All posts tagged: DeanBeat

Game industry predictions for 2025 | The DeanBeat

Game industry predictions for 2025 | The DeanBeat

Published by skeptic

This year’s best prediction for the game industry in 2025 already came from Swen Vincke, CEO of Larian Studios, maker of Baldur’s Gate 3, the Game of the year in 2023. At The Game Awards this year, Vincke got to announce the new Game of the Year (Astro Bot), and he made a prediction. “The oracle told me that the Game of the Year 2025 is going to be made by a studio who found the formula to make it up here on stage,” Vincke said. “It’s stupidly simple, but somehow it keeps on getting lost. A studio makes a game because they want to make a game they want to play themselves. They created it because it hadn’t been created before. They didn’t make it to increase market share. They didn’t make it to serve the brand. They didn’t have to meet arbitrary sales targets, or fear being laid off if they didn’t meet those targets.” The audience erupted into applause at his words, and he was not drummed off the stage for taking …

What Hamster Kombat is teaching us about game marketing | The DeanBeat

What Hamster Kombat is teaching us about game marketing | The DeanBeat

Published by skeptic

GamesBeat Next is connecting the next generation of video game leaders. And you can join us, coming up October 28th and 29th in San Francisco! Take advantage of our buy one, get one free pass offer. Sale ends this Friday, August 16th. Join us by registering here.  Game marketing is changing, thanks to Hamster Kombat, a tapping mini-game on Telegram that has been downloaded more than 300 million times since March. It took only 73 days for Hamster Kombat to reach its first 100 million users. Traditional marketing tactics are losing their power when it comes to attracting the attention of target audiences, said Tavia Wong, chief marketing officer at Credbull, a small private credit company in Asia with a dozen employees. The age of the viral game is back, at least on one platform. And many are starting to copy the formula like PiP World, Bondex, Gamee and Liithos. In an interview with GamesBeat, she said that Web3 tap-and-earn games like Hamster Kombat are the unexpected inspiration for marketing professionals, and she believes every …

Lightspeed, GamesBeat and Nasdaq announce second annual Game Changers startup list | The DeanBeat

Lightspeed, GamesBeat and Nasdaq announce second annual Game Changers startup list | The DeanBeat

Published by skeptic

Join gaming leaders live this May 20-21 in Los Angeles to examine the strategies needed to adapt and excel in an ever evolving landscape, featuring insights from leading voices and thought leaders in the industry. Register here. Lightspeed, GamesBeat and Nasdaq are excited to announce the second year of Game Changers, an annual list celebrating and accelerating 25 extraordinary startups in gaming and interactive media. More information about this year’s program — such as categories, timeline, and judges for this year’s nomination process — will be shared during GamesBeat Summit 2024 at the Marina del Rey Marriott in Los Angeles. The panel, Lightspeed x GamesBeat Game Changers — Innovations in gaming & interactive media, will take place on May 20 with Moritz Baier-Lentz (partner at Lightspeed), Sophia Xing (director of product at Inworld AI), Chris Bell (CEO of Gardens Interactive), Jani Penttinen (CEO of Bitmagic), and GamesBeat lead writer Dean Takahashi. Submissions for the list this year will open in June. Together with GamesBeat, Nasdaq, and industry-leading judges, Lightspeed is excited to announce the second …

GamesBeat Summit 2024 agenda: Lotsa talks on resilience and adaptation | The DeanBeat

GamesBeat Summit 2024 agenda: Lotsa talks on resilience and adaptation | The DeanBeat

Published by skeptic

Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the gaming industry’s top leaders? Learn more about GamesBeat Summit sponsorship opportunities here.  I’m very excited to present our full agenda for our GamesBeat Summit 2024 event on May 20-21 at the Marina del Rey Marriott in Los Angeles. You can use this code gbs24dean25 for a 25% discount on tickets. It’s my pleasure to note this is our 16th annual event, and our theme is Resilience and Adaptation. The game industry had a pretty bad year and a half when it comes to 20,000 layoffs. We have felt that pain with you at GamesBeat. But we’re so glad to have your support and a chance to discuss what matters with you. We have 99 speakers across 48 sessions. About 57% come from diverse backgrounds. Deciphering what’s happening in games The Super Mario Bros. Movie hit $1.36 billion in revenue. We’re all looking for the ideas that will deliver the next level of growth for gaming. We believe the agora of the game industry needs to bring …

#1ReasonToBe: Women speak to making games in emerging regions | The DeanBeat

#1ReasonToBe: Women speak to making games in emerging regions | The DeanBeat

Published by skeptic

Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the gaming industry’s top leaders? Learn more about GamesBeat Summit sponsorship opportunities here.  The #1ReasonToBe panel has had a strong legacy at the Game Developers Conference. It has been dormant for a while, but the session returned at this year’s GDC. This year, it featured six women from different parts of the gaming world. They talked about why they’re game developers and how that came to pass at the recent online-only GDC. The panelists included Laia Bee (CEO of Pincer Games and president of the Uruguayan Game Developers Association); Indrani Ganguly (studio head and game designer at Duronto Games); Isabel Vásquez  (video game producer/ CEO at Pink Bear Games); Alexandra Marzuqa Giacaman (software developer / musician and sound designer at AyHungry and Micromoon Bugs); Aevee Bee  (narrative designer at Future Club); and Bahiyya Khan (game designer, writer and filmmaker, independent). I’ve always enjoyed this panel about empowered women from emerging markets telling their stories about their passion for games. This is a panel that is rich in the history of GDC …

Tetris Reversed is unearthed after being forgotten for a decade | The DeanBeat

Tetris Reversed is unearthed after being forgotten for a decade | The DeanBeat

Published by skeptic

Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the gaming industry’s top leaders? Learn more about GamesBeat Summit sponsorship opportunities here.  Many game fans have enjoyed the Tetris movie, which chronicled the creation and licensing of Tetris, the addictive game that Alexey Pajitnov created behind the Iron Curtain. His friend Henk Rogers went through a great deal of trouble to license the game in Russia and even get Pajitnov out of the Soviet Union decades ago. But there’s one more chapter to the tale unfolding. Today, Pajitnov and others who unearthed a forgotten game in the Tetris canon talked at the Game Developers Conference about Tetris Reversed, a prototype for a game that was considered lost. But little did Pajitnov know that an engineer in charge of the game, Vedran Klanac, had kept a copy of it. Through the help of intermediaries, he showed it to Pajitnov and the two shared their memories of what happened to the lost game. GB Event GamesBeat Summit Call for Speakers We’re thrilled to open our call …

What we can learn from the Helldivers 2 and Palworld launches | The DeanBeat

What we can learn from the Helldivers 2 and Palworld launches | The DeanBeat

Published by skeptic

Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the gaming industry’s top leaders? Learn more about GamesBeat Summit sponsorship opportunities here.  When everybody shows up at once to play a game like Palworld and Helldivers 2, it’s like a thunderous stampede for the company trying to keep the games up in the face of unexpected popularity. When this happens for a game, it’s a lot worse than just a concert ticket launch for a band like Bruce Springsteen, where the tickets for a show are gone in seconds. That’s because the game has to be supported by an army of servers, not just when players are downloading it all at once, but also when they’re trying to play for hours at a time. It’s a complicated problem, and the launch of the recent hits like Helldivers 2 and Palworld shows that technological challenge of keeping a game operating as a live service isn’t solved yet. But there are vendors who swear that they have this problem under control, if only the game developers …

Why Apple needs to face greater antitrust scrutiny | The DeanBeat

Why Apple needs to face greater antitrust scrutiny | The DeanBeat

Published by skeptic

Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the gaming industry’s top leaders? Learn more about GamesBeat Summit sponsorship opportunities here.  After watching Apple’s defiance of European antitrust regulators this week, I’ve come to the conclusion that the company needs to face greater antitrust scrutiny. I believe the tech industry will thrive better under open standards and fair competition. The industry will innovate better when it can invest in new technologies, bringing about new versions of the internet, better AI tools, transparent tech like the blockchain and consumer gathering places like the metaverse. But Apple stands in the way. It is the mother of all walled gardens. It is a vertically integrated company, meaning it relies on its own hardware, software, chips, physical and digital stores, data centers and more. This strategy has made it singularly successful, but it flies in the face of what made Silicon Valley so innovative in its past history. Apple, once the underdog, is now the monolithic empire. I don’t pretend this opinion column is fair, but I …

How Hasbro’s Chris Cocks is steering the toy company into games | The DeanBeat

How Hasbro’s Chris Cocks is steering the toy company into games | The DeanBeat

Published by skeptic

Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the gaming industry’s top leaders? Learn more about GamesBeat Summit sponsorship opportunities here.  I think of Chris Cocks as the gamer who took over a big toy company. He was named the CEO of Hasbro in February 2022, even though he wasn’t a Hasbro lifer. Cocks started at the company in 2016 as president of the Wizards of the Coast division, which publishes Magic: The Gathering (which saw 10% revenue growth in 2023). Before joining Hasbro, he managed brands at Microsoft, Leapfrog and Procter & Gamble. His mission was to take the company — which had $5.8 billion in revenues last year and is valued at $6.9 billion — into digital tech and games. Hasbro is strategically establishing a network of studios and licensing arrangements to turn the company in a triple-A video game developer and publisher.  Hasbro focuses on the storytelling and exhilaration of play. But that isn’t just limited to toys. It also means consumer products as well as gaming and entertainment. Its products …