The NY Games Conference (NYGC) was held over two days at the end of September at the south tip of Manhattan adjacent to Battery Park in the Museum of Jewish Heritage. An odd-sounding venue, perhaps, but the museum sported a state-of-the-art auditorium that the conference used to host its single-track event. Upstairs from the theater where the lectures were taking place was a large ballroom hosting various exhibitor tables and containing large round tables for people to sit at. Security at the location was beefed up more than usual thanks to the Iranian president staying at the Ritz Carlton across the street, but getting to and from the museum wasn’t much of a feat thanks to NYC’s subway being a mere two blocks east.

The conference, run by Digital Media Wire (DMW), was very business-oriented and thus was packed with a great many middle-aged men and women wearing suits. DMW reported 300 registered guests, but the theater never seemed to hold more than half that at any given time, although certainly many of the registered attendees weren’t interesting in the full conference, as it spanned many areas of the games business, from core to casual to mobile. While the first day only ran from just after noon until five, the second day offered a full 8 hours worth of material. Each morning the conference was opened with a few words from DMW CEO Ned Sherman.

There were a lot of panels; in fact the majority of sessions were panels, but that makes sense when you’re trying to condense as much material as possible into two days (really a day and a half) by having as many people as possible participate. The biggest panels brought 6 panelists and a moderator up onto the stage. The thing I hate about panels though is that not only are they hard to cover because you have people tossing things out left and right and keeping track of who says what while you’re writing (or typing) and trying to listen to any responses is a pain – but they also are entirely dependent upon the moderator and the direction of the conversations the panel takes. Essentially you have a bunch of people jabber on for 45-60 minutes and hopefully someone says something meaningful every now and then that’s applicable outside the direct scope of the current topic under discussion. In other words, relevant to people as a whole.

Still, DMW did take measures to curtail rambling panelists by having a second, slightly smaller projection screen offset from the large center screen where one technician was using an online countdown timer to give each panelist (in some cases) a certain amount of time in which to respond. That second screen was also used to display an online message board called Mozes that posted up anonymous questions or comments people texted in from their cell phones. I thought this was a really cool idea and I was sorely tempted to see if it was being moderated at all by texting something obscene, but I managed to (barely) restrain myself. Several of the conversations in the panels were directed by comments people texted to the big screen. It did have a slightly annoying drawback though of refreshing the whole damn screen every half-minute or so, which on a rather largish projection screen can become quite distracting after a while.

Of the various panels and sessions, the ones that I (personally, mind you) found interesting are covered in the next few pages. The variety of content made this a rather broadly-appealing conference to many business executives. If you’re in a position at your company that includes understanding various aspects of the games biz and are looking for insight from other professionals, it’s a conference worth attending.

Analysts Panel