Casual Connect 2011 (Seattle) takeaways!

I spent last week in Seattle attending the Casual Connect conference, which turned out to be a great event. Lots of very interesting meetings with potential clients and publishers,  and I had the chance to hang out with several colleagues that are an inspiration.

I’ve learned a lot and most of it are old news, things that you’ve probably saw many times before in almost any gamedev related media. But the thing is that I had to see it to believe it, like:

1. Microtransactions are really happening
2. The new buzz is “mid core” audience
3. Facebook is still a relatively virgin market
4. Mobile, mobile, mobile

Sometimes you need to hear things from the teams that are actually doing it, instead of the press or blogs.

Besides all that business and meetings and how can I squeeze more money out of consumers… eh, I meant players. I had the pleasure to meet and have some beers with the awesome guys from JuicyBeast and Simon from BerzerkStudio. I’m a big fan of their work, and now I’m of the people behind it. The only thing that bother me a little was when the JuicyBeast team assault me, but what are you going to do? Canadians are like that.

All in all, a great conference in a beautiful city with nice people. And some good business too.