slides & audio(39 MB)
While we have all heard the hype about the huge subscriber base social networks provide, there are few opportunities for developers to put their games in front of these consumers. Social networks which provide places for old and new friends to meet with user-generated content is a stark contrast to the standard online portal business models which allow developers excellent front page promotional opportunities. One current solution to this issue of reach is the game network concept: centralized hubs providing consumers with easy ways to discover games and to connect these games with their social network. Come learn ways for casual game developers to leverage the game networks to reach a massive aggregated audience with concrete case studies and best practices.
Delivered at Casual Connect Seattle, July 2008
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Hugh de Loayza (email)
Hugh de Loayza is a games industry veteran having served as senior director of business development for Oberon Media building partnerships with EA/POGO, United Online, Verizon, ATT, Hewlett Packard and Hasbro. Prior to Oberon, de Loayza was the director of content development for Pogo.com and responsible for launching the Pogo ToGo downloadable games business as well as managing production for Pogo.com. He started working in the industry at Sony Online Entertainment where he produced Jeopardy! Online, Wheel of Fortune Online and The Dating Game online.
Stephanie Bergman (email)
Stephanie Bergman is the Director of Product Management for the MySpace Developer Platform. She happily spends her days throwing sheep, buying friends, and poking people as part of her work with applications. She also loves working with developers of all shapes and sizes, and is enjoying watching the changes that applications are bringing to the industry.
Prior to MySpace, Stephanie was the Lead Product Manager for Community Products at AOL, focusing primarily on AOL Blogs, AIM and AIM Pages. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, Stephanie has also served as a Product Manager on Yahoo! Messenger and Chat, and Producer/Community Manager for Pseudo.com.
A long time computer and console gamer, Stephanie has contributed numerous articles to various websites, including GameGirlz, loonygames (as Associate Editor) and GameSpy. She was a contributor to the book "From Barbie to Mortal Kombat" by the MIT Press, and, at Pseudo, created and co-hosted the first and only video podcast "by women gamers, for women gamers."
"StephanieBamBam" can be found blogging professionally for the MySpace Developer Team: http://developer.myspace.com/community/blogs/ and personally at StephanieBamBam.net: http://www.stephaniebambam.net.
Russell Ovans (email)
With over 20 years of industry experience in the timely delivery of robust software applications, Russell Ovans is the founder and president of Backstage Technologies. He was born, raised and educated on Canada’s west coast, including a Ph.D. in Computing Science from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Before starting Backstage, Russell was the senior software engineer responsible for leading a team of developers at two successful Internet startups (abebooks.com in Victoria, and Prophet.Net in Palo Alto) where he wrote the mission-critical search engine and realtime stock market data system, respectively.
Dr. Ovans has taught computer science at Camosun College and software engineering at the University of Victoria. He has published papers on such diverse topics as computer music, object-oriented programming, intelligent user interfaces, artificial intelligence, room acoustics, and software engineering. An iconoclast who eschews open source development, Russell prefers to spend his free time walking dogs on the beach with his girlfriend and three children. A pop culture junkie and trivia buff, he is a self-proclaimed expert on early ‘80s British synth bands.
Gabe Zichermann (email)
Gabe Zichermann developed the concept for ChroniQL in early 2007 after realizing that he had stopped enjoying the process of dealing with his friends’ online photos, and that a game-centric approach might fix the problem. Gabe is a ten-year games industry veteran, having previously worked for CMP Media on the Game Developers Conference, Gamasutra and Game Developer magazine, as well as helping to launch and guide Trymedia Systems from start to sale as its head of Strategy and Marketing. Prior to joining the games industry, Zichermann held roles with Cisco, CheckPoint Software and Nortel/Bay Networks. Now residing in New York City, Gabe muses about why the city that has everything can’t make a good burrito.
Richard Fields (email)
Richard is the founder and CEO of MindJolt Games. MindJolt is the largest social network gaming portal, and provides hundreds of games to players on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and Hi5. Richard previously worked as a consultant and Technical Lead on enterprise level client projects while at Scient Corporation. Additionally, Richard has founded and built several successful e-Commerce companies, outside of the gaming space. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.
