Table of Contents

Here's a preview of what you'll find in Part 1's coverage

Page 1: Adobe Director and Flash Lite

Allen Partridge, Product Evangelist for Adobe Director, talks about where Director is concentrating its focus and John Agger, Senior Marketing Manager, Adobe Systems, Inc., talks about Flash Lite and development for 2008

Page 2: Five Lessons for Building Successful Social Games

Social games - or video games designed to be played together on social networks - are tipped to be one of the fastest growing sectors in video games. This presentation by one of the leading social games companies uses data and design examples from Facebook hits 'Who Has The Biggest Brain?' and 'Bowling Buddies' to go over five key learnings from developing a top-10 game for social networks. Topics covered range from design insights and process learnings to experiments using different business models. Demos, examples and play- and distribution data are used liberally throughout.

Page 3: Disaggregating the Casual Games Industry

The terms "Casual Games" and "Casual Gamer" are very broad terms that mean different things to virtually everyone involved in this area of the overall games industry. The complexity of defining casual games is due to the evolutionary and revolutionary changes that occur each year and the diversity of products and services, breadth of consumption methods and wide variety of business models that have emerged. In this keynote address, Paul Thelen presents the results of new study performed by Big Fish Games, in collaboration with NPD Group, of the US games industry with an emphasis on the casual gamer. The study profiles distinct casual segments of the market and the resulting business opportunities as well as comparing and contrasting these casual segments with the traditional core games market.

Page 4: A Storyteller's Notebook – Story Development in Casual Games

Drawing from lessons learned working with some of our industry’s top game designers and art directors while overseeing game design on such hit casual properties as the Diner Dash® series, Dream Chronicles™, Chocolatier™, Wedding Dash® and The NightShift Code™, Kenny will take a more in-depth look at topics he’s touched upon in prior lectures on narrative and storytelling including: immersion, integration, the fourth wall, naturalism, closure, starting deep, minimalism (doing less with more, amplification through simplification), thoughtful sound design and music direction, obeying the laws of a story world, and what he calls “imaginosity”. Kenny will also talk through some war stories and outline a set of tools to use for creative direction including: how to set vision, how to hold a productive story development meeting, how to edit a script in half without bumming out your writer and how a good art director is a storyteller’s best friend.

Page 5: Fairies and Dragons: A postmortem of creating the first digital Happy Meal

Fairies and Dragons launched in April 2008 as McDonald's first digital Happy Meal toy. Over the course of 8 weeks it was distributed to approximately 40 Million kids in 17 countries and 11 languages across Europe. This session will be a postmortem on the design and development of this Fuel owned property.

Page 6: Freak Your Game: Data-Driven Game Management for Dummies

This presentation will show how the most competitive casual game developers are those who understand the importance of using economic data to make better decisions in designing a game. The best-selling book Freakonomics brought that concept to the mainstream, illustrating how such data can be valuable in all number of situations, from linking crime rates and abortion legality, to predicting winners in a sumo wrestling match, to understanding divorce rates, the mafia and more. Experts in finance, economics and business intelligence have long understood the value of economic data. Game designers are rarely economic experts, but evidence suggests that their games would be more profitable – and players would have a more rewarding experience – if they thought about a few key economic ideas in the creation and maintenance of their titles. Lisa will give attendees a practical, actionable presentation complete with background examples from the real world and revelations from Twofish's proprietary research and partnerships. She will go on to provide a list of key economic principles game developers should consider and how they can easily implement these ideas at every stage of game development. This talk will assert that developers who don't take economic data into account are missing BIG opportunities– and the vast difference that utilizing the data has made for successful online casual games. Attendees will leave not only with a better understanding of the opportunities that exist, but also armed with practical knowledge about HOW they can better capitalize on these opportunities.

Page 7: The Social Tidal Wave: The New Definition of Casual Gaming

In today’s world of gaming, the term ‘casual’ sparks a series of different connections – from the puzzle game your mom plays to one of the most popular casual games ever, Tetris. Over the past year, the definition of a casual game has become increasingly blurred. We now find casual games across multiple platforms including seventh-generation consoles, mobile devices and MMOs. Driven by the immense population of gamers today, and the explosion of social networking, casual gaming is on the brink of a transformation that is redefining the category and leading the games industry into new markets. In this keynote presentation, Dave Williams, SVP and GM of Nickelodeon Kids and Family Games Group will discuss the state of the casual games industry, who’s playing casual games and what this next shift and generation of casual gaming will look like.

Page 8: Managing Remote Teams

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