquering all. Matt DiPietro of Twitch, Sean “Day [9]” Plott, Chris Early of Ubisoft, and Todd Harris of Hi-Rez Studios told Alex Wilhelm of TechCrunch that livestreaming is becoming the preferred way to check out new games.
The frontier of gaming isn’t that far out for Todd Arnold of Tango, Sandy Duncan of YoYo Games, Jan Goetgeluk of Virtuix, and Mark Palatucci of Anki. Martine Paris of Pocket Gamer moderated the session.
Ryan Scott Dancey made a showdown pitch for Goblinworks, maker of a cool new fantasy massively multiplayer online game.
Our judges include Michael Chang of Mavent Partners, Mitchell Weisman of Lifestreet Media, Ann Burkett of the HTML5 Dev conference, Fernando Pizarro of PapayaMobile, and Eric Goldberg of Crossover Technologies.
Karen Snyder wants to build a transmedia empire out of romance. Her Kazap will make multimedia titles that leverage romance stories for video games, movies, and books.
Thomas Meyer of oMobio showed a cool app that uses real-world images to solve onscreen puzzles.
Oliver Miao of Pixelberry Studios described how his team helped talk a High School Story player out of suicide.
Darren Majewski pitched Playground Sessions at our showdown. The startup focuses on teaching you to play the piano, as a game.
Sameer Gupta of RivalMe described how his company can automatically generate trivia games based on player tastes.
Brian Krejcarek of ZowPow makes the winning pitch at our best game startup showdown. He uses the plush toy plane to control an iPad game.
GameStop’s Tony Bartel told Adam Sessler that the hybrid physical-digital strategy will work for years.
Kabam’s Kevin Chou described how to be nimble jumping from platform to platform.
Mark Rein and Tony Tamasi talked about how the PC and its accessories would be the innovation leader for future game tech.
Chethan Ramachandran of Playnomics, Courtney Guertin of Kiip, Terry Angelos of Trialpay, and Andrew Pascal of Playstudios described how to be creative in rewarding gamers for their loyalty.
At GamesBeat 2013, Dean Takahashi threatened the audience to get back on time after the break … or else.
Gabe Leydon of Machine Zone assigned 80 people to work for 19 months on Game of War: Fire Age. It paid off with a top-grossing mobile title.
Christine Tao of Tapjoy, Keela Robison of GameHouse, Hugh Reynolds of Swrve, Michael Oiknine of Apsalar, and Cliff Edwards of Bloomberg Businessweek explored the alternatives to spending a lot of money on user acquisition.
Bob Lindsay and Sean Kauppinen chatted outside the main room.
ZowPow’s Jennifer Lu and Brian Krejcarek won the Who’s Got Game Innovation Showdown in 2013.
Henry Oh of Animoca brought a lot of Pretty Pet Salon stuffed animals.
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