Introduction to PG Connects Seattle 2023, Dave Bradley, Steel Media Ltd

[Music] thank you [Music] good morning welcome to Pocket Gamer connect Seattle 2023. um my name's Dave Bradley I'm the CEO of Steel media the Publishers of pocketgamer and the hosts of pocketgamer connects um this is our third time running Pocket Gamer connects in Seattle we run them all around the world as I'll show you in a little bit um we had to take a pause because of the pandemic years but we're uh we're back now for our for our third time and I hope it's going to be a productive couple of days so what we're going to do right now is I'm just going to introduce you to um some of the things that are taking place give you a bit of introduction to the event set the scene a little bit I'm going to talk for five or six minutes and then we'll introduce our first Speaker here on the global Trends track so that's what we're going to do this morning um can I uh move on there we go so welcome so first of all let me just set the

scene a little bit I know we have people here who come to many of our events that we really appreciate that and some familiar faces in the audience thanks for coming back um pocketgamer connects uh is a series of conferences like this and you may have been to other ones in other territories including London um we started pocketgamer.com in 2006 which was the first site dedicated to Mobile gaming if you think about what was available in 2006 that pretty much meant me with the leading engage website um but uh but then with the App Store and so on uh pocketgamer.com is now a the longest running and um and most well known of the site's dedicated to Mobile gaming but since then we also launched a suite of uh B2B sites including bucketgamer.biz and uh and also in fact more than mobile so although the logos aren't up there we also run PC games Insider we run blockchain gamer.beers we run uh Beyond games and a few other sites as well uh covering various sectors including virtual reality um and then we started running events um in about 2014

um we uh we launched our first event and Pocket Gamer connects uh is now a fixture in the games industry calendar and we also run the um mobile games Awards which recently took place uh in uh in April so and what people maybe don't know about us is that we're actually part of the Enthusiast gaming group um they're based uh well it's in Toronto in Los Angeles uh it's um uh called it to comscore the number one gaming property in the US with more eyeballs than Roblox or twitch across the whole network we run um enthusiasts gaming not me personally Enthusiast gaming runs 50 websites and over 700 YouTube channels so that we're part of that group Luminosity is uh is an Esports team you might have heard of us so that's all alone by the Same by the same group so if anyone if you want to meet anyone from The Wider Enthusiast gaming Network um they are here and we've got representatives of the The Wider company here so do look them up on me to match so a lot has happened since we were here last I'm just going to set the scene really briefly and explain the reason

why we're doing some of the things we're doing here um when we were here last year we knew that there were some headwinds in the industry um a number of factors that we're all very conscious of there was war in Ukraine there still is inflation uh UA challenges following changes to the idfa and so on but in the last 12 months the industry has seen even tougher times with recession in some areas tech stocks crashing the elephant in the room is of course that many of the companies that we know very well have experienced layoffs uh and in fact um the the global gains Market revenues according to nuzu there for instance are a little down on what was predicted and it was the first time that the games industry hadn't grown in about 25 years um so um uh so that's something that we're all very conscious of and it affected investment money which has slowed um and uh and and that's had an effect on all of us and like I said we're very conscious of the fact that there have been layoffs in the industry now actually there are

and even there's some layoffs out there there are some reasons to be um to be cheerful those reasons to be optimistic um we are seeing games company shares pop up again according to Drake style the top 25 games companies are up on average about 12 in uh quarter one of this year um and uh and data AI That's the stat there and um uh very well known uh of course stats company reveals that compared to the uh the first quarter pre-pandemic uh there's actually been a 28 increase in spending by Gamers um in 2023 which is which is good news uh and there you go uh NEW Zoo uh looking at their predictions again say that by 2025 we'll actually be up across the whole industry by 3.4 percent and of course as everyone here knows games Remains the biggest entertainment industry bigger than TV and film put together um now I do appreciate that that's cold comfort to people who have lost their jobs in the last few months so how can we help well uh no doubt we'll be talking about the state of the industry um during the course of this event with

some tips on investment that's going to be taking place here in this track there's round tables about the layoffs in the industry and we are running for the first time here a recruitment Affair tomorrow so Career Zone is taking place now that's going to be in the um where the round tables are today the discovery room I'll show you a little map in a moment that's up the stairs just over the uh the other side of the hall it's all day tomorrow we've got a bunch of companies that are taking part uh including GG locators so big thanks to Cami Smith for helping us out organizing this as great agencies to check them out but also Big Fish who are um behind the careers walnuts out there but we've got companies including very very spaceship the Pokemon company shrapnel here taking part uh and about 10 companies I think are bringing jobs there so if you get some time tomorrow you are currently on the lookout for jobs um or know anyone who is um that's the room to go into tomorrow and we are of course also making um access to that free for job seekers in the industry so if you've got people that you know who are looking for work let us know and there's uh we'll be able to let them in tomorrow to take part in that

what else to expect well well there's plenty going on um here uh you can find it all on the website but very quickly we've got 14 traffic topic tracks over two days there's two rooms this is one of them um two concurrent stages there's a little bit of a special focus on AI uh it's the Hot Topic you can't avoid um it seems to be everywhere at GDC and we've got a number of speakers giving him some insight into that but overall we've got um I think it's actually a little a little under 150 expert speakers in a range of topics um and there's round tables too so if you um uh if you fancy a change from this kind of arrangement in that whole room over the hall there's um a chance to meet some of our speakers in person and engage with them we know you can't be in two places at once um so if you're in here you're missing what's going on in track room two we're recording everything except the round tables the round tables are off the Record but we're recording all the um the talks and panels if you missed something you'll be able to watch a recording of it later um the video will will be available in a couple of weeks once we've um chopped up the recordings and edited all the videos

but um you'll be emailed access so look at what's your inbox for Access um to the to all the recordings so you won't miss anything and you can play it back later that's where all the information is um there's a printout that's I can see some of you've got that got the schedule on it but it's all online at pgconics.com uh plus you should have access to meet and match everyone gets access automatically if you haven't received your login for that just ask a reception they'll be able to send it to you and the schedule is in there as well and you can add items to your calendar talk about mid to match um we've got about 700 people registered for the event about about 680 of them I think currently in the platform but more coming in all the time like I said and um you can find them all in the meter match platform you can search by category and set up meetings with them and add them to your schedule um about 70 of game makers Publishers and developers so um so go and have a look there and like I said if you don't have access yet it just means that an email's gone into spam or something and

we can resend it to you do explore the conference now there's printouts of the floor plan that's a little small I guess unless you've got the rise of a sniper but there's a there's a there's a printout reception uh it's also on the website um the thing I would suggest you to keep an eye out for is the yeah the room over there which we'll call in the discovery room that's got the uh the Career Zone in tomorrow there's a chill out Lounge area um the VIP area is kind of down here on the left and um uh the big Indie Zone where we've got about 20 Indie tables is adjacent to the meeting area so you should be able to take that check that out between your meetings speaking of which um this is something we haven't done the last time we were in Seattle we'd like to know which is the indie game you've enjoyed playing the most pick up a ballot paper from uh reception area and uh mark on it what's your favorite game drop it with us and we're going to be announcing the um the audience Choice tomorrow uh thanks to Bright whitebrew for encouraging us to do that there's a few other things taking place investor connector

um is a curated meeting a couple of hours between developers and investors and there's a very big Indie pitch today and publish the speed match tomorrow again we've hand-picked some meetings between developers and Publishers these are by appointment only so if you're thinking if you're not sure if you're going to be in those you are not currently in them but there is some space still available I think we might be able to squeeze you into again to ask a reception if you want to um those are those have been hand-picked and they're taking place at those times now here's the thing tonight um you're all invited bring your badge that gets you in at the door the venue is Right opposite the hotel so if you go out the front door um it's on the other side of the road it's the um video game themed bar um that was uh set up hit by companies including DreamWorks but it's right there and it's good fun and we're going to be there from seven uh there's your login details for the Wi-Fi that's here it's also on your badge by the way so if you if you haven't logged in you can get it there and please do uh tweet from the

conference if you're still using Twitter um uh I am I'm sure elon's new CEO who's going to hand check every single one of your tweets to make sure they're truthful so please do um please do share your pictures and comments from the um from the event and uh and our marketing team will will retweet the uh the best ones big thanks to our awesome sponsors I'm not going to list them all um but but we genuinely appreciate everything that everyone's done to help us here uh also our Media Partners as well it's a number of brands that are here if you want to be put in touch with the Press because you've got games to launch give us a shout and you should find many of them in the platform but if not come to find me and All That Remains before I hand you over to our first Speaker of the morning is just to remind you that we do do these things all over the world now um Seattle is actually one of our smaller events we're still growing um we we've been here like three times now London uh We've run for many years and and uh has has a cup maybe two and a half thousand people had something like that but we run um these events all over the world we're a very international business um we've launched in Dubai for the first

time next month um so we'll be we'll be going there and if anyone's interested in that do let us know the Middle East Market is uh seen a lot of a lot of investment and uh and is growing but we're also in Canada we're in Toronto in July Helsinki for the European industry in September uh Big Industry industry there that's a good one with going to probably our second biggest and then we're in um in Jordan uh in in November um and of course we'll be back in London UK in January that's our Flagship event and we've been doing it for the longest uh and uh is a great way to start the year so um uh so if anyone's interested in London do ask me about that I haven't got a slide for it here right we're going to kick off the first track how about that I would like to take this moment to introduce everyone to the first track of the day which is the global global Trends track now I know we've got our first Speaker here so we'll be able to launch right in um we've got um let me just find My Notes over here so we've got um uh two tracks running

right now so uh in here we've got uh Global Trends followed by the growth track and there's another track over the other side of the uh of the hall um I can see that because I've I've waffled on we're running about 10 minutes behind in this in this track room but that's fine we'll make we'll make time for everybody and of course when this the um the content is finished in here there'll be um there'll be a break and a chance for you to go and check out some of the other rooms so without further Ado welcome to the first content track of Pocket Gamer connect Seattle 2023. this is the global Trends track um we're going to be uh here for about four sessions before it becomes the uh the growth track um I would like to just for a moment thank all of our sponsors for all of our the content this morning which includes Moloko uh Verve group game server Services Game Changer sfh capture and optimove to um go and check out their um their Booth between sessions as well in the hall and our silver sponsor is in movie as well [Music]

thank you [Music]