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21 - 23 May 2013

Leveraging Hollywood IP

Leveraging Iconic Hollywood IP to Create A Global Mobile Phenomenon
Andrew SHEPPARD, President, Kabam
Serving a Global Audience

Serving a Global Audience
Brian OH, Director, GAMEVIL
Zombies on the Great Wall

Zombies on the Great Wall
Leo Liu KUN, GM China, PopCap
Hardcore Social Game

Creating a Hardcore Social Game
Leonard LIN and Tiam YANG, Co-founders, Tyler Projects
Navigating Ecosystems

Navigating Mobile Ecosystems Throughout Asia
David KIM, Co-Founder & CEO, Animoca
Tackling the Market

Tackling the Chinese Mobile Market: A Guide for Western Developers & Publishers
Aurelien PALASSE, Director Business & Communication, UBISOFT CHINA
Collaborative Game Development

Collaborative Game Development
Rajat OJHA, Managing Director, The Awesome Game Studio

Lectures at Casual Connect are programmed to focus on cutting edge topics in the casual games space. On May 21 - 23 2013, over 800 industry professionals will come to Singapore for Casual Connect in Asia.

Conference content was programmed by a set of industry advisors.

Day 1: General Industry, Selling Up & Selling Out, and Development

Tower Ballroom
Development

Emcee: Yan MARCHAL, Founder, Sanuk Games

Island Ballroom Jurong Selling UP & Selling OUT

Emcee: Jim PERKINS, Director, Digital Media Specialist, Corum Group

Island Ballroom Katong
General Industry

Emcee: David NIXON, CEO, Gemini Hive

9:15-9:20

Welcome to Casual Connect Asia

Jessica TAMS, Managing Director, Casual Games Association

9:30-9:50

Making Money with Casual Games – What’s Real Today!

Jessica SACHS, Director Developer Relations, Big Fish

A part of Big Fish since 2006, Jessica Sachs is a Director of Developer Relations. Jessica actively seeks out game developers who have the potential to develop successful casual games. Jessica works to establish and foster long-term relationships with these developers. This allows the developers to utilize Big Fish's production and research services to improve the quality of their games.
[Email Jessica]

A discussion about the changing casual games business, presentation on the very real opportunities to make money developing casual games, and how to successfully increase the ROI on an individual game.

10:00-10:20

The Effective Way to Publish Games in the Indonesia Market

Ihsan WAHAB, Director of Publishing, Altermyth

Ihsan is Director of Publishing at Altermyth, publishing games (Telco), building game platforms (Nampol), encouraging local game developers to monetize content, and welcoming content from all around the world to the Indonesian market. Ihsan also runs game operations as a publisher with the Pandawa Altermyth brand. Ihsan has specialties focusing on the establishment and optimization of day-to-day operations, and has built a good relationship with developers, game publishers, channel distributors, cyber café owners, media and game event organizers, with strength in business strategy and market trends.
[Email Ihsan]

Join Ihsan Wahab for insights into the Indonesian game market. He’ll present key information for entering the market including market facts, gamer behavior, product selection, localization and monetization, and he’ll suggest an effective way to publish, covering campaign, distribution, advertisement, events, and community.

M&A Gaming Market Update

Jim PERKINS, Director, Digital Media Specialist, Corum Group

Entertainment software entrepreneur Jim Perkins is directly responsible for publishing some of the industry’s biggest franchises, including Unreal, Duke Nukem, Wolfenstein, Doom, Hunting Unlimited, and Driver. A well-known senior executive with a 22-year track record of publishing such bestselling hits, he founded and grew two highly successful software publishing companies (FormGen and ARUSH) from start-ups to multi-million dollar enterprises.
[Email Jim]

The Corum Group presents a 10,000 foot view of the industry's consolidation, trends & drivers, and expectations for the coming few years in-and-around gaming, social, and media.

Facebook Platform for Games: Partnering in Asia

Jessica LEE, Head of APAC Platform Partnerships, Games, Facebook

Jessica Lee is Head of APAC Platform Partnerships, Games at Facebook where she leads the region's platform strategy for games. Previously at Facebook, Jessica was part of the team that launched the company's payments business in 2010. Jessica holds an economics degree from Stanford University.
[Email Jessica]

The world's most talented developers are in Asia, as are the world's most dedicated players. Learn how Facebook plans to lean in with mobile and desktop developers based in China, Korea, and Japan with a quickly growing Facebook population in Asia, and globally.

10:30-10:50

ICON POPin' Journey to the Top

Stefan DAMASENA, CEO, Alegrium

Stefan Damasena is the founding partner and CEO of Alegrium, an independent small scaled game development company based in Jakarta - Indonesia. Alegrium was founded in very late 2010 and has drawn quite a success with its latest release – ICON POP Quiz. Prior to Alegrium, Stefan was the founder of Magnivate (now XM Gravity, a WPP Company). He has been working as a digital producer for five years, handling high profile projects such as Nokia, Samsung, Hutchison, Pocari Sweat, Danone, Nestle, Unilever and some others.
[Email Stefan]

With over 9 million downloads, Alegrium's ICON POP Quiz has been one of the big AppStore hits of the the 2012 holiday season. This session will cover Alegrium's journey to the top as they present a detailed post-mortem of the development, virality and marketing of the game, as well as other notable lessons that the studio has learned throughout the years.

Mergers & Acquisitions Briefing

Jim PERKINS, Director, Digital Media Specialist, The Corum Group

Digital Future - Sustainable Economies

Michael POLE, CEO, gloops International

Michael Pole is the Chief Executive Officer for gloops International. gloops is one of the most successful mobile social game companies in Japan which was recently acquired by Nexon. gloops International operates two development studios, one in San Francisco, California and the other in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. We design, develop and publish a wide variety of mobile game applications across the widest variety of devices and networks possible.
[Email Michael]

Digital sales have jumped from $1.9 billion to $3.2 billion, and by 2013 are likely to be $10 billion. This historic shift for the games industry offers new opportunities and risks. While the opportunity for greater revenue and margin is attractive, the required and optional investments in infrastructure and skill set introduce new expenses and additional risk. Relationship investment is key to unlocking the vast potential of consumers wanting and who are willing to pay increasingly large sums of money to be entertainment on their Smartphones and Tablets.

11:00-11:20

Game Engines for BlackBerry 10 by BlackBerry® & Unity SEA

Justin LEE, Application Development Consultant Southeast Asia, BlackBerry
Brett BIBBY, Unity Evangelist, Unity Southeast Asia & Hong Kong

Brett has been making games for more than 30 years, with 15 of those years here in Asia based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Recently he has been working with Unity to help game developers across Asia get up and running in both game development and Unity.
[Email Brett]

Find out how to easily bring your games to BlackBerry 10™ using new SDKs from major game engines such as Unity 4 SDK

M&A Interview with the Buyers | 11:00 - 11:50

Jan BECKERS, CEO & Founder, HitFox Group
Moderator: Jim PERKINS, Director, Digital Media Specialist, Corum Group

Jan Beckers has co-founded 5 successful companies before starting the HitFox Group. HitFox Group is focused on building and acquiring synergetic businesses in the fields of game distribution and user acquisition. Its portfolio companies include ad2games, AppLift and Game Finder. Previously, Beckers has been Co-Founder and Managing Director of SponsorPay, Madvertise and Absolventa.
[Email Jan]

What are buyers looking for in acquisition targets- stable founders, creativity, headcount, revenue, profitability, market potential, or all of the above? Join this panel for a round robin Q&A.

Tackling the Chinese Mobile Market: A Guide for Western Developers & Publishers

Aurelien PALASSE, Director Business & Communication, UBISOFT CHINA

Aurelien has worked in the video games industry for almost 15 years with a background in retail & licensing deals.

He moved to Shanghai in 2010 to join Ubisoft in order to develop the business in mainland China.
[Email Aurelien]

The mobile market is booming everywhere and China is poised to be the No. 1 market by 2015. Even though regulations aren't constraining content from entering China, there are major differences from Western markets that must be considered before making money in this huge marketplace. Aurelien Palasse, Business & Communication Director at Ubisoft Shanghai in charge of the mobile activities of the group in China, will share some figures about this specific market, explain why rules are different in China for mobile and suggest what you need to do to succeed.

11:30-11:50

Making Money with Microsoft

Jeremy SNOOK, Sr. Business Development Manager, Microsoft Studios

Jeremy Snook is Senior Business Development Manager for Microsoft Studios, Microsoft’s first party games publishing group. He is responsible for discovering games and negotiating agreements for all three key MS platforms: Xbox, Windows, and Windows Phone. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2010, Jeremy was Director of Content for GameHouse where he built a publishing team and managed their games distribution acquisition efforts. Before his turn to casual games in 2006, Jeremy was a developer himself at Gas Powered Games, where he worked on the Dungeon Siege and Supreme Commander franchises. Jeremy holds MCDM and BA degrees from the University of Washington.
[Email Jeremy]

Jeremy Snook will cover distribution options for your games on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 including self-publishing.

Leveraging Iconic Hollywood IP to Create A Global Mobile Phenomenon

Andrew SHEPPARD, President, Kabam

Andrew Sheppard is President of Kabam Studios, overseeing four Studios and 16 development teams in the global production of web and mobile games. He also manages the product marketing, consumer insights, and community functions. Previously, he served as Chief Product Officer, leading Kabam's product strategy, product development, and engineering efforts. Before joining Kabam, he led hi5Networks’ transformation from a social networking site into a social entertainment destination. Prior to hi5, Andrew's experience in the games industry included positions at Outspark, Electronic Arts, and CBS Interactive. Andrew holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business and a BA from Pomona College.
[Email Andrew]

Building a successful free-to-play game for mobile devices is tough enough. Developing a mobile game based on iconic movie franchises presents a whole new level of complexity. Andrew Sheppard, President of Kabam Studios, will discuss his team's experience turning The Hobbit into one of the most successful games on iOS and Android in partnership with Warner Bros., and how the companies continue to scale together for a global fan base (i.e. now available in Korean and Japanese). Andrew also will share lessons learned from Kabam's first Hollywood studio partnership with Paramount Pictures to develop its Web game based on The Godfather, to its latest partnership with NBC Universal to develop a mobile game based on the just launched (May 24) movie Fast and Furious 6.

12:00-1:00

LUNCH SESSION: Entertainment and Gamification | 12:00 - 12:50

Neeraj ROY, CEO & Managing Director, Hungama

Neeraj Roy is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. Under his leadership, Hungama today is South Asia’s largest digital and mobile entertainment company. Neeraj has served as Chairman of the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) and is still on its Board. Neeraj was recently voted amongst the ‘Top Ten mobiThinkers’ and ’50 Most influential People in Mobile Entertainment’ globally. Neeraj was also awarded the Sun Microsystems- Economic Times Young Leader award in 2001 and voted as 25 young leaders in the new millennium by Business India. He is also an active speaker at various international forums and on several domestic and international committees advising on the global Mobile& Digital Entertainment economy.
[Email Neeraj]

The South Asian Entertainment market is fast adapting to global trends and at the same time innovating on various fronts setting global examples. India is at the epicenter of it all as a growing entertainment economy with over 900 Mn Mobile consumers, over 160 Mn Internet consumers and 170 Mn households consuming digital content in some form or the other. Gaming of course is a growing category across the 3 screens but there are interesting case studies on the Music and Movies business from which Gaming companies and independent developers can learn a lot. Entertainment and Gamification will be a key growth driver as new digital economies evolve and opportunities to cross sell and up sell within these economies will thrive.

LUNCH SESSION: "Show and Sell"-- mig33 Game Pitch | 12:00 - 12:50

mig33, one of Asia's leading mobile social network platforms, presents the opportunity for 3 finalists from the Indie Showcase at Casual Connect to pitch their game to a panel of judges. Bringing regional and international game studios and their products to the spotlight, you don't want to miss this "Show and Sell" kickoff. Join this session to see the pitches, and then come back at 5:00pm to find out who will rise to the top and earn the prize!
Prizes:
- mig33 will co-sponsor the winner for the upcoming Angel Hack Singapore 2013 (http://angelhack.com/)
- $1,000 USD in cash
- Prominent marketing packages on mig33 platform including guaranteed exposure to over 1 million potential users!

LUNCH SESSION: Coping with a Diversified Mobile Gaming Market | 12:00 - 12:50

Gonzague de VALLOIS, SVP of Publishing, Gameloft

Gonzague de Vallois is Senior Vice President of Publishing for Gameloft, a global leading publisher of digital and social games. In this role, Gonzague is responsible for driving worldwide sales of the company, leading its innovative marketing strategies and securing licenses with strong international brands.

Gonzague’s career spans over 14 years in which he has developed a strong background in the digital content market. He has worked as a Marketing Manager for Bouygues Telecom, a French mobile carrier. His initiatives successfully led Gameloft to become a leading player in this fast growing mobile gaming market.

He received his degree from ESSEC Business School.
[Email Gonzague]

Mobile gaming is booming across the globe, from smartphones to tablets, from China to Mexico, from US to Germany or Thailand. Learn how to cope with the diversities of these markets and become a successful global publisher.

1:00-1:20

Fukuoka City: Regional Game Industry Hub

Kiyoshi SHIN, Journalist and Lecturer, Fukuoka City

An honorary member of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Japan, a non-profit organization for individual dame developers and an executive board member of Digital Games Research Association JAPAN（DiGRA Japan), he provided advisory service for Fukuoka City Seattle Game Mission in 2012 and Singapore industry research. As a coordinator, he conducted research on current status of game industry in two regions while explored possibilities for mutual exchanges with Fukuoka’s game industry.
[Email Kiyoshi]

Effectively utilizing its advantages of geographical proximity to other Asian cities and a large number of universities and technical colleges, Fukuoka City continues to evolve as a hub of the gaming industry in Japan, working closely with both acedamia and government. They will share examples of companies that have taken advantage of and have thrived in this growing hub within the game industry.

M&A Interview with the Sellers | 1:00 - 1:50

Michael POLE, CEO, gloops International
John PASSFIELD, Creative Director, Red Sprite Studios and Program Manager, Right Pedal Studios
Lior SHIFF, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Product Madness
Moderator: Jim PERKINS, Director, Digital Media Specialist, The Corum Group

John Passfield is Creative Director of Red Sprite Studios and Program Manager of Right Pedal Studios, a games accelerator based in Brisbane, Australia. He is a veteran of the computer games industry with more than 20 years professional experience on numerous award-winning titles. John is also credited as a founding member of the Australian games development community having co-founded some of the first development houses including Interactive Binary Illusions in 1993, Gee Whiz! Entertainment in 1996, and Krome Studios in 1999. John also worked as Creative Director at Pandemic Studios, and was Co-Owner/Creative Director of 3 Blokes Studios before selling it to RockYou in 2011.
[Email John]

As Managing director and co-founder of Product Madness, Lior Shiff leads the operation, product efforts and strategic partnership of the company. Established in 2007 Product Madness is a leader in the Social Casino area with office in San Francisco and London. Product Madness developed and published successful Facebook games like 3D Slots, Hollywood Spins, and Celebrity Slots.

Prior to establishing Product Madness, Lior worked at McKinsey & Co. and as an officer in The Israeli NSA, where he managed an R&D department of 40 engineers and a $5mm budget. Lior, who holds MBA from Stanford University, won the Chief of Intelligence ‘Creative Thinking and Intelligence Contribution’ award and two ‘Source of Life’ awards.
[Email Lior]

What does it take to sell your game company? Find out from four CEOs who just did. The good, the bad and the ugly... hear the first-hand stories from these founders about what it takes for a successful exit. If you are thinking about a potential strategic sale in the near future, this is a panel you won’t want to miss.

Settling Down and Setting Up in Europe: The Cultural Challenges, Finding the Right Partners and Growing to Ship Fast

Alastair BURNS , COO, Gramble

Alastair Burns is proud to claim 14 years’ experience in the games industry. Highlights include Producer credits on Killzone PS2, The Simpsons Game for EA, Aliens versus Predator 3, Rogue Trooper: The Quartz Zone Massacre and Star Wars: Elite Squadron. Published titles aside, Alastair has also enjoyed the time to pitch, prototype and to work on some amazing concepts that have led to exciting new opportunities and moved him from console to mobile. Alastair is a growth mentality veteran: building teams, tech and business. He is now working with amazing colleagues, building the most fun and respected mobile social gaming network in the world: Gramble.
[Email Alastair]

Alastair Burns has experienced first-hand how the capacity to adapt to new platforms, devices and audiences is a key requirement to stay on your feet as a long-term game developer. He will lead the audience through his own experiences and learning curves as he transitioned from a being successful console producer and team lead to a mobile developer and finally as a start-up COO. Aside from laying solid start-up foundations to ride the rollercoaster of moving into mobile/tablet, he will also offer a roadmap for developers to foster an 'always executing and improving' workflow and develop products that are designed to ship fast. Last but not least, Alastair will offer tips to break through into the European continent with your game business, acquire funding to grow and set up partnerships that count without having to go through the same hassle he and his co-Gramblers have been through.”.

1:30-1:50

Collaborative Game Development

Rajat OJHA, Managing Director, The Awesome Game Studio

Rajat Ojha (Managing Director) has 18+ years of industry experience, represented entire creative industry of India at various forums, credited for releasing India’s first global PS3 game Smash ‘N’ Survive, produced over 15 titles so far.
[Email Rajat]

Not all Indies are fortunate to have all the possible skillsets required to develop a game. They often find a workaround for any given problem which, most of the time results in their own creative solution; but, collaborative game development can fill all the possible gaps. Indies can remain Indies and still release something which lasts forever. No partnership, no outsourcing, no contracting…pure passion meets pure passion. Rajat Ojha will shed some light on collaborative development: What is it? What is the need? Is it even possible? Who can do it? How can they do it? Is it outsourcing model? What are the challenges involved? What are the benefits? Is it the future?

From Developer to Self Publisher: The Fast Track

Torsten OPPERMANN, CEO, indigo pearl GmbH & Co. KG

Torsten Oppermann is one of the industry veterans in gaming. He started his career in 1988 at Germany's first gaming magazine and has since enjoyed making money while gaming. He's worked in Germany, the US and the United Kingdom for companies such as SEGA, HASBRO, and Computec Media to name a few. He started his own venture in 2001 with indigo pearl - one of the leading European agencies specialized in gaming and technology and also pro-actively is a business angel and coach to gaming startups.
[Email Torsten]

In today's digital world, publishers are not necessarily needed. But just publishing your game doesn't make you a publisher.

This speech is about the 7 key strategies and tactics to have in place in order to start your future life as your own publisher.

2:00-2:20

The Future of Game Development in the Philippines | 2:00 - 2:50

Darwin TARDIO, COO & Co-founder, FunGuy Studio
Niel DAGONDON, President and Founder, Anino Games
Erick GARAYBLAS, Founder, Kuyi Mobile
Markku KERO, CEO, Job & Esther Technologies
Jhondie ABENAZA, Founder & CEO, Zeenoh Games
Andro BALUYUT, CEO, GameOps
Moderator: Alvin JUBAN, Head of Operations, Secret 6 Inc.

Darwin is the COO and Co-Founder of FunGuy Studio, a game design and development studio based in the financial hub of the country, Makati City, Philippines, and also a Co-Founder of 2FunGuys LLC, a game development and publishing company in Phoenix, Arizona. Included in his portfolio are games such as SqwishLand and Actionjetz, which are among the top virtual world game for kids in the U.S. His studio also worked on different games for different platforms such as mobile games for Andorid and iOS, Facebook apps, Xbox and PlayStation.

He also currently holds the position of Vice-President of the Game Developers Association of the Philippines (GDAP), a non-stock, non-profit organization dedicated to furthering the game development industry in the Philippines. It is composed of game development studios in the country, both foreign and local, and has strong ties to the government, technology suppliers, education sector and the international community of game developers via the International Game Developers Association.
[Email Darwin]

Elson Niel Dagondon is the president and founder of Anino Games. The company was founded in 2001 and is the first Game Development Studio in the Philippines. Anino Games specializes in Third Party Development and its related services for PC and Mac, Mobile, iOS, Facebook, Nintendo DS and Wii and has won multiple international awards such as the Independent Games Festival and International Mobile Game Awards. Their games have also gone on to reach the top 10 in the Appstore and Online Portals such as Big Fish. Its past and current clients include Walt Disney Interactive, Activision, Electronic Arts, Alawar, Namco, Oberon Media, Gamehouse and Playdom among many others in the U.S., Europe and Australia. Its 50-strong studio is located in Makati.

Niel is also the president of CIIT Philippines, a Digital Arts and Technology college in Quezon City, and is a board member of the Game Developers Association of the Philippines.

Niel obtained his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science major in Computer Engineering at De La Salle University and is currently taking up his Masters in Entrepreneurship in Ateneo de Manila University.
[Email Niel]

Erick Garayblas is a game designer and founder of Kuyi Mobile, a game development company based in Manila. He has been developing games for over 12 years and created a number of award-winning and successful titles including the "Streetfood Tycoon" franchise, which has received millions of downloads worldwide. An entrepreneur by heart, Erick loves watching movies, travelling, reading and considers babysitting his best skill to date.
[Email Erick]

Having been involved in mobile gaming and entertainment for more than a decade, and having worked on games and mobile development throughout the evolution of mobile as we know it today, Markku Kero provides technological insight that spans various devices, software platforms and implementation scenarios. Currently he heads Job and Esther Technologies, where he has worked on programming language translation technology, launching a development tool named Eqela that enables development of games and applications for multiple platforms without penalties in performance or programming power.
[Email Markku]

Jhondie Abenaza is the founder and CEO of Zeenoh Games. He is a game developer and a young technology entrepreneur with a track record of producing five original casual games. JD is an active member of the Game Developer's Association of the Philippines and he supports the advocacy of the organization.
[Email Jhondie]

Andro Baluyut is part of the pioneering team of Online Game Publishing in the Philippine Market, and has been part of the industry since 2003. He has personally worked with over 50 online games, from MMORPGS to Web Games, in Philippine and international territories. Currently, he is a consultant for global publishers, and an Outsourcing Solutions Provider of services specialized for online games.
[Email Andro]

Secret 6 Inc. was founded in San Francisco, CA by Ron Schaffner and opened its Game production studio in Manila in 2005. It has expanded into a full range game development studio to service many platforms and has a compliment of nearly 70 Game Artists and Developers.

The company still does support work for mainly US clients in terms of Art (2D/3D/Flash) or Art and full development, but now has a keen eye for bigger project partnership ventures.
[Email Alvin]

The game development community in the Philippines has taken a careful approach toward outsourcing their production process. But as developers and publishers relentlessly look for more cost-effective solutions in building their products, they are realizing the value of curtailed cost and efficient development processes. Join this panel of the top Philippine studios to gain insights from a country that has heavily relied on outsourcing to fuel the local game development industry.

Development Studio Fundraising in Asia--Past, Present and Future

John LEE, Chief Strategy Officer, ZeniMax Asia Pacific Ltd.

John has been investing in the Asia Pacific games space since 2001, starting at Softbank Venture Capital, followed by senior executive roles at several top Asia based games companies including NC Soft in Korea and GigaMedia in Hong Kong. He currently a founder of AngelVest's Hong Kong chapter, the largest angel investor network in greater China, and has been involved at a board level for multiple games companies around Asia in the past 12 years, including currently being actively involved as a board member of Mig33, the largest mobile social network in Southeast Asia.
[Email John]

A 12 year perspective on the evolution of the fund raising market in Asia for developers, from a experienced investor both from a angel perspective and a corporate investment perspective. Overview of what has worked in the past, present and active Q&A on what might work for the future for aspiring game studios, including perspectives on Kickstarter and seeking investment from angels and venture capital funds. Bring all your funding questions!

Operating a Global Game Service: Lessons Learned

David WORLE, VP of Content Acquisition, WildTangent

David Worle joined WildTangent in November 2007 and currently leads the game content strategy for the WildTangent Game Network. His responsibilities at WildTangent include managing the publishing team and driving current partnerships, as well as prospecting new games for release.

Prior to joining WildTangent, David held various positions at Encore Software for 10 years, including Director of Sales & Director of Marketing. During his tenure at Encore he helped the company grow from $12 million to over $80 million annual revenues. David studied English Literature and Philosophy at Texas Tech University.
[Email David]

This session will discuss how to resolve the common pitfalls of the developer community, from overcoming SDK fatigue to prioritizing developer resources. Then, we address some of the challenges that developers face when going to work directly with an OEM or mobile carrier (i.e. lack of value, time to market, etc.). In addition, this session will highlight the importance of picking the right advertising solution (brand advertising vs. CPI ads) and how it truly works. Finally, we will wrap up by discussing how to stay up-to-speed with the changing times and new operating systems, and how to ensure success in an ever growing marketplace where discoverability and revenue are a huge obstacle.

2:30-2:50

The Challenges of Creating an Indie Game Accelerator

John PASSFIELD, Creative Director, Red Sprite Studios and Program Manager, Right Pedal Studios

John Passfield discusses the challenges of building a mobile game accelerator from scratch. Right Pedal Studios is helping small teams of 2-5 developers to build mobile games by providing funding, office space, access to industry mentors and business support.

This talk will discuss the process of building the accelerator, the methodology behind the selection of the games, as well as an overview of the tools and business behind the program. You will also be given a sneak peek at some of the games in development.

Mastering Growth: Keys To Developing A World Class Work Place

Michael KALKOWSKI, Co-founder & Managing Director, GameDuell

Michael Kalkowski is co-founder, Managing and Creative Director of GameDuell and is responsible for the company’s games, websites, and player communities. He has a passion for creating great teams and products that people love. Michael started his ventures as a serial entrepreneur 13 years ago as a founder of dooyoo.com. In his previous life, he worked as an international product and marketing consultant. He holds several business degrees from Germany and an MBA from Eastern Illinois University (USA).
[Email Michael]

Most start-ups begin with an energized, driven culture but as they grow bigger or older, this culture often deteriorates. how do you avoid becoming the victim of your own growth? Over the last 9 years, GameDuell has evolved from a three people casual game developer to a cross-platform company with over 200 people in several countries. Michael Kalkowski, Co-Founder and Creative Director of GameDuell, will examine best practices of companies that are known for a great work environment in both Silicon Valley and Europe. By getting insights into the processes to maintain creativity and drive amongst employees, you will learn how to survive the impact of fast growth and technology changes on your team's culture.

3:00-3:20

Developing Native Cross Platform Games

Markku KERO, CEO, Job and Esther

With the advent of more and more mobile platforms, together with the rising popularity of mobile gaming, the challenge to develop software for different operating systems and hardware configurations has become even greater than before. How to deal with different mobile platforms, while still maintaining a desktop presence, and also targeting the web? How to write the code; what are the different technical architectures/methods for approaching the different platforms; how to optimize performance? The topics will be explored and discussed specifically from a programmer’s perspective.

Is There a Series A Crunch in Asia? | 3:00 - 3:50

Jeffrey PAINE, Founding Partner, Golden Gate Ventures
Dmitry LEVIT, Partner, Digital Media Partners
Chua KEE LOCK, CEO, Vertex Venture Management
Don SIM, Co-founder & CEO, Daylight Studios
Reza BEHNAM, CEO & Co-founder, AdzCentral
Moderator: Oh THONGSRINOON, VP and Evangelist of Games, Mig33 Pt., Ltd.

Jeffrey Paine is the founding partner of Golden Gate Ventures, an early stage technology incubator based in Singapore. Jeff started and manages the Founder Institute in Singapore where he is currently overseeing its expansion in Southeast Asia. Since 2010, the Founder Institute in Singapore has graduated over 60 companies.

Jeff spent the first eight years of his career in early stage venture and private equity in the US, North and South Asia. He co-founded a China market entry advisory firm which was then merged with a China mid-market private equity firm. He is currently an investor and advisor to Redmart, Tradegecko, Coda Payments, AtticTV, and Flutterscape.

He is a Singapore native and graduated with a Bachelors of Business Administration (Information Systems) from the University of Southern California.
[Email Jeffrey]

Dmitry formerly served as an advisor to several investment groups and corporations pursuing technology and media opportunities across developing Asia, with Media Development Authority of Singapore, Singtel, ru-Net, IDG Ventures Vietnam, SUP Media, Livejournal.com, Chinese Founders Fund, VIVA Media and Nusantara Ventures among his clients. In 2008-2009, Dmitry was part of investment team of IDG Ventures. Prior to that, Dmitry spent several years in business development roles with Yahoo! Southeast Asia. Prior to his move to Asia, Dmitry served as a CMO at Digital Design, leading Russian enterprise software solutions provider.
[Email Dmitry]

Mr Chua Kee Lock is Group President & CEO of Vertex Venture Holdings Ltd. Prior to joining Vertex Group, Mr Chua was the President and Executive Director of Biosensors International Group, Ltd. From 2003 to 2006, Mr. Chua was a managing director of Walden International, a U.S.-headquartered venture capital firm. Between 1987 to 1997 and 2001 to 2003, he served in various different roles within NatSteel Group. Positions held included Vice President of Transpac Capital, a venture capital firm, CEO of Intraco Ltd and Deputy President of NatSteel Ltd. Between 1998 to 2000, Mr Chua was the Co-Founder and President of MediaRing.com Ltd, a voice-over-Internet services which was successfully listed in Singapore in late 1999.
[Email Chua]

As the CEO and Executive Producer of Daylight Studios, Don not only manages business development and partner liaisons, but he also sets the vision for the company's game development. He started his career as a usability specialist and went on to gain valuable entrepreneurship experience in the app consulting business. His love for games and his drive to create the highest-quality games led him to establish Daylight Studios with his partners and long-time colleagues, Alwyn and Yappy.
[Email Don]

Reza is the founder and CEO of AdzCentral. He launched the company in 2008 after he witnessed how difficult it was for marketers to execute and optimize digital media ad campaigns while he was at Yahoo!. Prior AdzCentral, Reza was a venture partner with IDG Ventures SEA, a venture-capital fund focused on the technology, media, and telecommunication sectors in Southeast Asia. Prior to IDG Ventures, Reza held a number of senior roles at Yahoo! for over six years, culminating in his assignment as Managing Director of Yahoo! Southeast Asia from 2004 to 2007 where he ran the end-to-end delivery teams, including product, engineering, sales, marketing, strategy and G&A teams.
[Email Reza]

Oh is a technocrat with entrepreneurial DNA and extensive experience in establishing international operations, including start-ups, fundraising, P&L responsibility, joint ventures, product development, branding, sales, and marketing. Prior to becoming a suit, Oh earned his stripes the old-fashion way, in the trenches as product manager, producer, creative director, game designer, technical support, and customer advocate. Lately, his recent calling is to “Bring Sexy Back” as he helped put together game business for static online companies and make them relevant/cool again to both the press and the users. Despite his success as a suit, he still has a natural aversion to office politicians.
[Email Oh]

Lately, Series A crunch seems to be one of the en-vogue topics within the tech investment community. What exactly is Series A? Is there a universal definition for it? Many agree that it’s the most important stage of funding next to the Seed round, the funding round that enables a company to pivot to the next level. What better way to sort things out than to bring together a panel of tech-oriented VCs and tech companies that have successfully raised money. With companies of various sizes and stages and with so many strong personalities on stage, this panel is sure to have a few fireworks. Oh, our brave moderator, will help to keep calm and carry on the panel.

Hype vs Real Deal: Asian Edition | 3:00 - 3:50

Manish AGARWAL, CEO, Reliance Entertainment Digital
Brian OH, Director, GAMEVIL
Andrew SHEPPARD, President, Kabam
Jeremy SNOOK, Sr. Business Development Manager, Microsoft Studios
Moderator: David NIXON, CEO, Gemini Hive Inc.

Manish Agarwal, CEO, Reliance Entertainment Digital has over 15 years of industry experience, with six years dedicated to the digital industry. His expertise in the digital space ranges across consumer marketing, product development, developer evangelism and digital monetization, which makes him the right leader for this new-age digital venture from the Reliance ADA Group.

At Reliance Entertainment Digital, Manish leads a young team of creative wizards for a group of digital platform based businesses which include Zapak, Reliance Games, BigFlix and BigAdda.

Prior to Reliance Entertainment Digital, he has been a part of some of the leading corporations in the technology and media sector such as Microsoft, Rediff, Infosys and UTV.
[Email Manish]

Brian Oh is the Director at GAMEVIL. He has over ten year experience in the game industry from mobile to PC online. He has been working for international business throughout his career. His responsibilities at GAMEVIL are business development in game sourcing for publishing, new market expansion, explore new platform partnerships and find local partners.
[Email Brian]

David is Co-Founder and CEO of "Gemini Hive, Inc." - a boutique investment, advisory, and consulting firm focused on helping small social and social mobile game companies get started and find growth. David has been involved in video game development since 1989. In 1999 he dedicated his career to the publishing of "casual" games and pioneering ways for these games to reach new audiences. He has played a key role in the launch of RealArcade and the establishment of the casual games industry. He was also deeply involved in the rise of Oberon Media, and the launch of Xbox Live Arcade. He has a passion for online communities and social interactions in online cross-platform game services.
[Email David]

The future is rushing at us faster than ever. Our panel of experts pull out their crystal balls to predict future trends.

3:30-3:50

Games Solution Centre – An Innovative Hub for Indie Game Developers in Singapore

Albert LIM, Deputy Director, Nanyang Polytechnic, Singapore

Albert has been working in the tertiary education sector since 1990. He is currently a member of the senior management team at Nanyang Polytechnic, Singapore. In addition, he is a key member of a team that establishes and manages the Games Solution Centre; a National Centre established by MDA to facilitate game development in Singapore.
[Email Albert]

In this talk, Albert Lim will explain how a game ecosystem (Games Solution Centre) was established to facilitate indie game development in Singapore and its progress to date. He will detail its multi-faceted approaches in facilitating development and ensuring high probability of completion and commercial release. Albert will also show all stakeholders (students, indie developers, publishers, funding agencies, education institutions, tool/service providers, etc) how they can participate and actively engage in this growing game ecosystem.

4:00-4:20

Launching a Gaming studio in Singapore: Challenges and Opportunities

Alban VILLANI, Director, Forever Young

As Forever Young Group director, Alban has more than 10 years of experience in content production (film, mobile and games) and advertising in France, the United States, and Singapore. Forever Young Group is a mobile social gaming and Gamification specialist created in Singapore in 2008. Split in two entities, a studio and an agency, the company provides:
1. a complete digital marketing expertise for gaming Publishers and Producers: Webdesign, social media platform, content marketing, strategic consulting, PR & Copywriting, performance campaigns;
2. mobile gaming production for the global market and has released its first title, a card-collection combat RPG: http://www.whakan.com
More information: http://www.foreveryoungcreative.com
[Email Alban]

Alban will discuss the process of setting up a mobile gaming studio in Singapore and provide an overview of the tools and programs available for indie creators, as well as a realistic view of the opportunities and challenges Studios can be confronted to: public funding, accelerators, investors and marketing. He will also share a sneak peek at some of the games in development and the strategy behind them.

Setting Up Game Business in Singapore | 4:00 - 4:50

Robert KIM, Director, Consumer, IDA
Joachim NG, Director, MDA
Tai WEI HAO, VP, Time Voyager
Allan SIMONSEN, Co-founder and Technology Director, Boomzap
Addison KANG, Co-founder, Cherry Credits, Vice President, Shanda Games
Moderator: Oh THONGSRINOON, VP and Evangelist of Games, Mig33 Pt., Ltd.

Robert Kim is responsible for industry development in the consumer infocomm space which currently includes start-ups/entrepreneurship, online gaming and digital media. Robert has extensive experience in the digital media and the venture start-up space across various platforms including online, mobile and TV. Prior experiences include: Head of Digital Media for MTV Asia (Media); VP of International Business Development for Neomtel (Mobile Software); Founder of Spectrum Venture (Start-up), Engagement Manager for McKinsey & Co. (Consulting) and Operations Specialist for AlliedSignal, now Honeywell (Aerospace). [Email Robert]

Joachim Ng currently serves as Director, Industry Operations at Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore. His responsibilities include overseeing the implementation of industry development strategy for Film, Broadcast, Animation, Music, Interactive Media, Games and Publishing sectors. MDA is the lead government agency that regulates and promotes the media sector in Singapore. Prior to joining MDA, Joachim served as US Country Director for Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore. Prior to joining IDA, Joachim spent 5 years with the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB).
[Email Joachim]

Tai Wei Hao graduated from NUS with a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2005. Wei Hao started his career with one of the research institutes in A*STAR as a business development executive. He was a key account manager in A*STAR Data Storage Institute (DSI) for major MNC clienteles in the hard disk drives industry. During his 3 years tenure in A*STAR, he had successfully anchored 2 major Japanese hard disk drives component manufacturers to set up their R&D centres in Singapore. Subsequently, Wei Hao joined a Singaporean online game developer, Time Voyager Pte Ltd, which has successfully licensed their first game title to one of the top publishers in China. Wei Hao took up the role as the Business Development Manager and was responsible for the business and operations of the company. He has assisted the company to take part in the various government initiatives provided by the different government agencies. He was also involved in sourcing potential funding and business collaborations with game-related venture capitalists and companies.
[Email Tai]

Boomzap's a completely Virtual Studio, founded in 2005, 77 staff in 8 countries, with no offices anywhere. Allan believes that a good programmer is a lazy programmer, that Code Quality matters and that life is NOT a zero sum game.
[Email Allan]

Addison Kang, is a recognized name in the Asian online and electronic gaming industry. Charged with driving the development and promotion of Cherry Credits as a premier electronic pre-payments provider, Addison benefits from over a decade of industry expertise and credibility.
[Email Addison]

The little engine that could. For a tiny country of 6 million or so population, we are seeing game companies from small studios to well-known brands setting up regional hubs in Singapore.

What makes Singapore the increasingly preferred destination of choice? What is Singapore's USP (unique selling proposition)? Joining this panel are representatives from Singapore agencies that deal with the game industry and game companies that setup shop here.

Takeaway:
- Better understanding and tips on how to access various Singaporean government programs and funds for game studios and publishers wanting to setup shop in the country.

How a Japanese Mobile RPG Made it Big Outside Japan

Tetsuya MORI, Managing Director, DeNA Singapore

Mr. Mori is a Silicon Valley veteran. He was stationed in California from 1994 to 2004, and contributed to the global technology evolution. He was a part of the Nintendo 64 Game Console development team in Silicon Graphics. Afterward, he joined Sun Microsystems in 1998, he co-invented Java 2 Micro Edition and established de-facto standard for the mobile downloading application under his global leadership as Director of J2ME Business Development.

In 2004, Mr. Mori relocated himself to Japan and joined a Venture Capital arm of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group called Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, as Managing Director of Cross Border Investments. Through his investment activities, Mr. Mori discovered his passion and developed his commitment to South East Asia, especially in Vietnam, which led to current responsibilities for Mobage expansion in SEA under DeNA.
[Email Tetsuya]

Tetsuya Mori will share DeNA’s experience developing their own first party title, Blood Brothers, and how they managed to apply the science of operating social games in Japan to the US market. Disbelief? Let the results speak for themselves as Blood Brothers has managed to stay in the Top 3 of the Grossing Charts both on Android and iOS. He will also share how DeNA extends the lifespan of their titles by localizing them for specific markets like Korea and China.

4:30-4:50

Alpha Kimori JRPG and Philosophy

Sherman CHIN, Founder, Sherman3D

Sherman Chin is the founder of Sherman3D, the game development company that has developed over 20 game titles worldwide since 2003, including popular hits like Scribblenauts (Warner Bros.), Moshi Monsters: Moshling Zoo (Activision) and Drawn To Life (THQ). Sherman then created his own intellectual property, Alpha Kimori, which he coded as a 3D tech demo but later continued as a 2D JRPG so that he can focus on its story. Sherman is currently working on the final third episode of Alpha Kimori and the Japanese translated first episode.
[Email Sherman]

Pop Culture and Philosophy are not uncommon but Japanese Role Playing Games (JRPGs) feature the connection between them because of their inherently philosophical core storyline. From games such as Xenogears, Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII, traditional JRPGs have had strong storylines, character development and deep intricate philosophical complexities that underlie the simple gameplay mechanics. Alpha Kimori focuses on this aspect and aims to be the medium that drives the philosophical message across.

Bringing AAA IPs to Online and Social

Fabien SIOUFFI, VP Online & Social, Take-Two Asia Pte.

Fabien has spent the last 10 years in Asia working for leading “Western” companies such as Blizzard, EA and now Take 2. His specialty is to successfully bring AAA IPs and brands to Asia by adapting their content, platform and business methods to the Asian markets. He is now hard at work on Civilization Online (2K/XL Games), NBA2K Online (2K/Tencent) and Pro Baseball 2K Online (2K/Nexon) and a portfolio of branded social games for PC and mobile. His previous experiences had him closely associated to the rollout of World of Warcraft (Blizzard) and FIFA Online (EA/Nexon) in Asia.
[Email Fabien]

Transforming established retail franchises into social and casual titles doesn’t just mean simplifying gameplay and banking on the brand. It’s a delicate balancing act that involves forming a winning team, creating high-quality content, staying close to the market, and sustaining partnerships. Learn what it takes to work on AAA IPs from Fabien, VP for Online at Take-Two Interactive. Fabien has extensive experience since his days at EA and Blizzard launching online titles such as FIFA Online and World of Warcraft. Now he partners with developers and publishers in the region to bring Take-Two’s revered IPs such as Civilization, Borderlands, GTA and 2K Sports to broader Asian audiences across multiple platforms.

Day 2: F2P/ Games as a Service, Mobile, and Development

Tower Ballroom
Development

Emcee: Stephane PANYASIRI, CEO, SEA Gaming

Island Ballroom Jurong Mobile

Emcee: Gabby DIZON, Producer & Business Development Manager, Boomzap

Island Ballroom Katong
F2P/Games as a Service

Emcee: David NIXON, CEO, Gemini Hive

9:30-9:50

Funding for Games Development in South East Asia

Reza RAZALI, Founder, Terato Tech

Reza Razali founded Terato Tech in 2008 to develop mobile enterprise apps. Terato Games, a unit of Terato Tech, was formed 2009 as a way to get the team to work on exciting innovative IPs on mobile. The company has since grown to a team of 31 based out of Bandar Baru Bangi Malaysia. Terato Games has worked with Chillingo, Bulkypix and DeNA on original IPs since 2011.
[Email Reza]

Fundraising is one of the hardest parts of building a game company in Southeast Asia. The easiest option is to bootstrap all the way, but there are definitely other ways to help developers in the region get their kickstart in producing that holy-grail of original IPs.

Mobile Games Distribution 2.0: Why the Big Appstores Won’t Do the Job for You

Tim KOSCHELLA, Partner & Co-founder, HitFox Group

Tim has been a passionate Internet entrepreneur for several years prior to cofounding HitFox Group and AppLift.com. He acted as a founder and managing director of the Leipzig based eLearning startup, lecturio.de and as Interim-CFO at one of Europe's leading sports apparel online retailers, mysportgroup.de. He holds a Master's Degree in Business & Economics from HHL - Leipzig Graduate School of Management, a leading international business school in entrepreneurial education (#1 FT Global Entrepreneurship Ranking 2011, 2012), where he graduated best-of-class in 2008. Prior to HHL, Tim studied at the University of Mainz and Universidad del Pacifico in Quito/Ecuador.
[Email Tim]

The app stores are becoming more crowded every day with a flood of new apps released by an ever growing community of mobile developers. Consumers face the challenge to find their desired app among hundreds of thousands of available games and other apps for smartphone and tablet devices.

Tim Koschella will discuss the challenges every mobile games publisher faces and insightful solutions, as to how tools like specialized distribution networks, can help your game gain additional distribution traction where it is needed. Make your games stand out or be left behind in the competitive mobile market.

10:00-10:20

Pants Optional: Scaling a Virtual Company

Gabby DIZON, Producer & Business Development Manager, Boomzap

Gabby Dizon is a producer and business development manager for Boomzap Entertainment, where he leads the production of games for mobile devices for the company. He was previously the co-founder and CEO of Flipside Games, a game outsourcing company based in Manila, Philippines. One of the pioneers of game development in the Philippines, he also is a staunch promoter of the game development industry in Southeast Asia.
[Email Gabby]

Growing any company is hard. Growing a 100% virtual company with over 70 people in 8 countries can be especially challenging. We've been through typhoons, earthquakes, Third World internet connections, and countless coffee shops to make some of the best games in the casual game business. Let Boomzap share with you how we do it from Jakarta to Vladivostok, pants optional.

Navigating Mobile Ecosystems Throughout Asia

David KIM, Co-Founder & CEO, Animoca

After several years of pioneering work in Internet and technology in the US and Asia, David Kim now serves as the CEO of Animoca. He previously served as CEO of Lycos after spearheading its acquisition by Daum Corporation, and CEO of mail.com Corporation, a leading personalized email and messenger service.
[Email David]

Countries throughout Asia each have their own, distinct ecosystems that mobile game developers must learn to navigate in order to ensure success. From monetization solutions and distribution methods to device testing and customer support, what works in one Asian country won’t necessarily work in another, despite their close proximity. To shed light on these differences and discuss how to best manage them, Animoca’s David Kim shares what his company has learned about growing its games in countries throughout Asia.

Andy KLEINMAN, Chief Business Officer, Scopely

Andy Kleinman has a deep understanding of the gaming industry and has founded or held senior roles at a variety of top gaming companies during their height. As chief business officer at Scopely, Andy leads business and corporate development and is focused on growing the company through partnerships with developer studios and brands.

Prior to joining Scopely, Andy served as an advisor to the company as well as other early stage startups including Radical Studios, Urbita, Ideame, Tactivos, Fanwards and others. Before this, Andy was general manager for Latin America at Zynga, focusing on the company’s International growth, business strategy, and monetization efforts. Prior to Zynga, Andy was VP of Business Development at Three Melons, a gaming studio that was later acquired by Playdom, which is now part of The Walt Disney Company. Andy co-founded Vostu, one of the largest social gaming companies in the world and co-founded Emepe3, the first and one of the largest online music websites in Spanish, which was sold to an international media company.
[Email Andy]

The free to play market is maturing, and now more than ever, audiences are spending increasing amounts of time and money in games. Gameplay is becoming less about churning out one-off experiences, and more about the longer term engagement opportunities with players. What makes games successful in free-to-play today? How can developers improve their ROI? What are the challenges of operating games as a service? In this session, Andy Kleinman of Scopely will share what developers need to keep in mind as they build games in this maturing market. Whether you've launched a premium game and are looking to pivot into free to play, or you're looking to improve ROI on existing freemium games, this session will provide an informative perspective on the opportunities and challenges in the market today.

10:30-10:50

Creating a Niche-Based Game Development Company

Anuj TANDON, COO, Rolocule

Anuj Tandon is Co-Founder and COO of Rolocule Games Pvt. Ltd. Anuj has been a gamer since his early days. Graduating as a computer engineer from India, he joined Infosys Technologies in 2005. After stints in UK with British telecom, he decided to join as co-founder of Rolocule Games in 2010. He handles operations and marketing at Rolocule apart from doing game design. Rolocule Games is an award winning game development company that creates simple to play, console-quality casual video games for smartphones/tablets.
[Email Anuj]

In this session, Anuj will present a path to grow as an Indie development studio, covering the following topics:
-How niche-based game development is the way to grow in the crowded App Store market
-Bootstrapping in gaming
-Growing from an Indie game development company to attract VC funds
-Growing a company in India where the gaming ecosystem is still underdeveloped

Tablets and TVs – The Next Wave of Smart Growth

Colin SEBASTIAN, Sr. Equity Research Analyst, RW Baird

Colin Sebastian is Baird’s senior equity research analyst covering Interactive Entertainment and Internet. Prior to joining Baird in 2011, Colin spent six years at Lazard Capital Markets having established the company’s Video Game research practice. Colin also worked as an investment banker at JP Morgan/Hambrecht & Quist. Prior to Wall Street, Colin was a business analyst developing software at a Fortune 100 financial services company, and was a co-founder and CFO of Latin American career services website Detacuche.com. Colin appears frequently in the financial and industry press, including CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Financial Times, among others.
[Email Colin]

Even as consumers continue to increase their spending on apps and games for smartphones, tablets are now emerging as a potentially more lucrative growth opportunity. Favorable form factors such as larger screens, easier to control game play, and access to the rich content available on the App Store and Google Play make tablets a unique market that developers cannot ignore. In addition, the rapid increase in the number of connected TVs presents another massive growth opportunity, as technology powerhouses such as Apple, Google and Samsung set their sights on the living room. In this presentation, he will review these opportunities, as well as provide updated revenue projections for each segment of the video game market.

Leo Liu KUN, GM China, PopCap

By early 2012, Plants vs. Zombies had become one of the most popular casual games in China, but thanks to widespread piracy, it was not generating much revenue for PopCap. Our China team hatched a bold plan: Convert this classic premium game to freemium, and relaunch it as Plants vs. Zombies: Great Wall Edition on local Android platform, Tencent. The plan worked, and the game is #1 on Tencent's Android platform and, thanks to ongoing operations, is generating more revenue today than when it first launched 12 months ago.

During this session, Leo will share how PopCap did it, show what Chinese zombies look like, provide take away lessons relevant to any team trying to adapt premium to freemium, extend the life of a title through ongoing updates and game operations, and reveal how to penetrate the Chinese market.

11:00-11:20

One Man Indie Game Development: The Survival Guide

Erick GARAYBLAS, Founder, Kuyi Mobile

Erick Garayblas is a game designer and founder of Kuyi Mobile, a game development company based in Manila. He has been developing games for over 12 years and created a number of award-winning and successful titles including the Streetfood Tycoon franchise, which has received millions of downloads worldwide. An entrepreneur by heart, Erick loves watching movies, travelling, reading and considers babysitting his best skill to date.
[Email Erick]

Erick talks about his experiences on being a one-man indie game developer for almost 10 years and provides tips and insights on how to survive and adapt to the rapid changes in the mobile gaming market and how he was able to grow his player base from several thousands to several millions (7M+).

Global Trends in App Store Monetization

Junde YU, VP APAC, AppAnnie

Junde manages business development and sales in Asia Pacific for App Annie. He started his career in web startups while he was in university, and has since accumulated experience at web and mobile startups and corporations, in particular business development roles at companies like Scoreloop, SingTel, and Tapjoy. Junde graduated with a Computer Science degree from the National University of Singapore, and is thrilled to return to his hometown to share more industry insights and experiences.
[Email Junde]

Using App Annie Intelligence, the most accurate market data on the app stores, Junde will deliver the most unique insights on Global Trends in App Store Monetization.
- What are the highest countries for revenue, downloads and ARPU?
- Just how significant is the growth of the app stores in Asia?
- Where are the growth opportunities for publishers across different categories and regions?

Manish AGARWAL, CEO, Reliance Entertainment Digital

Millions of games are presently available for Andriod, iOS and other smart devices, and there are at least a hundred more games added to the list every single day. It’s time that we, as mobile game developers, pay attention to the fact that while an incremental number of games is being developed and published every year, only a small percentage (as low as 1 percent) of these games turn out to be a success story. In the context of a highly successful IP-based game, Real Steel, Manish Agarwal (CEO – Reliance Entertainment Digital) will break down and discuss the scope of the options developers face:
1.Invest in the already successful game to increase repeat-play by augmenting the reach and user experience of the same game with innovative value additions.
OR
2.Invest in an altogether new game with a fresh set of funding for its development; its fate eventually being decided by consumers.
The session will be co-presented by Sandeep Shetty (GM – Reliance Games).

11:30-11:50

How to Build a Brand from Your Game

Anna GRUETER, Founder & Game Designer, ReignDesign

Anna is founder of ReignGames & ReignDesign, a leading mobile development company in Shanghai which has been making apps and mobile games since the the launch of the App Store. ReignGames is best known for the iPhone hit, Pig Rush, which has been downloaded over 4 million times on iOS and Android. Anna is experienced both as a game developer and a game designer and has most recently been working on games for toddlers, mobile puzzle games and casual multiplayer games.
[Email Anna]

Any indie developer who experiences success with their first game wants to replicate this success. In her talk, Anna will talk about how to create a successful sequel to your game and to build a brand instead of creating new games from scratch. It comes down to the right marketing techniques for existing community and fans, developing a unique, distinguishable style, and branding your game to different platforms and media.

From Small to Powerful: Leveraging A Hit

Jean MATHEWS, Strategy & Business Development Consultant, iMAGINATE

Jean Mathews specializes in creating franchises or negotiating deals on behalf of studios. She helped indie studio Bolt Creative’s Pocket God grow beyond iPhone into a multi-million dollar brand whose story made the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine (Nov 2012). She does strategy and business development work for a variety of clients from indies to major studios, such as Adult Swim Games (Turner Broadcast), Disney XD’s Slugterra (by NerdCorps), Roadhouse Interactive, and Harmonix. Recently, she forged a deal with powerhouse Sony Pictures and Playfirst to launch a mobile game for hit animation Hotel Transylvania.
[Email Jean]

Due to luck, hard work, or pure brilliance, sometimes a studio's app leaps up in rankings, gets great press, and perhaps even AppStore featuring. Now what? How can indies leverage their hit app into a successful business? Learn from case studies of indies that grew their original IP into major franchises.

Peter GAN, Head of APAC Global Marketing Solutions for Games, Facebook

Peter is the Head of Asia Pacific Gaming at Facebook, the largest and most engaged community of real people. Peter and team focus on helping leading game developers build awareness, loyalty and engagement using Facebook marketing solutions. Prior to Facebook, Peter was with Google for 5 years where he held multiple roles across Australia, India, and Singapore with his last position being the Head of Revenue Development where he was leading efforts to drive export led advertising solutions across China, Japan and Southeast Asia.
[Email Peter]

Globally, Facebook has over 1 billion monthly active users including 600 million users on mobile. Find out how game developers can leverage Facebook marketing solutions across desktop and mobile platforms to build awareness, loyalty and engagement, irrespective of where users are based.

12:00-1:00

LUNCH SESSION: PlayStation(R)Vita: Games for Everyone

Eitaro NAGANO, Director, Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Asia

Since joining Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. in 1996, Eitaro Nagano has been involved in the production of more than ten PlayStation®3 exclusive titles for 11 years as a director/producer, including WILD ARMS 2nd IGNITION, Gunparede March, GHOST IN THE SHELL STAND ALONE COMPLEX, and WILD ARMS XF. He has also engaged in various projects of “media franchise” which is a unique combination of game, TV animation, comics, and novels. He is now in charge of the Asia region and works on the production of original content in Asia, development of new services, training local game creators, and providing support for local companies to bring talented creators/developers from Asia.
[Email Eitaro]

-Introduction of the functions and development environment of PSVita.
-Introduction of Sony’s business scheme.

LUNCH SESSION: Extending Cocos2dx - Mobile 2D Framework by Happy Elements

Rony XU, SVP, Happy Elements

Rony leads the social game business for Happy Fishbowl, My Kingdom and My Legend as well as the company’s social game production. Rony is the first Social Game Producer in China. Previously, Rony was a Senior Manager at RenRen.com, leading Social Game Department, RenRen Platform strategy. He founded 5qzone.net, one of the most popular social websites for colleague students in 2003 during his last year of college. In 2005, he successfully sold this website to RenRen.com.
[Email Rony]

In recent years, we have tried to use different engines to create our games at Happy Elements. After having encountered many obstacles and issues, we finally chose cocos2dx + Lua as our major engines. This presentation will introduce you to the reasons behind this decision, what we have done to improve the efficiency of these engines and the advantages they could bring to us.

Leah NA'AMAN, Marketing Manager, SocialClicks

Leah Na'aman is the Marketing Manager at SocialClicks, a leading provider of technology-based Facebook advertising solutions. The SocialClicks platform leverages its advanced targeting engine, bidding algorithms and real-time analysis of downstream user engagement to ensure acquisition of the highest quality users at the lowest possible cost. Leah guides the company's marketing strategy, and manages the development, design and launch of its marketing campaigns
[Email Leah]

Are you taking full advantage of your Facebook Mobile campaigns? From Mobile App Install Ads to Sponsored Stories, leverage your Facebook Mobile Advertising, first to acquire high quality users and then to engage, interact and keep them coming back to your games for more. We will take a close look at how success is driven by Facebook Mobile Advertising campaigns leading to high quality user acquisition and maximized Lifetime ROI.

1:00-1:20

How to Get 1Million Downloads in 3 Months without a Huge Marketing Budget

Ganesan VELAYATHAN, CEO, Fun & Cool Ventures

Ganesan is the CEO of Fun & Cool Ventures Inc., a company that builds AdNetworks for app cross promotions, publishing to the Chinese, Japanese and Korean markets. Fun & Cool Ventures also develops their own games. Ganesan is Malaysian born living in Japan for the past 18 years, and lately returned back to Malaysia and Singapore. Ganesan holds a Ph.D in Search Engine from a Japanese University.
[Email Ganesan]

Ganesan will share how Sushi Friends managed to get 1 million downloads, covering the following: - SEO for App Store and Google Play - Cross promotions of your own apps - AB testing - Facebook marketing - Other techniques

Growing Business Opportunities in Mobile Web Gaming - Insights for Developers and Distributors | 1:00 - 1:50

Rakesh RAJU, CTO & Co-founder, TreSensa

Rakesh is the CTO and a co-founder of TreSensa, a cross-platform game development and distribution company which provides studios and developers with the framework, tools and support they need to develop, distribute and monetize games. Prior to Tresensa, he was the founder of Codewalla, a game dev studio. Rakesh has been developing games, simulations, consumer software and animation tools since 1993. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and University of Illinois at Chicago and has worked at RealNetworks and Walt Disney Feature Animation.
[Email Rakesh]

Consumers are rapidly moving to smartphones and tablets to consume their media, but there exists a big shortage of quality mobile web gaming content. With concrete case studies, industry examples and actual game data, you will learn about the trends in the mobile web game space, hear about the unique opportunities unfolding for studios and distributors, and get insights from top media companies, carriers and game portals from around the world.

Leonard LIN and Tiam YANG, Co-founders, Tyler Projects

Leonard is a co-founder and director of Tyler Projects. He graduated from the Singapore Management University with a double degree in Business Management (Finance) and Information Systems Management. He was the designer for Tyler’s flagship game Battle Stations and guided the development of the game’s community.

Leonard was a speaker at the Singapore Facebook Developer Garages held in Singapore in 2008 and 2009. He was also the keynote speaker for the 2010 Facebook developer garage held in Taipei, Taiwan in 2010 and established Tyler Project’s first overseas office there soon after. He has been a member of the Program Advisory Committee of DigiPen Singapore since 2011.

Tiam Yang is one of the co-founders and CTO of Tyler Projects. He graduated with a Bachelor of Computing in Communications and Media (Honours) from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2005. He has been actively involved in the development of several games in Tyler Projects over the years. He has also helped to initiate the technical localization of Battle Stations into other languages.
[Email Tiam]

The talk will focus on the development and operation of the Facebook game Battle Stations created by Tyler Projects – A local games development studio based in Singapore.
Battle Stations was first launched in Facebook in 2007 and is the first Facebook game developed in Singapore. It has managed to maintain a very loyal and die-hard fan base that is still active 5 years since the game’s initial launch.
In this talk, they will touch on the experiences of running a hardcore game on a social network and some of the more interesting issues encountered.

1:30-1:50

Developing Game Developers: Teaching Stable Game Development Skills for the Ever-changing Game Development Industry

Hilmy Abdul RAHIM, Lecturer, KDU University College

Hilmy Abdul Rahim has over 10 years of experience developing and teaching game development degree programs in Malaysia. He was Producer for 3 years in 2 Malaysian game development companies, and was Malaysia's previous IGDA Chapter Coordinator for 3 years.
[Email Hilmy]

How do you create a game development program that will adequately train students to be skilled enough for the industry, when the industry itself changes substantially every 3 years and academia syllabus need to be crystallized 5 years before a student graduates?

Hilmy has created and taught game development programs since 1998, and in this session, he shares the stable solutions he discovered to the ever-evolving problem.

David CHIU, Principal, Business Development, GameStop

David P. Chiu is a Principal at GameStop Digital Ventures and the Director of Developer Relations and Business Development at Kongregate. Kongregate, part of the GameStop Digital Network, is an online social gaming platform for web free-to-play games with over 15M core gamers (85% male, average age of 21) and also a publisher of mobile F2P games. Before joining Kongregate and GameStop, David was at Intel Corporation for more than 5 years in various gaming-related roles such as a Gaming Developer Relations Manager, US Gaming Campaign Strategy Manager and Software Business Development.
[Email David]

Kongregate, part of the GameStop network, is a leading online gaming platform for free-to-play games and mobile publisher. Kongregate has over 300 games on Kongregate.com from developers all over the world ranging from small indie developers to big multinational companies like Nexon, Tencent, R2, BigPoint, IGG, Snail, etc.

As a platform for F2P games, Kongregate has a unique perspective on what types of mechanics and characteristics of F2P games are most effective at maximizing player retention, monetization and satisfaction. This talk will look at F2P trends and specific game metrics with a comparative analysis of free-to-play games by Asian & Western developers. We will examine the similarities and differences between games as it relates to retention/ monetization, share best practices and statistics to understand how to maximize your success with Western audiences.

2:00-2:20

Unity, Asia and You! | 2:00 - 2:50

Brett BIBBY, Unity Evangelist SEA & Hong Kong, Unity

Unity has seen unprecedented growth as the game engine of choice globally, and is far and away the most popular game engine. Unity is now taking steps to further democratize game development and empower developers. In this talk you will learn how Unity is used to make casual games, where it's being used and by whom. And most importantly, you'll hear about Unity's strategy and plans in Asia, and how we can help you realize your potential to make successful games with Unity.

Serving a Global Audience

Brian OH, Director, GAMEVIL

It's not easy to satisfy a local audience, let alone a global one. As a developer and publisher, GAMEVIL provides games and game services to a worldwide audience. Join Brian Oh, Director at GAMEVIL, as he shares case studies of executing a global operation and how they are looking to expand.

Sangeet Paul CHOUDARY, Founder, Platform Thinking

Sangeet is a widely published technology analyst. As a former incubator and investor, he has had extensive experience leading early stage ventures from idea to a functioning business model. His work has been featured on the Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch, GigaOm, TheNextWeb, Forbes, The Hindu and several Asian media. His blog Platform Thinking (http://platformed.info) was ranked among the Top Startup Blogs by the Harvard Business School Centre for Entrepreneurship Chair Prof. Tom Eisenmann. He is a contributing author to the book “Managing Startups” being compiled by the HBS Centre for Entrepreneurship. He is an investor and advisor to startups in the US and India.
[Email Sangeet]

Invites are dead. They lead to spam and are ineffective in audience acquisition. How does a social gaming product acquire users virally in an era where invites are dead? This session explores the new rules for acquiring users organically and scaling your user base. Taking successful examples from non-gaming verticals, this talk will illustrate how gaming companies can apply growth strategies that create a good user experience.

2:30-2:50

The Business of Games — HTML and the Future of Mobile

Albert LAI, Co-founder & CEO, Big Viking Games

Albert Lai is the co-founder of Big Viking Games, Canada's leading social and mobile HTML5 game development studio. Prior to founding Big Viking Games, Albert was the co-founder of Kontagent, a Facebook-funded viral analytics platform venture. Albert sold his first internet company, the MyDesktop Network, while in his teens to JupiterMedia (JUPM). He was also the founder/CEO of BubbleShare, a photo-sharing company sold to Kaboose/Disney in 2007. In his spare time, Albert blogs (infrequently) at http://simplyalbert.blogspot.com and is active on Twitter at @albertsupdates.
[Email Albert]

Using HTML5, savvy developers are able to create games that are indistinguishable from native apps. In fact, the advantages of HTML5 over native code are clear: developers can release games to more platforms, create a better experience for their players and avoid the third-party dependencies. Big Viking has used HTML5 to create immersive mid-core games who gameplay is identical to rival native apps. Albert will share how Big Viking Games uses ubiquitous gameplay and how a single codebase across multiple devices, real time updates and native-app like performance is all possible with HTML5. Furthermore, we'll talk about what the future holds for HTML5 games and what business and technical barriers need to be overcome for HTML5 to become more attractive platform to build on.

Tom SPERRY, Business Development, Exit Games Inc

Tom Sperry runs Business development for Exit Games Inc. Exit Games is a venture capital backed technology company that builds Photon- a realtime, cross platform multiplayer engine. It has offices in Portland and Hamburg Germany. Prior to Exit Games he was the CEO of Blade3D headquartered in Shanghai, China, with an office in Seattle, Wa. Prior to his role at Blade3D, held senior management positions with HNC Software (Executive Director) and Looking Glass Studios (Director). Tom began his career at Microsoft Corporation, where he was an International Program Manager in the Games Division. Tom holds an M.B.A. from The Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, International Executive M.B.A. Program located in Hong Kong, 2002-2004.
[Email Tom]

Case study on the launch of a Glu Title that leverages Exit Games Photon. How Exit Games and Glu worked together to launch titles globally but players play multiplayer locally. Will go in to local Cloud Hosted Server and load balancing that allows for players to join and play games with folks in the same region.

3:00-3:20

Building Flash Games with the Adobe Gaming SDK | 3:00 - 3:50

Bill HOWARD, Group Product Manager, Adobe Systems

Bill has been creating software for 25 years, but for the past 18 months, Bill has been working as a Group Product Manager for Flash technologies, driving gaming and video features into Flash Player and AIR. When not at work, he is busy gaming with his wife and 4 kids.
[Email Bill]

The Adobe Gaming SDK has everything you need to build games that can reach 1.3 billion users through the web and 500+ million iOS and Android devices. This session will introduce you to the features and roadmap of the Adobe Gaming SDK and will show you how easy it is to get a game up and running for the web and mobile devices. Along the way, you will also learn a bit more about the future of Flash.

The Mystery Land of Russian Mobile Market

Alexander DUBROVIN, VP of Sales & Marketing, Alawar

Alexander Dubrovin has been with Alawar Entertainment since 2009. Prior to joining the company, Alexander held numerous marketing leadership positions in large Russian companies. As Marketing Director (2009-2010), he devoted himself to Alawar’s game distribution development, enhancement of Affiliate Program, market research and analysis, and the promotion of the company’s online resources and game brands. In 2011, he was appointed as a VP of Mobile Platforms taking lead in development and distribution of Alawar’s first mobile and freemium game titles. During the last several years, Alexander had built a solid production line for mobile and made significant achievements in international games’ sales and distribution, as a result of which he was appointed as a VP of Marketing and Sales within Alawar Publishing business unit.
[Email Alexander]

Alawar, a leading international publisher and the No. 1 distributor of casual gaming content in Russia, shares its experience in building a game market from zero in one of the biggest countries in the world. Starting with PC casual and progressing to mobile and social free-to-play, they have that “extra something” to make a game successful in Russia. This lecture unwraps the mystery of the Russian “playing soul”, showcases the most successful and adored titles in Russia, and reveals the Russian market potential in mobile and social as well as PC. Learn how you can enter one of the most promising mobile and gaming markets in the world.

Elvin LI, CEO, ZelRealm Interactive / Sogamo

Elvin is an aspiring entrepreneur with expertise in data mining and games analytics. As the CEO of ZelRealm Interactive, Elvin has lead the team towards building one of the most powerful real-time game analytics solution, Sogamo, to help game developers and publishers optimize monetization of games. Elvin believes that innovative data-driven solution will help businesses increase their revenue and improve their product design. He has been very active in the start-up space and co-founded several companies that provide innovative solutions to businesses and consumers.
[Email Elvin]

Are you in the habit of pulling out your mobile device to play a game while you are waiting for the bus? Or have you bothered your friends just to send you a life for your Candy Crush game? As games become closely integrated into our lives, we start to see more unique behavioural patterns exhibited while people play games. Find out how to measure and leverage these behaviours to make the next big blockbuster game.

3:30-3:50

Leveraging Lessons from a Dominant Mobile Franchise to Build Enduring New Brands and Communities

Paul CHEN, VP Business Development, PlayFirst

The mobile gaming ecosystem is fast and unforgiving, with games vaulting up the charts but fading from memory only weeks later. PlayFirst will leverage lessons from its unique, crowd-sourced “Game Jam” development philosophy and its experience with the DASH brand -- a franchise with close to 700M downloads and steady growth since its mobile debut three years ago -- to share lessons on how to add fresh content, boost retention, improve monetization and turn mobile games into enduring and vibrant platforms for player communities to thrive. PlayFirst will also be launching significant new IP in the time surrounding the conference, and Paul can discuss in detail the development and decision-making process that went into them.

Arthur CHOW, COO, 6waves

Arthur Chow is the Chief Operating Officer of 6waves, the leading international publisher and developer of gaming applications on the Facebook and Yahoo! Mobage platform including Ravenwood Fair, Ravenskye City, Bubble Epic, Mystery Manor and Kingdoms of Camelot. Arthur is responsible for overall strategy formulation and execution of the company's plan as a distributor of social games. He also leads the Legal, HR, Finance, Product and the China and Japan teams. He was named Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2012 and previously worked as Executive Director, Business Development – Asia Pacific for TimeWarner’s Turner International Asia Pacific Limited, and before that he spent several years at Yahoo! in Business Development, Marketing and Strategic Planning functions for Yahoo! Hong Kong.
[Email Arthur]

With the explosive growth of mobile games, many developers have shifted focus almost exclusively to mobile projects. Where does this leave social games? Is it still possible for developers to succeed on Facebook or other social networks? This session will offer insights for developers from the publisher's perspective, as well as highlight key considerations in making your game into a global hit.

4:00-4:20

Indie Game Studio Survival Panel | 4:00 - 4:50

Yan MARCHAL, Founder, Sanuk Games
Chris NATSUUME, Co-founder, Boomzap
Sian YUE TAN, Game Director, Ratloop Asia
Ian GREGORY, Creative Director, Witching Hour Studios
Moderator: Juan GRIL, Studio Director, Joju Games

Yan had joined Ubisoft in 1996 as a programmer and contributed to some of the then-midsized publisher's early successes (and failures). In 2003, irresistibly attracted by entrepreneurship and by the charms of Asia, Yan left Paris for Bangkok and founded Sanuk Games. After years of soul-searching and rollercoaster-like highs and lows, Sanuk Games established itself as a prominent console game developer and digital publisher, with over 50 games released in the past couple of years.
[Email Yan]

Christopher Natsuume has been developing games for over 15 years. He has been working in the Southeast Asian region since 2004, including founding Singapore-based Boomzap Entertainment, one of the leading independent developers in the region. Boomzap has shipped 8 casual game titles, including the top ranked Jewels of Cleopatra series, using developers in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Japan.
[Email Chris]

Sian Yue founded Ratloop, Inc back in 1998 with three partners. After shipping some games for Activision, he decided to study finance and law and started work in Singapore as contracts / finance manager, listing the company he worked for in 2006. With some money in the pocket, and an itch to get back to developing games, he set up Ratloop Asia Pte Ltd in 2008 to work on Rocketbirds, growing a team from a humble duo to a respectable 10 man studio, taking the Rocketbirds from Browsers to PlayStation(R)3, Steam and PlayStation(R)Vita. Ratloop Asia is currently working to bring the next iteration of the franchise to the PlayStation(R)4.
[Email Sian]

Ian Gregory is the Creative Director of Witching Hour Studios, developers of the award winning and critically acclaimed iOS game, Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion. Ian's penchant for creative storytelling moved him to form Witching Hour Studios during his second year at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, along with two other partners, facing the many adversities that start-up companies face. Ian's perseverance has certainly paid off today – with Ravenmark widely lauded as the best of it's kind in it's genre and platform, and under Ian's leadership, Witching Hour Studios looks set to make waves in an industry where few in this region have dared to venture.
[Email Ian]

Juan heads the production at Joju Games. Joju produces online, social and multiplayer games for clients such as Atari, Addicting Games, Mindjolt/SGN, MTV Networks, Comedy Central, and Mochimedia. Juan has more than 13 years of experience developing online games. Previously, and as one of the first members of the Yahoo! Games team, Juan was the lead producer for the downloadable games area and community manager of multi player games. In the last year of his tenure at Yahoo!, Juan was the head of Yahoo! Games Studios. Juan is a frequent speaker at industry events. He is a Co-Director of the Indie Showcase at Casual Connect, an editor of the IGDA Casual Games White Paper, and an Advisor of the Social Games Summit at the Games Developers Conference. Juan holds a BFA in Electronic Media from the University of Illinois.
[Email Juan]

You’re a game developer and you’ve decided to go indie. You have an office wall covered with ramen noodle packets, and enough cash to pay rent and utilities for a few months. You are going to make the next great game, or so you think. But how will you promote it? If the game fails, what next?

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to put these questions to people who have managed to stay afloat, regardless of the circumstances? In this panel, Juan Gril of Joju Games has invited a group of very successful indie game developers to talk. “Success” is defined here as being able to feed yourself and your team for more than a few years in a row solely by making games. We will cover topics such as promoting your studio, self-publishing vs. working with publishers or distributors, how to best plan your projects, and general survival skills. Come with your questions, and we'll do our best to answer them.

Under the Hood of PikPok's Publishing Process | 4:00 - 4:50

Mario WYNANDS, CEO & Managing Director, PikPok

Mario Wynands is the Managing Director and co-founder of PikPok, a leading digital publisher across mobile, tablet, and desktop. In his 16 years at the New Zealand based company, he has led studio operations, built a successful game portfolio and overseen the creation of many engaging console titles including ShatterR, GripShiftR, and Speed Racer The Videogame, as well as multiple hits in the smartphone and tablet space including Flick KickR Football, Into the DeadR and the BAFTA nominated Super Monsters Ate My Condo. He is an advocate of New Zealand industry, assisting and mentoring other developers where possible. Wynands is a graduate of Victoria University in Wellington with degrees in business management and computer science, and has studied at MIT Sloan
[Email Mario]

Join Mario Wynands from PikPok as he explains how to reach mutliple audiences with your cross-platform games and what pitfalls to expect when publishing internationally.

5:00-5:20

Puzzle Design Tools

Sam WONG, Team Lead, The Voxel Agents

Sam TC Wong made his debut in independent game development with The Voxel Agents in 2009. In his young but fast-moving career, Sam designs and codes on a day-to-day basis and has already shipped several game titles.
[Email Sam]

This session will cover the benefits and pitfalls of using puzzle generators, solvers, visual representations of solutions and content pacing tools to assist designers to iterate faster and get content out of the door quicker. This session is NOT a tech talk! If you have a keen interest in logical puzzles, don't miss out!

Day 3: Casino, Social Mobile and Indie Postmortems

Tower Ballroom
Indie Postmortems

Emcee: Joel JOHNSON, Indie Developer, digiKhel

Island Ballroom Jurong
Social Mobile

Emcee: Derrick MORTON, CEO, Flowplay

Island Ballroom Katong Casino

Emcee: Brock PIERCE, Managing Director, Clearstone Gaming Fund

10:00-10:20

The Ins and Outs of Indie Games: A Splitman 2 Postmortem

Bari SILVESTRE, Game Developer, and Gilbert DE VERA, Game Artist and Animator

Bari Silvestre is a self taught game developer and a long time gamer. He's been working on Flash Games for more than 3 years and has tried mobile recently. Some of his notable games are Splitman, Belial, Vanguards, Zombies vs Penguins, Pinoy Hangman and Pretentious Game.
[Email Bari]

Gilbert has always been an artist since he was a kid. One of his lifelong ambitions was to be able to create graphics for games. This didn't materialize instantly. He took a different course in college and took a different job after graduation. He worked at a BPO company before realizing the needs to pursue his dreams. He's now a full time game artist and animator, and created graphics for games like Villainous, Zombies vs. Penguins, Belial, Nano War and a lot more. He is now doing what he loves most and specially fulfilling his ambitions.
[Email Gilbert]

Splitman 2 a flash game with simple controls and a very unique mechanic. It has been played more than 5 million times on the web in just a month. Bari and Gilbert will also share their experiences on how they made ends meet while developing the game.

Building a Games Business

Bernard TAY, Mobile Specialist, Google

As a Mobile Specialist, Bernie's responsible to helping grow Google's mobile business in APAC. Prior to Google, Bernie headed the Performance Advertising business for AdMob in APAC, and various positions in Motorola & Sun Microsystems. Bernie holds a BSc. from King's College London.
[Email Bernard]

This talk will touch on various topics critical to running a games business.

Profitable Longevity Strategies for Social Gaming – No More Risky Business

Aber WHITCOMB, CTO, SGN

As CTO of SGN, a leading multiplatform game developer and distributor, Aber Whitcomb oversees the cross-platform technology strategy and plays a key role in developing and operating SGN titles on a global scale. Whitcomb is a recognized expert in large scale computing, networking and storage and frequently speaks on these topics at industry events.

Prior to SGN, Whitcomb’s most recent role was CTO and co-founder of MySpace where he was responsible for the engineering and technical operations groups of one of the world’s most successful social networking sites. InfoWorld named Whitcomb as one of the “Top 25 CTOs of 2009.”

Whitcomb is a co-founder of i/o Ventures, an early stage startup program that focuses heavily on mentorship. He graduated from the University of Washington and was born and raised in Bellingham, WA.
[Email Aber]

The rise and fall of Zynga has left the gaming industry suspect of the social games category. Just as with the music industry, social games are perceived as “hits” driven. Methodical strategy and diversification of titles or content can help developers in social games develop thriving – and profitable – titles for paying players. Games must be fun, innovative, and accessible on all the most popular platforms – across mobile and social networking destinations. Intelligent analytics behind thoroughly researched and strategic cross-promotion techniques hold the key to success for long-lasting, revenue-driving social gaming titles.

10:30-10:50

The Problems We Encountered When Porting Flash Game to HTML5

Zhifeng CHEN, Founder and CEO, NTFusion

Zhifeng Chen is the founder & CEO of NTFusion and the producer of NTCreature, Pocket Creature game series, which are hot popular games on global casual game market. Recently he began producing HTML5 casual games by both developing new games and porting games from Flash.
[Email Zhifeng]

Currently HTML5 is still in the early stage, but actually we can make lots of fun games with it. For Flash game developers, porting Flash games to HTML5 is not a difficult task, because of the similarity between Actionscript and Javascript. However, problems still exist: performance, sound, browser compatibility, etc., In this session, Zhifeng will share the experience in porting the game Fruity Annie from Flash to HTML5.

Cloudification of Games

Dhruv PARPIA, Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services

Dhruv Parpia is a Solution Architect with Amazon Web Services (AWS) where he is responsible for educating companies with the service offerings of the AWS platform, as well as helping them in their architecture with the best practices to build highly scalable and resilient applications on AWS. With over 13 years of experience in the IT industry, Dhruv started out running the first gaming cafe ever in India, introducing India to competitive PC gaming. He simultaneously started his own web development firm providing consultancy around the latest web technologies including Amazon Web Services. He has also consulted and deployed enterprise grade wifi utilizing wireless mesh technology and helped create robust and secure wireless networks for some of the largest corporates in India. He is an avid gamer and has represented India professionally at the World Cyber Games 3 times as well as the E Sports World Cup.
[Email Dhruv]

The convergence of social gaming and mobile has changed the game for social game developers combining old and new challenges. Many mobile social game developers are leveraging AWS for their backend infrastructure because it allows them to execute in the face of these challenges. How can you reduce deployment time from weeks to hours? How can you build a backend that can serve 10 users or 10,000,000 without failing or paying for what you’re not using? Come learn from us how to architect your mobile social game on AWS and change the game of mobile social deployment in your favor.

Social Casino by the Numbers

Joost VAN DREUNEN, Co-Founder & CEO, SuperData Research

Joost is fascinated by games and human behavior. He has over fifteen years of commercial research experience in interactive entertainment and technology industries, and was also one of the first academics to study video games. After receiving a doctorate from Columbia University on the topic, he founded SuperData to help the games industry better understand online, mobile and digital games. In early 2010, the company secured multi-year seed funding and today SuperData is a leading games industry researcher, specialized in online games.

Clients include publishers such as Electronic Arts, SEGA, and Pokémon as well as all the major Wall Street firms. In addition to his business adventures, Joost teaches at the NYU Game Center. He lives in the East Village in New York, with his wife Janelle and son Maximus.
[Email Joost]

As the social games market matures, a classic type of play has emerged as one of the fastest growing categories. The US market for social casino in the US alone totals an estimated $863 million in 2013E. And with casino-style games accounting for roughly 25% of total social gaming traffic, overall earnings support recent investments in the space. As social casino games grow into their own, now is a great time to take a step back and look at the overall market.

While there still exists ample opportunity for growth, the presence of several large operators make this segment a riskier opportunity compared to a year ago. This presentation provides a clear overview of the social casino space, its major trends, an assessment of top titles and a vision of what’s to come.

11:00-11:20

Paving Your Way to Success | 11:00 - 11:50

Desmond LEE, Producer and Lim JENN YU, Creative Director/Game Designer, Appxplore

Graduated with a BFA (Computer Arts) in 1999 from Academy of Art University, San Francisco. Desmond Lee worked in the United States for 5 years as: Multimedia Designer at Garmin International, Art Director at Digital Pipe Inc. and Streaming Media Specialist at Fantastic Corp.

He returned to Malaysia in 2004 and worked as a consultant specialized in New Media. In August 2004, he was appointed by Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) as a consultant to assist Saladin Special Project and later became the producer of Saladin The Animated Series (26 Episodes), which was nominated for the International Emmy Awards 2011 – Malaysia first Emmy nomination.

In early 2011, he co-founded Appxplore with the goal to establish a worldclass mobile game and content development studio in Malaysia.
[Email Desmond]

Highly skilled artist with more than 10 years experience specializing in conceptual drawing, 3D animation and game designing, Jenn Yu has won numerous New Media Awards during his career and one of his 3D digital artwork was featured in EXPOSÉ. Jenn Yu is one of the pioneers in the Malaysian gaming industry where he assisted Phoenix Game Studios to develop Malaysia first MMORPG- Fung Wan Online back in 2004.

In 2007, Jenn Yu moved on his career as a Senior 3D Artist with an international game studio – Codemasters where he worked on AAA titles like Grid, Dirt 2 and Bodycount. In 2010, Jenn Yu joined Cubinet Sdn Bhd as Lead 3D Artist and Game Designer with the opportunity to produce 3D MMORPG and social games. Currently he is playing a key role and leading Appxplore as the Creative Director and Game Designer.
[Email Lim]

Malaysia-based Appxplore will share their experiences and learned lessons on how they started and paving their way to success. Today, Appxplore has successfully published three mobile games - Lightopus, Sporos and Alien Hive and all three were featured on either App Store or Google Play. You will hear about their experience - the team setup, design and development, publishing and monetizing of their games. They hope to inspire new start-ups.

The Rise of Mobile-Social Networks in Asia

Steven GOH, Co-founder & CEO, mig33

Steven is well experienced in developing and delivering successful Internet services for consumers, having first founded Australia’s first online stock brokerage company, Sanford Securities Limited, prior to co-founding mig33, one of the world’s largest social entertainment services, and Belldirect, Australia’s premiere independent online financial services company.

Steven is recognized as an authority on contemporary IT issues, with extensive private and public board experience, has served as a keynote speaker and panelist at conferences throughout the U.S., Australia and Asia. Steven received both a Bachelor of Commerce and an MBA from the University of Western Australia, along with a number of awards.
[Email Steven]

The mobile phone is the first screen and primary entertainment device for many users across developing countries in regions such as the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. With the explosive growth of home-grown, mobile-first social networks in the aforementioned regions in the past 2 years, how is a company like mig33 succeeding despite challenges that include feature phones outnumbering smartphones, low-bandwidth, poor physical infrastructure, extremely low online credit card usage, and cultural/religious sensitivity? Steven will shed more light on this industry along mig33’s up-and-down-and-up journey.

BINGO! The Numbers Game: How Analytics and Game Design Came Together

Lalit PATEL, Co-founder, BASH Gaming

Lalit is the Co-Founder of the gaming start-up BASH Gaming (formerly BitRhymes), creators of Bingo Bash, the #1 social Bingo Game in the world with more than 1.5M+ people playing every day across pc, mobile and tablets. Prior to BitRhymes, Lalit was part of the core technical team at SlideShare.net, which built the very early product which today commands 3 billion slide views a month (now acquired by LinkedIn). He loves writing code, growing plants and reading Calvin & Hobbes. More: http://www.lalit.org/about
[Email Lalit]

Lalit will speak about how emphasis on metrics-driven game design helped propel their game Bingo Bash to No. 1 position of Top Grossing charts on iPad, Top10 on iPhone and Android. In an incredibly crowded mobile gaming market with next to zero organic growth and cost of user acquisition going sky high, there are thousands of games that can’t retain users or are having trouble breaking ground even with exciting new game play. Often, analytics is the secret ingredient these games are missing. This talk will share insights on how you can measure your games' progress and back your decisions with numbers to improve user engagement and retention. It will also focus on how to use analytics to optimize your user acquisition efforts to bring down your cost and maximize ROI.

11:30-11:50

How Targeted, Personalized Messaging Strategies Peak Consumer Interest in Games

John CHENG, Co-founder & COO, Playnomics

John Cheng is co-founder and COO of Playnomics, leading product vision and development, and focusing on tailoring the product to meet customer needs. A reformed investment banker, John has spent his career working with early stage software companies. John completed his undergrad at Berkeley, and holds an MBA from Kellogg.
[Email John]

The future of loyalty marketing is happening now in the mobile, social games industry. The advent of connected devices has turned games into real-time marketing services, where every interaction with a player is a unique opportunity to cultivate them. In this session, Playnomics COO John Cheng will share case studies on how targeted players responding to messaging and incentives outperformed control groups, resulting in 5X higher click-through rates, 87% higher spend, and 23% higher return rates.

Emerging Markets for Social Casino Gaming

Vicenc MARTI, CEO, Akamon

Vicenç Martí is an expert in the specifics of the gaming industry, after being Managing Director at Cirsa Gaming Corporation. As Chief Marketing Officer at Spanish low-cost airline Vueling, he succeeded in turning the start-up into a cool and reputable million-euro brand, and as CEO at fashion label Custo Barcelona, he had direct responsibility over finance, marketing, sales, operations and product functions.

He graduated in communications from Saint Louis University, and earned an MBA from IESE Business School, University of Navarra, completed with an Executive program at Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He prides himself on his excellent communication skills in four languages: English, French, Spanish and Catalan. He understands Portuguese and Italian, too.
[Email Vicenc]

While the social casino sector becomes increasingly crowded in the English-speaking world, emerging markets like those that share Latin language represent a good opportunity for “brave” players who understand the cultural similarities and differences, ho bet on mobile and have a deep knowledge of local games. The session will present the main aspects of Latin (emerging) markets as an opportunity in the social gaming industry.

12:00-1:00

LUNCH SESSION: Nice Guys Finish 93rd: Pixel People's Battle for F2P Success | 12:00-12:20

Abhishek RADHAKRISHNAN, CCO, LambdaMu Games

Ivan and Abhishek started LambdaMu after years of using games for educational purposes in the classroom. Coming from different gaming and design backgrounds, they each bring a unique flavour to the games they co-design and produce, creating LambdaMu's special blend of free-to-play mobile games.
[Email Abhishek]

Is it possible to make a free-to-play game that doesn't get condemned for its exploitative business models? Is there a way to cash in on this lucrative space without selling your soul? Do devs have to choose between good press and good money? LambdaMu Games certainly believes so, and given their experiences with the success of Pixel People, they feel they're getting closer each day to having their cake and eating it too.

LUNCH SESSION: Introducing Dreadout | 12:30-12:50

Rachmad IMRON, Founder, Digital Happiness

Rachmad Imron is an Indonesian designer, Creative Entrepreneurs, 3D artist, director, and also father who loves collecting figures, watching movies and playing games with his son in his spare time. After graduating from formal education in Design Department, Bandung Institute of Technology, with his interest in 3D and Gaming world, in 2011, a small company based on real time interactive was formed in order to create and develop successful and recognizable new game IP (intellectual Property) running on multiple platforms (Digital Happiness - PT Digital Semantika Indonesia). Now he still continues to develop his own creative entrepreneurship as a main business line in Bandung, Indonesia.
[Email Rachmad]

In this session, Rachmad would like to introduce a new indie game developer from Indonesia, as well as talk about creating their first major game DreadOut

LUNCH SESSION: User Acquisition from East to West | 12:00-12:50

Simon NEWSTEAD, CEO, Frenzoo
Kenrick DRIJKONINGEN, Director of User Acquisition, NonStop Games
Rokimas SOEHARYO, Co-founder, TouchTen

The opportunity for mobile developers to reach a global audience has never been bigger. However however finding quality users at a reasonable prices can be challenging and require different strategies across the global landscape.

This panel will share best practices for Asian developers looking to distribute their games in the US and Europe. Learn how top developers combine marketing strategies - such as cross promotion, ad networks, incentivized downloads, app store partnerships - to launch and sustain momentum for their games and which strategies are most successful in different locations. .

Lunch Break

1:00-1:20

Key Points for Indie Success Globally

Aun TARASEINA, COO, Kiragames

Aun Taraseina is the COO of Kiragames Co., Ltd., developer of Unblock Me, he focuses on business strategies for Kiragames, collaborating with strategic partners and expanding Kiragames line of products and platforms. Kiragames's most successful game, Unblock Me, is globally one of the most popular games and was named as #17 most downloaded app of all time in the US AppStore.

Before joining Kiragames, he had been Lead Developer for many game companies and also a frequent speaker on topics such as game development and game engine technologies. In his younger years, he had once dream of becoming a professional gamer but found out that he enjoyed creating games even more so he shifted his effort to create fun and addictive games instead.
[Email Aun]

Kirakorn Chimkool, CEO of Kiragames, has released Unblock Me three years ago and it became an instant hit and inspiration to many other developers around the world, being one of the most downloaded application in 2010 and created a phenomenal with people playing at all ages, genders and nationalities. Working solo and indie at the time, he slowly grew his company and the popularity of Unblock Me during the past three years while still maintaining his indie roots. Today, joined with many sessional developers, Unblock Me FREE is still going strong and has been named as #17 most downloaded application of all time from the US AppStore and Kiragames is still looking forward to expand globally. In this session, Aun Taraseina the COO of Kiragames will share the Key Points that they believe were crucial for Kiragames success ranging from what design rules they used for Unblock Me to the company culture within Kiragames

An Overview of the Asian Mobile Market with Android

Wai Cheong CHOY, Director and COO, Metaps Pte Ltd

Choy Wai Cheong has lived in Japan for 15 years. He has more than 8 years of experience in expanding businesses into more than 10 countries in Asia Pacific. Choy joined Metaps in early 2012 and is spearheading its Singapore subsidiary as Director and COO, focusing on building strategic alliances and leading Metaps to grow businesses in APAC and globally.
[Email Choy]

Choy will share the growth of Android, experiences in creating high ARPU users, and strategies to be successful on Google Play in strategic countries around Asia.

Real-Money Gaming: The Future of Monetization

Jonathan FLESHER, EVP Business Development, Betable

Jonathan Flesher is Executive Vice President of Business Development at Betable. Based in San Francisco, he focuses on building strategic partnerships that create new opportunities for Betable and its customers. Prior to joining Betable, Jonathan worked as Vice President and General Manager of Business Development at Zynga where he worked on distribution, licensing, advertising and other commercial partnerships with dozens of companies including Google, Tencent and bwin.party. Additionally, Jonathan was a Senior Director of Business Development at Electronic Arts, Vice President at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.’s fixed income funds, consultant for MC Venture’s venture capital funds, and Vice President at JPMorgan’s investment banking division.
[Email Jonathan]

Free-to-play game developers have a major problem: low conversions, low ARPUs and difficult acquisition channels. The first wave of developers have launched real-money games and the results indicate relief for this challenging model. Is the promise of real-money gaming real? What are market entry strategies? What is working and what isn’t? Join Betable’s EVP of Business Development Jonathan Flesher as he discusses how the intersection of social/casino games has and will continue to dramatically impact the trajectory of the Casual Games Industry in the coming year.

1:30-1:50

Valthirian Arc II: Transforming Players Feedback into the Sequel

Wimindra LEE, Creative Director, Agate Studio

In 2006, he worked at Altermyth Studio as Pixel Artist/Project Manager. In 2007, he founded Lucidrine (www.lucidrine.com). His works include Sushi Go-Round(2007), Cube Colossus(2009), and Valthirian Arc(2010). In 2010, he won People's Choice Mochi Awards at FGS 2010 (Cube Colossus). He joined Agate Studio in 2011 as Creative Director and also leads a mobile social game platform project (www.gempon.net).
[Email Wimindra]

Valthirian Arc II is a Simulation/Action game that put player as the principal in charge for academy of heroes.

Did you ever think your player plays a major part of your game design?

In this session, we will share how to make a game that takes user feedback into account, how to learn from past mistakes, fix issues and improves them.

Reality Check on HTML5 - Will 2013 Bring The Breakthrough

Alexander KRUG, Founder & CEO, Softgames

Alexander Krug is a serial games entrepreneur with more than 10 years experience in making big things happen. Alexander started his career at Yahoo! Germany where he successfully managed the re-launch of Yahoo!’s complete gaming portal. In addition, Alex has co-founded several successful gaming start-ups. SOFTGAMES, founded in 2006 is a developer and publisher of Mobile Games & Apps which has worldwide partnerships with carriers, mobile social networks and mobile portals.
[Email Alexander]

Predicted to become a future of cross-platform entertainment and frowned upon by some global players, HTML5 delivered so far an unstable performance. With today’s capabilities and well known challenges of the technology, one wonders if HTML5 can compete with native development and how to monetize the technology in gaming sector. Alexander Krug will present SOFTGAMES's insights on the launch, promotion and monetization of HTML5 titles. A discussion on upcoming trends, major KPI´s and insights will round up the session.

Skill Based Gaming and Wagering on Core Games

Paul KIM, CEO, Xfire

Paul Kim has been in the entertainment industry for over 20 years, the first decade in film and video and the last decade in PC Online games. Paul was the Executive Vice President at GoPets, Ltd. where he was instrumental in building out a 70 person online game studio in Seoul, Korea. He then served as Vice President of Business Development and Licensing at companies such as Affinity Media, PlayXpert and Gazillion Entertainment, creating partnerships for IP’s such as Thottbot, Wowhead, Marvel, and Lego. He is now CEO of Xfire spearheading a major pivot into competitive gaming.
[Email Paul]

League of Legends, World of Tanks, Battlefield 3, Dota 2... these are the most popular games today and they all have something in common: competition. We are seeing year after year growth in eSports, online tournaments and the idea of playing to win. New pro leagues and teams are being formed everyday to be recognized as representing the best. Xfire is leveraging this growth market with a fully automated competitive gaming platform that extends life cycles of games, adds new revenue streams and has gamers putting money where their mouth is.

2:00-2:20

A Simple Approach to Procedural Content

Eli PIILONEN, Game Developer

Eli Piilonen has been developing games for about ten years now. His game, The Company of Myself, has been the highest rated puzzle title on Kongregate.com since it released in 2009. He recently moved to working in 3D and is now finishing up his first price-tagged product, Not the Robots.
[Email Eli]

This presentation will cover the reasons why a developer might want randomized content, descriptions of different styles of randomization, and some examples of games that use them in different ways. The attendees will find out about a method for procedurally generating different types of content, like room layouts, color palettes, and wallpaper patterns.

Mobile Advertising Best Practices for Game Developers

Phalgun RAJU, Vice President & General Manager, India, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, InMobi

Phalgun Raju is Vice President and General Manager of the India, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan region at InMobi. InMobi is the world's largest independent mobile advertising network. She is a frequent invited industry speaker on mobile advertising, branding, and the mobile industry and is on the APAC board of MEF. She recently received the Brand Leadership Award at the 2012 World Brand Congress in Mumbai.

Prior to InMobi, Phalgun held various senior leadership roles at Google, Nokia and McKinsey. She has a MBA from the Harvard Business School and a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
[Email Phalgun]

You’ve built a great mobile game. Now you need to promote it, but how? While PR, viral marketing and game reviews are vital to your marketing strategy, they can’t deliver consistent results like mobile advertising can.

Join InMobi as we take you through the fundamentals of mobile advertising for games. We discuss all aspects, including how to make great mobile creative, what are the best targeting options and markets. We will also share our formula to calculate LTV (Life Time Value), so you can better optimize your spend, all from real world examples as case studies.

Social Casino : Where It All Started and Where We Are Going

Jose BROTONS, Executive Director & Co-Founder, Product Madness/Aristocrat

Jose Brotons has a Masters in Industrial Engineering by the ICAI, the top engineering University of Spain. Prior to Product Madness, he got his MBA at Stanford where he did his summer internship at McKinsey and Company. Pre-MBA he worked at ITT Industries where he was Director of Monitoring & Control (M&C) Technologies in Spain. There he managed the first successful product turnaround the company had had in this vertical. Later, he was part of the team for international expansion that was awarded the prestigious Geneen Award for excellence. He is originally from Spain and loves high adrenaline sports like kite surfing and snowboarding.
[Email Jose]

2:30-2:50

The Making of BaliFied - Word Game of the Gods

Gilbert JANSEN, Art Director, & Yon Hardiyan TANTO, Game Designer & Studio Manager, Dragon Game Studio

Gilbert Jansen, Takengon, ID, Since he was a kid, he studied hard to draw and paint to fulfill his dream to work in the Art industry. Previously, he worked at Gameloft as 2D Artist. Now he works as an Art Director at Dragon Game Studio, responsible for creating and directing game assets.
[Email Gilbert]

Yon Hardiyan Tanto, Surabaya, ID. Previously worked as a Game Artist at Little Giant World Studio, he moved to Bali for his passion and became a Game Designer & Studio Manager at Dragon Game Studio. He believes that everybody has a different opinion or an odd way of how to represent a game.
[Email Yon]

In this session, Bali-based startup company PT. Dragon Game Studio reveals their new and upcoming word game: BaliFied - Word game of the Gods. You will hear about the game development process, the good, the bad, the struggles, the great ideas and so forth… and how they as an Indie developer, succeeded to finalize the project. With this seminar, they hope to be an inspiration for other startup Indie developers!

How to Define Just Right KPIs For Mobile Game Operation

Ibrahim DAI, Chief Evangelist, TalkingData

Mr. Ibrahim Dai is the chief evangelist of TalkingData, China's largest Mobile Internet data service platform. He has solid professional background in TMT industry with rich executive experience in mobile Internet field. Before joining TalkingData, Mr. Dai served as senior solution manager at BEA/Oracle in charge of TMT solution design and delivery for global key customers.
[Email Ibrahim]

Competition stiffens in mobile games sector today. Deeper data analytics becomes critical for game developers/publishers to understand details of their business operation in order to get maximum out of it. How to define reasonable KPIs for different types of games? And how to calculate all these metrics such as LTV, CAC, and 1-7-14-30 days Retention? How to read and analysis these metrics in different phases of a game's lifecycle? And how does these metrics play compared with industry benchmarks? Ibrahim Dai, Chief Evangelist of TalkingData will tell you the answers in this lecture.

Turning Your Poker Club Leaders into Game Managers

Xiang LIN, VP of International Business, Hoolai

Xiang Lin, VP of International Business, oversees international strategy, business development, corporate communications and international operations. Born and raised in Beijing, Xiang holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Tsinghua and a M.S. from Brown. Prior to Hoolai Games, Xiang escorted many products through their full or partial lifecycle from inception, birth, growth and end of life in companies like Microsoft, SanDisk and several silicon valley startups.
[Email Xiang]

3:00-3:20

Awesome 2D Game Animations with Spine

Stefan NGUYEN, Lead Mobile Game Developer, Vinova Pte Ltd

Stefan Nguyen is the lead mobile game developer at Vinova since 2010. He has the passion to apply the best techniques to his game development work and share his knowledge to the world. He is one of the active contributors for Artemis Entity System and Spine.
[Email Stefan]

Spine is a super new tool in the market (23 Feb 2013) that replaces traditional raster animation in games, providing smoother animations that are easier to produce. Animations can be created without needing more art and are so tiny that games can make extensive use of them.

Vinova has adopted Spine from the day Spine has successfully raised its funding goal on KickStarter on 23 Feb 2013 ($67,569). Vinova is actively contributing the patches for spine-runtimes library in order to make Spine more awesome to game developers. In this session, Stefan will share about how helpful Spine is, and how easy it is to apply Spine into 2D game development process.

Mobile Social Games Vs Reality Television - An Emerging Market Comparison

Raja HUSSAIN, Founder & CEO, FunSpot

Raja Hussain is the Founder and CEO of Funspot. Funspot is working across Asia's emerging markets to make mobile social gaming an affordable and accessible genre of entertainment for everyone. Prior to starting Funspot, Raja Hussain was part of the founding team at Roamware, a telco technology start-up from Silicon Valley which become a leader with 600 mobile operators around the world for 12 years. Raja has lived and worked across Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa and Europe and understands the realities of emerging market consumers around the world and the opportunity they represent.
[Email Raja]

Reality Television shows are popular across the globe. Everyone in the community is able to access and engage with it. From the richest to the poorest has access to TV. How does Mobile Social Gaming stack up as a mass market entertainment genre compared to this? What can the gaming world learn from this and the opportunities it represents? A perspective from a mobile social gaming company focussed exclusively on democratizing this form of entertainment across emerging markets of Asia.

3:30-3:50

Learning from TaTaO: Importance of Project and Time Management

Jason CHRISTIAN, Chairman, UMN Game Development Club

Jason Christian is a student, a game hobbyist, and a programmer. He is a student majoring Computer Science in game development and programming concentration at Universitas Multimedia Nusantara, Indonesia. He is now the chairman of UMN Game Development Club.
[Email Jason]

TaTaO is a social web-based mobile game created by 4 Universitas Multimedia Nusantara’s students. It is a product of a 24 hour hackathon competition which they won and finally published at KotaGames platform. They learned that developing a game does not only require the knowledge of the tools that they used, but also a good project and time management. Their over optimistic schedule resulting to the late delivery of the game.

This, Not That! Mobile Game Design Best Practices

Ray LONG, Director of App Services, Tapjoy

Ray Long has been a professional game designer for years including tabletop card and board games to facebook, PC dowload and mobile. From Hive7/Playdom to Playfirst to Game Show Network and now Tapjoy, Ray has designed for tons of games including original IP like Knighthood, one of Facebook's first huge hits, to licensed properties like Wheel of Fortune. Currently the resident game guy at Tapjoy, Ray analyzes and reviews games to increase their fun factor, balance and business potential.
[Email Ray]

Don't let history repeat itself. Learn how to navigate general game design pit traps and avoid mistakes rampant in the mobile game space in this two part talk.

4:00-4:20

Critical Missions: SWAT - From a Hobby Project to a Viral Success

Veli-Pekka PIIRAINEN, CEO, Critical Force Entertainment Ltd

Veli-Pekka Piirainen is CEO and founder of Critical Force Entertainment Ltd, a Finnish startup game studio established in 2012. He is a former studio manager of Supercell North as well as a lecturer and head of Kajak Game Development Lab. Veli-Pekka is also co-founder of NMP Games Ltd.
[Email Veli-Pekka]

Critical Missions:SWAT is the first real cross-platform FPS MOG, where players are able to compete against each other using PC-web, Mac, iOS and Android platforms. It has gained wide popularity and achieved over 8 million downloads and almost 300000 DAU so far. This presentation tells how the game was built, how it's virality was built, what went well, what went wrong and what the future of the game looks like.

How to Make Your Game Successful Globally

Gewben WU, Business Development Director, ASIA, Fortumo

Gewben deals with market building and business development in Asia area for Fortumo. He brings 6 years of management, sales and marketing experience in gaming industry. Before joining Fortumo he used to work at several top game companies in China like Snail Game, Renren Game and Perfect World - helped them set up their oversea departments and business. Gewben has graduated from Xi'an Fanyi University in China. He likes history and sports such as basketball and billiards. People who used to work with Gewben would describe him as a hard-working, professional and trustworthy partner.
[Email Gewben]

Gewben will share key factors that developers need to alter in their monetization strategy to make the most profit from their Android games.

4:30-4:50

The Real Study – Taking a Game Show Warrior from Concept to Manga to Game

Gerald TOCK, Founder, Inzen Studio

Five game developers met at the Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab. They’d worked on a couple of kick-ass games before, ranging from a cult-hit fighting game that was almost violence perfected, to a popular vertical shooter involving some seriously enraged dots which you controlled by literally sketching out awesome attack formations. Though they had a lot of fun at the time, they wanted to create more immersive play experiences.. especially ones involving Giant Mecha Gorillas! Enter Inzen Studio. Starting in Oct 2012, Inzen Studio is now a scrappy band of six fired-up developers and artists across Singapore, Uruguay and China.
[Email Gerald]

In this session, Gerald and Team Inzen will take you through:
a)The design inspiration for Game Show Warriors
b) What it took to establish an impactful and consistent feeling throughout different media, from web manga through to game.
c) How it all eventually came together in drawing players into the world.

The Internet of Everything by AllJoyn

Keith HONG, Application & Ecosystem Lead, Qualcomm

Mr. Keith Hong is the Application & Ecosystem lead for Qualcomm in the South East Asia/Pacific region. He has rich experience in the Telecom & IT industry, having worked in different parts of the Telecom value chain including device chipset (Qualcomm), infrastructure (Ericsson), mobile carrier (Smartone/CSL in Hong Kong) and Apps developer. These experiences enable him to collaborate with different players, and in different levels, in the application ecosystem. Keith was one of the first Computer Science graduates from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and received an MBA from the same school.
[Email Keith]

AllJoyn™ is an open source project which provides a universal software framework and core set of system services that enable interoperability among connected products and software applications across manufacturers to create dynamic proximal networks so that products – for the home, automotive and the enterprise – can interact in new, exciting and useful ways that will engage and delight users.

21 - 23 May 2013

Leveraging Hollywood IP

Serving a Global Audience

Zombies on the Great Wall

Hardcore Social Game

Navigating Ecosystems

Tackling the Market

Collaborative Game Development

Day 1: General Industry, Selling Up & Selling Out, and Development

Tower Ballroom Development

Island Ballroom Jurong Selling UP & Selling OUT

Island Ballroom Katong General Industry

9:15-9:20

Welcome to Casual Connect Asia

Jessica TAMS, Managing Director, Casual Games Association

9:30-9:50

Making Money with Casual Games – What’s Real Today!

Jessica SACHS, Director Developer Relations, Big Fish

10:00-10:20

The Effective Way to Publish Games in the Indonesia Market

Ihsan WAHAB, Director of Publishing, Altermyth

M&A Gaming Market Update

Jim PERKINS, Director, Digital Media Specialist, Corum Group

Facebook Platform for Games: Partnering in Asia

Jessica LEE, Head of APAC Platform Partnerships, Games, Facebook

10:30-10:50

ICON POPin' Journey to the Top

Stefan DAMASENA, CEO, Alegrium

Mergers & Acquisitions Briefing

Jim PERKINS, Director, Digital Media Specialist, The Corum Group

Digital Future - Sustainable Economies

Michael POLE, CEO, gloops International

11:00-11:20

Game Engines for BlackBerry 10 by BlackBerry® & Unity SEA

Justin LEE, Application Development Consultant Southeast Asia, BlackBerry Brett BIBBY, Unity Evangelist, Unity Southeast Asia & Hong Kong

M&A Interview with the Buyers | 11:00 - 11:50

Jan BECKERS, CEO & Founder, HitFox Group Moderator: Jim PERKINS, Director, Digital Media Specialist, Corum Group

Tackling the Chinese Mobile Market: A Guide for Western Developers & Publishers

Aurelien PALASSE, Director Business & Communication, UBISOFT CHINA

11:30-11:50

Making Money with Microsoft

Jeremy SNOOK, Sr. Business Development Manager, Microsoft Studios

Leveraging Iconic Hollywood IP to Create A Global Mobile Phenomenon

Andrew SHEPPARD, President, Kabam

12:00-1:00

LUNCH SESSION: Entertainment and Gamification | 12:00 - 12:50

Neeraj ROY, CEO & Managing Director, Hungama

LUNCH SESSION: "Show and Sell"-- mig33 Game Pitch | 12:00 - 12:50

LUNCH SESSION: Coping with a Diversified Mobile Gaming Market | 12:00 - 12:50

Gonzague de VALLOIS, SVP of Publishing, Gameloft

1:00-1:20

Fukuoka City: Regional Game Industry Hub

Kiyoshi SHIN, Journalist and Lecturer, Fukuoka City

M&A Interview with the Sellers | 1:00 - 1:50

Michael POLE, CEO, gloops International John PASSFIELD, Creative Director, Red Sprite Studios and Program Manager, Right Pedal Studios Lior SHIFF, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Product Madness Moderator: Jim PERKINS, Director, Digital Media Specialist, The Corum Group

Settling Down and Setting Up in Europe: The Cultural Challenges, Finding the Right Partners and Growing to Ship Fast

Alastair BURNS , COO, Gramble

1:30-1:50

Collaborative Game Development

Rajat OJHA, Managing Director, The Awesome Game Studio

From Developer to Self Publisher: The Fast Track

Torsten OPPERMANN, CEO, indigo pearl GmbH & Co. KG

2:00-2:20

The Future of Game Development in the Philippines | 2:00 - 2:50

Development Studio Fundraising in Asia--Past, Present and Future

John LEE, Chief Strategy Officer, ZeniMax Asia Pacific Ltd.

Operating a Global Game Service: Lessons Learned

David WORLE, VP of Content Acquisition, WildTangent

2:30-2:50

The Challenges of Creating an Indie Game Accelerator

John PASSFIELD, Creative Director, Red Sprite Studios and Program Manager, Right Pedal Studios

Mastering Growth: Keys To Developing A World Class Work Place

Michael KALKOWSKI, Co-founder & Managing Director, GameDuell

3:00-3:20

Developing Native Cross Platform Games

Markku KERO, CEO, Job and Esther

Is There a Series A Crunch in Asia? | 3:00 - 3:50

Hype vs Real Deal: Asian Edition | 3:00 - 3:50

Manish AGARWAL, CEO, Reliance Entertainment Digital Brian OH, Director, GAMEVIL Andrew SHEPPARD, President, Kabam Jeremy SNOOK, Sr. Business Development Manager, Microsoft Studios Moderator: David NIXON, CEO, Gemini Hive Inc.

3:30-3:50

Tower Ballroom
Development

Island Ballroom Katong
General Industry

Justin LEE, Application Development Consultant Southeast Asia, BlackBerry
Brett BIBBY, Unity Evangelist, Unity Southeast Asia & Hong Kong

Jan BECKERS, CEO & Founder, HitFox Group
Moderator: Jim PERKINS, Director, Digital Media Specialist, Corum Group

Michael POLE, CEO, gloops International
John PASSFIELD, Creative Director, Red Sprite Studios and Program Manager, Right Pedal Studios
Lior SHIFF, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Product Madness
Moderator: Jim PERKINS, Director, Digital Media Specialist, The Corum Group

Manish AGARWAL, CEO, Reliance Entertainment Digital
Brian OH, Director, GAMEVIL
Andrew SHEPPARD, President, Kabam
Jeremy SNOOK, Sr. Business Development Manager, Microsoft Studios
Moderator: David NIXON, CEO, Gemini Hive Inc.

Robert KIM, Director, Consumer, IDA
Joachim NG, Director, MDA
Tai WEI HAO, VP, Time Voyager
Allan SIMONSEN, Co-founder and Technology Director, Boomzap
Addison KANG, Co-founder, Cherry Credits, Vice President, Shanda Games
Moderator: Oh THONGSRINOON, VP and Evangelist of Games, Mig33 Pt., Ltd.

Tower Ballroom
Development

Island Ballroom Katong
F2P/Games as a Service