The Importance and Growth of Online Events | PocketGamer.biz RoundTable

hello my name is rick cowley and this is our pocketgamer.biz roundtable session we do these every fortnight to discuss uh hot topics in the mobile games industry and uh get a bunch of experts in to discuss the topic uh i am the editor of pockygamer.biz and we'll be moderating and leading the panel as usual uh this week we will be discussing the importance and growth of online events so obviously the world has gone a bit mad and now we can't go outside anymore um so unfortunately everything we have to do now has to go be online in zoom calls such as these and um we will be discussing what that means for the industry what that means going forwards will we see physical events coming back and all that sort of thing but first of all i should introduce the panel uh with me and um i'm just gonna go in order of who i can see although liane seems to be having a bit of problems so i'm gonna go to sally sally if you could quickly introduce yourself

okay uh let's try liam leanne if you could quickly introduce yourself yeah sure if you can hear me oh i said leanne but yeah this is going fantastically well well in that case let me [Laughter] sorry leanne it's okay um i'm here now um i hope you can hear me [Music] we're studio based over in bromley um we work on a bunch of games over there just released like gears tactics so we've just announced our game outcasters which is on stage so and i i'm yeah i'm the piano event as i said um and i've i've been working on on both those areas for sort of over eight years now so yeah i hope to share some experience today fabulous thank you um alex uh hi i'm

alex um in a previous life i used to be known as big boy barry video game tv presenter back in the day uh these days i am the director of global pr for a company called heaven media we're a leading gaming marketing agency i've been in the industry for a couple of decades and uh heaven media as i say do a lot of events both online and physical thank you uh leon right it's my turn yes sorry hey hello guest hands i'm leon um working for ubisoft for the last 14 years uh currently global event director or director international events based out of paris normally but since the lockdown based out of amsterdam which is much nicer i mean parents are lovely but you know uh sally now that you're back yeah hi everyone what a great intro

um i'm steel media's uh senior global event manager um i'm normally running around the world putting on amazing conferences for the games industry um obviously this year has been slightly different um i've actually been working with events 18 years now um so i've seen quite a bit um but this is definitely a new one so but we keep smiling and we keep going and in true style there is always hiccups along the way that we just have to go with cool uh and finally elsbus hello uh hi i'm elle smith i am working at unity technology and i'm based out of copenhagen but i am actually british visitor um i've been at unity for about three years now but um in a previous guys i was actually working at pocket gamer um i've always worked in the events industry um i've saved for the last 16

years and so yeah games has been one of the main focuses um an industry that i've worked in so i think yeah i've seen a little bit of everything and i've worked with some of these guys before so it's nice to join a panel and share our learnings i guess we're looking forward to it and it's lovely to have you back um right so obviously we're going to be talking about online events and their growth and everything but i always like to start by setting some context and looking a bit to the past before we get to this point so um let's talk a bit about physical events how important were they for for your business uh and and for the industry as a whole do we sort of think anyone feel free to jump in on this and just talk about like physical events what they what they used to mean and how important they were for you i think you know speaking for uh for heaven media a large portion of the business uh were circled around physical events uh you know games comedy traditionally would be our biggest show of the year a

lot of stuff happening in europe for us um obviously i can't divulge figures but it's a significant chunk of uh change that's been lost due to physical events around that show and of course throughout the world as well so we also put on events across europe and in north america and uh they were very important to us both uh you know trader focused and consumer focused as well um a significant portion of our business based around events so uh we've had to pivot pretty quickly uh in order to capture some of that business i was also going to jump into something i didn't want to overspeak feel free to just jump in i was going to say yeah i think we certainly within the games industry um a lot hinges off big events like gdc games from other global events and then uh you know suddenly those those kind of disappear or they go global but it's whether they still have the same impact on the business with

regards to you know kind of goals and strategies and revenue targets that we're all kind of working towards so i think yeah i think the physical event was always super important for every company that i've worked up but yes it's quite interesting to see how everybody's pivoting and changing and making things work in the online way and hopefully getting the same results but not always as i'm sure we'll discuss for me if i may jump in my job was evolved or is involved around live events uh life event director our our goal was to produce events like gamescom china joy and so on and so forth so we have to pivot our entire way of working to digital creating digital experiences so that's been in that's been interesting

yeah i'm gonna jump in pocket gamer you know that's what you know we're on a pocket game at biz round table um i would normally this time of year have probably delivered upwards of 40 events um with pocketgamer um you know from those big conferences the small um very big indie pictures um to mixers and stuff like that so having to make that big change really quickly it's been intense but in some ways it's been a lot of fun you know as long as we're staying connected that's that's all we can do they're all very different as well aren't they all of those shows i mean if you think about it you know the obvious ones are the gamescoms the gdc's the e3s uh but the game of london but what a different show that is to something like e3 and what i'm trying to say is our industry is so bored now and so mature that there are you know niche events and not so much events more consumer more trade

and uh you know really when you add them up there's always something happening and they're usually pretty important the big shows certainly so that's a lot of events a lot of networking a lot of publicity opportunities all taken from us and uh and companies like ourselves have to find a way that we can speak for our clients right yeah totally first for example for ubisoft and i think for the entire game ministry to chime in on e3 it's the biggest communication platform of the year and when that gets cancelled which it did obviously uh i mean you're brought to a position where you have to rethink and and try to recreate a platform that's non-existent until then it's like okay how do we create something from scratch how do we take the ubisoft branded human south experience that we normally have at e3 and transform it into something that is digital and we transform it into ubisoft forward which went quite well as well thank god yeah i i'll jump in as well i just think it's

very strange time you know i'd normally be getting ready for gamescom and with people face to face it's so important around this time of year and it's definitely definitely all the faces that you'd normally see on the circuit so it's definitely been a change it's definitely been a time to sort of make more effort out digitally with people and connect have phone calls and do zoom calls and things like that so yeah but i think you know the industry is super adaptable so i'm kind of excited to see how we evolve from here um because i imagine that we are going to continue forward with a very strong digital presence in events so yeah cool and so let's move on a bit to actually talk about the the online events now so um you know i feel like obviously everything's changed and everything's now way online and as that's the only way you can do it but online events they're not entirely new um because we've had sort of that shift we've seen nintendo doing direct and we've seen more and more like online conferences and so that's that style but i guess it's new

um i guess how important were the online events before the the pandemics started and how was i mean it's kind of obvious how it's changed now but how has like it changed for you how has it impacted how you do business and stuff uh leanne i'll start with you there because you're already unmuted um so i mean it's a bit different for me at the moment we haven't um the last time i did sort of the live engagement at an event with the game is dirty bomb and we sort of press events there so it's been a while since i've had that kind of pressure to do that so it's been a kind of a gap for me anyway um but um sorry what was your question originally sorry i wasn't really sorry i was fine uh how important were online events before this all the panda so um you know for us it's always been a mix as well and um i think it's always been there right you've got you know starting with some gamescom stuff there's always been like a high like level of like twitch presence and things like that and people

do it like kind of com having those two things combined and it it is you know you walk around the show and you see those sorts of license going on because it's usually important like the games obviously it's a global audience and not everyone can come to the event itself so it's always been important to pair whatever you're doing at a conference to have that have that content go out digitally as well in on your social media or anywhere else so yeah i think i think having the both has always been um super important if that kind of answers your question yeah yes absolutely they've always had their place right i mean nintendo can get away with nintendo direct and sony have something very similar but they can do that because they're the format holders right uh but i think for much smaller companies to be able to do their own digital or online event would usually fall flat um you know and why e3 works so well yes all the main conferences in our stream live but they've always worked so well because they have that live audience as well it's like watching wwe it's like

watching theater right so you know yes they've been streaming but without without the people there um it's a very different proposition um so to be honest i don't think they um i think it was a secondary concern for a lot of companies doing it online and uh much smaller publishers would always prefer an event like gdc or e3 or gamescom to make a splash but obviously now that those options aren't open um the whole it's gonna hold 180 and uh and they're the only way of reaching consumers now one of the one of the things that you that you shouldn't forget about for for speaking from a publisher's perspective on live events of course you have the the consumer side and you were touching on the business side of it but for example for ubisoft normally at an event like e3 or gamescom we also do our demos for media influencers and so on and so forth which is a challenge working remotely um so for ubisoft forward we decided to work with parsec to have

these remote possibilities in order to have people from all over the world play our game because that was the main challenge it's cool it's cool if people get to see our content in a conference and creating a digital show is relatively easy and less expensive than doing a full conference however at the same time you're missing one of the biggest aspects of what generates this this uh this reach for us which is people actually playing our games uh cool yeah that sort of answers all that question so um online events themselves uh obviously i think the main benefit obviously is that it's global and everybody can kind of join in but what are some of the other benefits to to running them compared to having something physically uh sally you told me not to pick on you but i am going to jump to you on this one just because obviously as you say you you would have done about 40 physical events now and now you're reducing it to

online like what have you found to be the benefits of doing it online compared to being there in in the flesh kind of thing there's i guess a number of ways you can look at it um benefit you you are getting that bigger audience or you're reaching an audience that could potentially couldn't make sort of a beat at the event due to finance due to workload and we're reaching different target audiences speakers etc like that there is also a massive environmental impact um you know we're not all flying around the world we're not all printing material we're not you know doing that so there is this you know it's really yesterday and it's really like i really miss it i really miss the hugging but yeah the environmental impact it was something i was beginning to look at um the end of last year just how you know how we can change the way we're doing real life events anyway to kind of mitigate those impacts and this year just stopped altogether you know so that for me is one of the

biggest positives i'm not sure it'll ever go back to exactly how it was before as well because now so many companies um that perhaps previously wouldn't allow their employees to work from home or you know didn't want the zoom calls but now got used to it right i think you can see a lot a lot less business flying i think you can see a lot less travel if people can dial in and be at home then that's great well it's true but then also for the media um you know some of the media prefer to stay home as well it's just more convenient for them you know it really is it's much easier for a lot of journals to be at home and and log in rather than you know have to take a whole day out sometimes to go to london or to go to you know big city where where a game is being played just to see a game and that's no disrespect to any of the publishers but it is much more convenient if they can take an hour out of their day log in and watch online event take place in that rather than have to take a whole day or you know something like e3 that's at least a week out of somebody's calendar right so

there's there's the convenience factor there's the price factor um the audience of course you you're gonna get but um i still don't think you can you can beat the real buzzer you can never ever beat that real buzzword again sorry it's never gonna happen i think i think it's also the matter of having a shared experience all together watching a conference or playing video games being able to actually embed or anchor these experiences into your brain like hey i did this together with a group of peers of fellow geeks and that kind of stuff and that's and i think that's why and maybe i'm already moving on to the next question sorry i think that's why in the end i mean physical events will come back i mean especially we need that especially since we operate in the digital realm we need these real face to face not zoom in school uh real face-to-face opportunities to interact the hug and the need to share the bond 100 percent ukrainian leon i was in the

audience uh when a live panda came and got a live panda but a panda came out and danced live on the stage did you like that idea you see you could have but you can't replicate that or zoom i don't think we tried we tried the panda but uh he wasn't locked down so yeah what could you do don't make good tv but that's the experiences that we you know we as event professionals that's what we do and that's we're we're all missing it and i think everybody that comes to our event is events and we will never be able to replicate that in digital it's fantastic that we can keep people connected and keep those communications going this year give me a live event right now no but it'll come back i think and i'm sure that's gonna be the points that we'll come back onto but i think it is just keeping the connections alive because you know we have our connections we know but the thing that we we miss is those random networking opportunities

you bump into someone you don't know them but your best mates after three days and then you're doing business with them and i think that's where it's really difficult in this current climate and that's why i think we have to be clever when we design our events and make sure that we have these kind of meeting and networking tools because otherwise you just you can't really meet someone random online it's just kind of impossible but it happened it is possible i try it i mean especially in the beginning of the lockdown i want to meet up i need that like face-to-face kind of like not personally with my family because who cares but more like with the whole the business side of like i want to interact i want to connect i want to network and then you set up these like random like calls with link people that you meet on linkedin like okay well let's share experiences and that kind of stuff sometimes it works out really well most of the times it's like ah awkward yeah yeah awkward hi

i can't give you a hug from here natural hug virtually natural hug i know so not the same leanne are you gonna jump in no yeah just to echo what everyone's saying you know it isn't the same um as meeting people face to face and it's certainly not the same when for example you've got a game to show to people and you get you get gamers sitting down and they're playing and you get to see their reaction to the stuff you've put in and you just can't get that in in any other way and it's a very special experience um doing that at these big conferences and then going back to the dev team and you know letting them know how it went and letting them understand how how players connected with the game and what to change and things like that so that's definitely something that that's that's missing at the moment but i know

i know that there's there's other ways that you you can do that virtually but yeah there's nothing like the real show cool um so i mean one of the one of the obvious sort of things that we could talk about is like how do you do a show really well uh and what are the how do you like make sure everybody has a great time but one thing i really want to sort of go straight to now is more like about the mistakes and the problems that we've had because obviously everybody's learning everybody's constantly finding new ways to do things and we've um you know i'll let sally explain that some of the first pocket game of the connex digital didn't really go off quite as well as we had hoped we've sorted out the problems but what sort of what what mistakes do you think companies are making when they're when they're organizing their own digital events and um that's either from like from an organizational perspective stuff that you've learned or you know from from the the developer perspective in the pr perspective like what what could events be doing more to help you if in that regard anyone

get an event manager to help you plan it don't just go off go off on one and think you know what you're doing because events are still events whether we're doing this live or we're doing them digitally they still need to be curated they still need the content and you still need the connections and you need a professional to do that you know that's that's simple as obviously we you know pocketgamer did come out the flocks pretty quickly we had a conference up and running three three and a half weeks after lockdown um i've never learned so much tech in all my life so quickly i thought that was too old um but it's again we're event industry professionals so we tend to come up with solutions anyway that's not we have to run this we have to find out how to do it so we will and things will hiccup they do in live events as well as digital so we keep learning and we keep changing and we keep trying harder and harder yeah i think i think it's i think it's interesting with

sort of event professionals now having to there's a real need i think for like really good producers really good coordinators with events because all of a sudden as we kind of move into this digital space of events you need people to train people how to speak to a camera rather than to a live audience where you're getting that real-time feedback so i think there's so much for everyone to learn whether you're managing the event organizing it or whether you're the person suddenly having to do a talk to a camera rather than a real life audience so i think it's just it's just going to be a learning curve for everyone and it's going to be really exciting so yeah well just to echo what uh what what the m and sally basically said as well it is different to uh to a physical event there are different considerations that you have to have you've got to make sure that you hold people's attention which is i think much harder online as well so get a professional to put it together because you only have one chance to make that first impression so company like heaven media uh you know we we understand the pitfalls

that uh that are very easy to uh to encounter along the way and uh we always try to guide our clients and make something that's bespoke and customized to them as well i think the only other mistake that was i won't say the only other mistake but one mistake that we're seeing at the moment is that it's like the wild west everybody's realized uh but that these physical events aren't happening and they have to go online so where do they throw their money behind is it the ign is it future publishing is it you know there are a lot of these different events that are coming up and i think uh some smaller publishers need gently guiding as to you know what's going to give them the best bang for the buck uh does it make sense to to do their own bespoke events or does it make sense to become part of something bigger be it gamescom or as i say the ign's the future publishings whatever it may be so it's about finding that right vehicle for them and realizing that uh you know the best uh the cheapest way may not be the best way to make that impact uh with the with the physical events we have those big keystones as leon said earlier e3

is a huge one but there's no sort of real e3 live at the moment so everybody's doing different things and it's a it's a little bit of a weird year at the moment it's a bit of a weird year that most of the big games haven't been announced we don't know when the next xbox is coming out we don't know when uh the next playstation is coming out and all this information would have uh by now being set in stone because you use the big events to plant the flag in the ground so at the moment everybody's off doing their own different thing and uh and i think that needs to be corralled because uh i think it was leanne who said we ain't going back to normal anytime soon any of the mistakes people have seen well are they i'm coming at this more from the angle of a company that sponsors a lot of events we actually haven't hosted our own uc self curated event as yet we are working on something at the moment um so i've seen quite a lot of um companies going online or events

going online in a very short first time like sally was just talking through um and i actually think pocket gamer is one of the one of the better ones that we've obviously taken part in and has you know happened to turn around everything so quickly and actually has best practices and guidelines and it you know it's super organized so that's why we obviously support that but there's a lot of other events where we've seen um everything just happens so so late in the process of planning so we just you don't get the usual lead time that you would to plan and certainly in a large company like unity we can't just make decisions overnight we can't just make a new video of someone talking about a product overnight these things take weeks and then days and they need approval process and sign off and all that fun stuff so for events to kind of give us deliverables a week out from a show it's it's been quite problematic for us but obviously we've made it work um but

that's something that we've all kind of had to take internally and feed that back up the kind of content creation chain and now people are having to work differently in this new online um kind of world that we're all in and obviously it's a lot more work for everyone it's not much pressure um but that's how it is going to be for the foreseeable so i think people are just adjusting and kind of you know knowing oh we knew about this event we didn't we didn't know how it was going to work we didn't have the specs we didn't know what platform we didn't know anything until like a week before so yeah it's been interesting it's been quite stressful um but i think things have worked out how we've wanted them to in them in the main um i mean some of the things that i think i've seen have been bad at other events if you want to go into i'm not going to name names but i think doing anything like talk wise live i know you guys have kind of like mastered it but other events that we've we've taken part in live sessions where the whole platform's collapsed things haven't worked people haven't been able to log in

viewers haven't logged in so they haven't seen the session everything we try and do is pre-recorded and then then questions live because i think that just makes everyone feel a little bit more comfortable um and then i also think um i think just knowing the audience that you're hoping to attract is also really important for getting people to attend getting people to sponsor and be part of you can't always just assume it would have been the same audience that would have come to a physical event we think it would be but you don't always know um so kind of trying to find out and investigate your kind of audience as much as you can and provide steps i think for organizers is really is really useful um but yeah i mean there's been a lot of i'm sure we all we've all seen them seen them and done them yeah but the only way we do learn you know we the only way you learn sometimes is from making that mistake and that didn't quite work we need to revisit it and need to look at it again but you know we're all trying i think to

deliver as much as we can in you know those experiences and hoping it works and if not go and bang my head against a brick wall for a couple of minutes or have a glass of wine and then go fix it yeah i think that's it i think people are a lot more lenient as well there's less kind of question maybe on having a live performance or something it's kind of like let's see what happens every time i log into a new event and see if the platform crashes on the first or what are people doing how are they kind of connecting and networking it's kind of you don't know and you're not kind of like interestingly looking at that i do some work for other other industries and it is the gaming industry that has just gone with this and gone with the digital events and gone with the world virtual and just gone yeah we'll give it a go and i think they're just so much more adaptable and maybe they just you know the gaming world are just fantastic and they're just used to trying it yeah i think

everyone's all tech savvy as well i work for industries as well and a lot of the events just cancelled postponed till next year in the kind of aec and atm industry they didn't want to even try and work on something because i think the type of attendees are less likely to sit behind a computer and join sessions and go to a virtual expo and do those things i think yeah i think you're right the industry really has latched on to it and and grabbed it and around with it because actually i think people want they want it i think there's much more desire to still be connected and still take part in something um there's no doubt yeah we all love it i think there's there's no doubt on that at ellsworth but you know you you'd hope that the video game industry would be slightly more adaptable than i don't know an insurance industry or something but it's not just that we want it of course i think that it's that we need it right uh because that's how we disseminate

information is it these big shows and um i think other forms of entertainment perhaps are still you know a little more open to you see you know when new movies coming out traders go everywhere and then you see the stars on chat shows or whatever there are different forms of marketing when it comes to different forms of entertainment but i think for gaming these big shows are very very important at making a splash and uh you know certainly for some of the smaller publishers and the indies uh you know they absolutely need that that forum uh to get seen to get noticed so it's it's not just that we want it i think that it's absolutely imperative we need it cool uh we'll just move on to sort of cover the flip side uh i kind of wanted to steer this towards them obviously we talked about gamescom and e3 and the big events and gamescom is actually starting this week as a digital thing so worth talking about and remembering because to be honest i completely forgot but we'll come on to that later um something that i'm curious about is from the from a more b2b perspective so obviously we have our pocket game

connect events and there's all sorts of other events that have been happening uh white knights went digital and other things like that um from both uh an organizer and a an attendee sort of point of view because i'm sure some of us we've all like attended these various conferences like how do you how do how should and how do you provide um value for attendees at the events because obviously like the main the main value i've always thought to b2b events is to get in front of people to have those meetings that kind of thing and that's obviously a lot harder um how do you provide a similar value or a different kind of value through like online events particularly in a b2b role uh leon we haven't heard from you in a bit so i'm going to throw it to you if you have any thoughts on this i i think it's basically how do you throw value or how do you give value to b2b is by giving them what they want the example that i gave earlier in regards of for us b2b was making sure that people or business people get to play our games and making sure that it's not just us talking

and saying that our games are great which of course they are but it's it's really allowing people the opportunity to play from their homes when in there when they are ready for it and just give it to them the way it is and i think if you do that if you build that in then for us at least for ubisoft it worked really well um i think some of the other challenges that we have seen because of course we need these b2b meetings that we have for example for retail or for other stuff or partnerships these kind of things they go through zoom or they go through teams or whatever and they and and they work it out they just basically redirect everyone to our ubisoft forward streaming like okay you go watch that if you have any questions you know where to find us if you want a demo we can set it up um but no face-to-face meetings

i guess pocketgamer we've got our meeting systems to lock up you know that's connecting people in that obviously we had a hiccup on the first one but digital 2 was it was so much um so much better in that we had something i think it was over 2 000 meetings probably more than that i'd have to double check with dave because i'm um not allowed in the meeting back end because i tend to break it but you know it's making those connections we also um we even um we ran a discord um discord server alongside digital too as well because again that was building those communities trying to kind of um have that more natural conversations i guess which is where those those randomness random meetings come in and it's just trying to build that really that's just it is understanding your audience isn't it i think leon hit the nail on the head there absolutely and really just to echo him we have to

remember that you know even the b to z shows even your packs or your games comes whatever it may be there's always a strong b2b element there as well there's always business to be done so it's it's understanding that you know uh distributors or retailers um you know they don't want to spend they don't want to carve out a time a part of their day just to watch a game trailer to watch a presentation they can see on youtube they're going to have their own questions concerns worries whatever it may be um that they need answered so it's about making sure that you can you can pivot and you can cater to toward the audience that you you're trying to uh you're trying to reach uh ellsworth sorry you were trying to jump in this time when we were talking about discord um i think i think that has been a really successful way to kind of make a kind of export networking environment as you would kind of call it and i've certainly seen it used quite successfully and now that

when i was taking part in not again they used it really well and you really got that kind of personality and the kind of vibe that you get from that event if you've ever attended it it's kind of all about the community and and the people who organize it and you really felt that they were kind of running the show and pushing things along and talking to people and it felt like it was not at games conference um and yeah i just think having something like that alongside the kind of streaming of content works really well and also then allowing essay exhibitors or sponsors to have access to those things in there has been quite successful for those as a sponsor and for promoting things and getting people to give us feedback um that was certainly successful and then i think i was just gonna say well about me to match which we always love an event that has that because it makes it super easy for our sales teams to engage everyone knows how to use it you you log in and it's their job done they don't have to scour through you know attendee lists and then look

through salesforce and find out if they know these people it's super easy so we if an event has that it's a real bonus for us and we always kind of look to sponsor events that i have but well a similar platform i know there's elizabeth [Laughter] but i think it's yeah it's like what you said um you know it digital is an enabler essentially so it can allow you to do all of these cool things so you don't have to watch every single show you don't have to have the confidence you you when you're e3 and gamescom you cannot possibly speak to everyone you want to speak to during that those couple of days you're there and like having these sorts of things you're talking about these meet to match it's just amazing because you know you suddenly you're suddenly able to have a really good way of trying to get through as many as possible and if not you've got a place a central pub where you can say look let's have a chat afterwards and you feel like maybe you can connect with more people so i don't know i think that i think

there's there's lots of ways that this we could start to evolve to to make it so you can actually do way more um with the time that you've got through through digital functionalities yeah cool uh we have a question from the audience which i would like to jump to because it's something that was on my mind as well but always like to have questions from the audience if anybody in the zoom chat wants to throw something into the q a please do um so an anonymous attendee asks depending on how long the pandemic continues to affect live events do you think there is potential to encounter virtual event fatigue and if so how can you overcome this um so on a personal note i kind of am already experiencing a bit of this because um as alex was sort of referring to there have been a lot of consumer events over the summer and all different sort of little fragments and that kind of thing the summer games festival itself was basically just about 30 different events and catching up on them is very difficult and that's one of the benefits of e3

in my mind is is having everything in one place um so how like do you agree that there's fatigue around these online events and how can we start to you know fix that alex because i mentioned you i'm gonna jump to you oh yeah absolutely right rick and uh and thanks i don't want to call you out but let's just be honest you would forgotten gamescom was yes exactly you know what i had too but we would never have done that in a physical if the physical show was going on right it's just such a huge show so now um absolutely i think you're already starting to see that fatigue because everything is kind of spread out and everybody's doing their own thing right and and i think that that's what what needs to happen we need to club together around uh you know a big event and i think we need to become a little more disciplined as an industry and uh and start trying to figure out what works and what doesn't work and uh and where to plant our flag and you're absolutely right that you know um yes liam was correct in saying you can't possibly get to see everybody at e3 but it does focus the mind right you

know you've got three days so you've got three important days to get those announcements out there to make sure that you uh you see the most vital contacts and uh networks that you really need to meet up with and that does focus the mind a little bit at the moment everything is a bit too spread out so i'd like to see the industry get behind a couple of uh key big events just like we did in a physical world and um yeah i think that would be a big step forward at the moment everybody's getting a bit bored and a bit confused as to where they can find out the news they're looking for if their show is going to be more b2b focused or b2c focused or indeed is going to be more orientated towards pc or console so i think these are some of the issues that we need to figure out going forward uh leon in particular i'd like to hear from you because obviously ubisoft is sort of in this ecosystem now and is doing your own sort of events with ubisoft forward as you said like have you have you thought about how to combat that sort of fatigue and that kind of thing not really i i really approach it maybe i'm naive or something but i

approach it from the perspective of people want to see content if you create cool content people will tune in if you have cool games or whatever products and you manage to get some promotion uh you're all good i mean we've seen it i mean for ubisoft forward just we were not the first one to do our conference i think we were halfway during that summer of games and our conference perform outperform e3 by factor two point something so i don't think i don't think there is fatigue of course yes we all want to have our physical events 100 for sure but at the same time i think there's a huge opportunity for the industry actually for anyone especially also for the smaller parties out there if your content is cool if your content is differentiate differentiating enough original enough people will people will eat it up i mean that's the thing people are hungry for content i mean i think everyone here on this call right now have watched

every movie and series on netflix i mean how many times can you watch whatever the series i mean it's like a certain point in time rick and morty gets boring too it's but that's the thing people are hungry for content i think that anyone that can create intriguing relevant content for your audience will have an audience congratulations on those stats by the way that's i wasn't aware of that 2.6 did you say or 2.2 points something i don't know the exact uh i mean i do know but you need a raise leon [Laughter] yeah i can agree with that that content thing everyone is hungry for good content and i think that's where you can kind of top and tell your events i think maybe the industry does need to do this a little bit more you know it's not just suddenly oh there's an event tomorrow i forgot about it i'm going to quickly tune into gamescom because i'm probably going to do the same like oh what's going on over there you know and i think if you can before we get to the event i'd like to see more really good content on their other platforms so

whether but there's a landing page on the website you're going in you're like okay i know exactly what this event is for and where i need to go to get the content that i need whether i'm a consumer whether i'm b2b whatever um so i do think that that's where the discipline should come in to say like you know we're going into a content world so businesses small businesses everyone needs to kind of create really good video content really good social assets and and just go from there and constantly remind audiences why they should invest any time at all in this particular event or this particular um live stream so yeah cool any sally or ellsworth any thoughts on fatigue in manager's point of view because when you spend 60 hours in zoom in a week you get a bit frazzled and you definitely become what i call a zoombie and you just like pop out the other end of the skirt uh i can't talk to anyone i'm just going to

stay outside for 12 hours but i don't know maybe it's just because i'm used to it and it is you know it's just the way i work i mean i'm in a screen all the time and i just enjoy being able to see people so i don't know maybe it's just who i am but um yeah i understand that there are a lot of events and you may not want to listen to it but content's always been key whether that's live or digital it's it's just making it more apparent that content is where you need to be so yeah absolutely agree with the rest of them really yeah i think probably the same as sally um i think there is yeah it just feels like a little bit that some of the events maybe there is too much content that's been seen before it's not fresh it's not kind of engaging it's just people talking to the sake of talking all day and then when you're at work and you kind of maybe gonna tune in for one hour a day on your lunch break um i also sometimes feel that maybe those speakers don't even get many views or many kind of people tuning

in to see the talk live or on demand so sometimes it's not even worth for the speaker or the sponsor or even the attendees it's kind of just churning out content for the sake of content and that's not what we want to do i think that's going to just give the whole industry above kind of name and it's just going to stop people wanting to tune in so yeah i think doing something on math that maybe kind of focuses everybody's goals and maybe pinpoints it into kind of main events at either end of the year then that would be way better for everyone than every week there's a new there's a new event that's on for three four days a week maybe two weeks anyway we need a pocket game a mega event then yeah yeah a whole month of pocket game connects how hard can it be we could give it a go can we rick let's do it well the the content is king and leon's absolutely right on that i think uh you know all credit to ubisoft do such an amazing job um with their events but you know we

have a very big company there very big publisher and you have your social channels and your community channels and goodness knows what else to be able to uh to broadcast the fact that you're gonna go live with uh with an online event or content drop whatever it may be and i think that's the challenge for a lot of the smaller publishers and some of the smaller studios is that you know they've got something to say they've got something to show uh where do they what's the right form for those guys right well actually if i make jump in we have a few thoughts for indie gamers in our show as well and i think that's the responsibility that maybe some of the bigger platforms or publishers might have right okay use the platform that you have don't be greedy and share the love with also the smaller person agree kudos to you leon um cool this is actually a question and i i'm trying to formulate in this my head for the last five minutes but something i've noticed on sort of a from the journalists perspective is that we've got all these events um and you know there's an expectation that we will tune in and see all the content stuff

what i'm seeing less of is developers sort of saying we're gonna be at this event um i think it's all it's kind of drifting in towards like a surprise drop territory where everybody's sort of going okay we'll be at this and everybody's gonna be watching it and bam here's the game everyone's gonna be super excited um is that like do you think that's gonna continue i guess um as we keep going into this digital thing because previously you had a physical event people would be emailing me two weeks in advance to say hey i'm going to be at gamescom do you want to talk about the game like is is that are we going to see a return to that or we're going to see like more sort of surprise drops and people just sort of jumping into an event and expecting there to be eyes um i don't know who would want to jump in on that uh alex i'm gonna go back to you from a sort of a pr perspective on that front no worries i think uh you know surprise is always good they're they're they're a key part of our industry everybody loves a good surprise whether um and i think uh for the format holders uh

you know if microsoft or sony or nintendo are going live with something that surprises work really well there but again for some of the mid-tier publishers and some of the smaller guys the indie guys um then you know surprises are always good as long as we know that people are going to be watching but um it is important that they are able to find an audience and the people that do follow those uh those genres of games know where they're going to be and where they're going to be announcing and so on so forth so yes they have their place but it's not always a great idea cool um i'll just leave that as sort of a random question then that sort of popped into my head we're about 10 minutes i think it's an interesting one and as i say you know it's when you when you're watching the playstation 5 unveil and you see a new ratchet and clank game or new spider-man game that's you know that's fantastic but they have the luxury of knowing that they've got the world watching those guys at that time right and i think some of the smaller publishers and indies um you know they need to make sure that that game is going to be seen otherwise you know you have that one chance to

make a first impression and if you miss it um then their entire launch can can be thrown out and that's um that's really bad news if you're a small publisher we all just need to be a little bit more creative i mean it's like looking at your and that's the thing also to go back to a earlier question that you asked rick that people make when it comes to producing these online experiences i mean just speaking from the usual perspective i think the tendency that we have is to fall back on what we know it's like okay how to translate this life event into a digital experience how do we create a virtual room where people can meet up in vr and blah blah blah and that's all cool but nobody cares and people just want to have cool content and i think that how do you say that it's it's it's it's easy to fall back on what you know but we need to as an industry be more creative maybe okay maybe it's not that

you don't go the typical route of announcing a new game as indie or a bigger publisher you go a different route and maybe first impressions who cares about first impression maybe there's another way in as well and that's the thing it's like this whole situation has forced us event managers in the industry to rethink like okay take a break look at what you've been doing and realize that you need to do something different and don't try to hold on to nostalgia it's gone it's done i mean for the next foreseeable future we will have a situation where life events will be tricky that's that's what it is so you need to evolve so you need to evolve you need to think okay how can we then leverage all the tools that we have in today's society to make some noise around their products and that could be whatever and indeed i mean yes ubisoft we have the platforms and we have the for sure but at the same time we have to invest in media buy we also have to do other stuff

so there's and we also did some other things that didn't per se cost money that just helped align the stars and make sure that we indeed reached these numbers that we did anyway elsewhere do you have something on that i was just getting uh uh something cool that's coming up this week actually at gamescom um is the india arena booth um which is basically a kind of online um virtual booth mmo game that uh super crowds developers in germany have um formulated and jumped on and created in the last i think three four months and it's going to be super exciting and i think it's like a real great opportunity for indie developers to actually get their games in front of you know the publishers and the media at the event while still kind of being within like a virtual world so i think it's going to be exciting something to watch this week because that is a really kind of a good way a good

opportunity i guess that they don't have a lot of these virtual events is to have like a little kiosk and booth they brand up like you would see you know a pocket game and everyone gets a table and they bring their posters it's kind of like that but in a virtual world which is made of unity as well it's a small club but yeah i think if you get chance to sleep to check it out it's going to be super interesting and probably a new way that we can look at building kind of small or medium or large online virtual expos so something true give it a look yeah um cool and on that sort of topic so we've got a few minutes left um so we'll start wrapping up and heading towards the conclusion here but um how do we see digital events evolving and growing over the coming months over the coming years and i'm going to fold what would be my last question into that as well it's like as that evolution are we going to see um physical events taking over again or are we going to see

digital events and physical events living in harmony there's a lot to unpack there so feel free to just take that however you like um leanne i'm going to jump to you first because we have not heard from you in a while um yeah i think sort of reiterating what i'm saying i think i think there's going to be a space for both of them and you can see the big games companies just driving their own digital events and taking a lot of ownership and doing their own thing like like microsoft and stuff you know it there is going to be a big change and i think there is space for both of them of course like humans are sociable creatures at the end of the day they do need to see people they do want to sit and have a coffee but it's an awareness that just like everything else in life things are more digital you know we're going to be working from home more we're going to not be seeing our colleagues as much so everything around us is going to change and i think the games industry is one of those you know industries where you know gamers interact with each other online like

games are an online practice and we'll definitely be able to forge that sort of identity into the way we do events as well i think i think we'll have both but i think you know just to go back the environmental impact of not having everyone travel to one place every single time is a big win so there's a win there but you know as long as we can find those balances and just sort of ebb and flow of like okay how can we marry up the need to be sociable and need to meet people and have meaningful interactions with having a digital place where we've got a bigger audience a lot more people can attend um you know it's just fight we'll fight i think we'll find that balance between those two things because we have all the tools in our toolbox we just need to to bring them out be creative with our content be creative with how we meet and yeah so i'm kind of positive about it um but i do i do i i can hearing this kind of need to support and indies as well is something

certainly i've taken on board in my mind from just from chatting to you guys because it is something that we as an industry needs to club together and make sure that we are supporting some of those voices that might get lost in the crowd as we move towards a more digital space so yeah lots to think about um but yeah yeah you know i think if you look at if we take esports for example the industry is uh you know still discovering the awesome force of esports as a spectator sport right you know so live events aren't going to go away they're going to come back of course they will we all want that um but i don't think things will will be the same probably ever again i really don't i think i think you will find a nice fix and it will be a healthy mix and you know where where it saves uh the environment and a lot of uh pain and heartache can time out the office and an online event works that's great uh where it makes sense to get games together and celebrate you know our industry and our love of gaming then then that's also going to happen right so e3 or gamescom or events of those nature you know they're not going to go away once there's uh

a way of dealing with uh with covid things will generally i think get back to normal but i think you'll see them being supplemented by online events as well and there'll be a much more intelligent mix of methods of communication and reaching the the audience you're trying to hit yeah from my point of view i think yeah wait it won't fully go back i think a live event or event will just become a mix of the two it will be a live show with stream content so you are reaching those people that can't attend or can't take the time out but allowing that that you know the space for people that do want to do it you know and it'll just become this really lovely balance but do you think the b2b events will start will become more of the like live component and then the consumer stuff will be more digital is that could that be like a fragmentation that we might see

okay um sorry alex if you want to expand on that i just see that i think you know gamers like to to celebrate their past time together right you know you look at what happens when they open gamescom open to the public and and how different that show was to the business orientated days you know gamers love to gather together play the new games chat and congregate very often from a business perspective that's when it's a pain in the butt to travel half way across the world or or you know be somewhere for a week where that takes them out of the office so personally speaking i actually see it the other way around but that's just my two cents of course yeah maybe just because we you know i primarily do b2b i think it allows a really lovely place for b2b to work and without the consumers attached to it so yeah i think ricky do b2b plus stream stream content for consumers from my point of view but again it'll all it but

there'll be a mix of it both because not everybody will want everything else so we'll figure it out as we go but we will figure it out and make it work elsewhere um i think pretty much everyone's covered it but yeah i think it is going to be probably a hybrid and it maybe will actually depend on kind of location because you know we don't know what's going to happen it could be that people can't travel to the us or people can't travel to europe so maybe there'll be a small event in germany but it's streamed across the world but then you get that kind of feel of a live event for the people that are there and it kind of feels like it's an event with personality and it's slightly different to what we're seeing online um now where things may be a little bit kind of sterile i guess but it could be a complete mix i think we just don't know until we know how things are gonna kind of pan out in the next year to two years and and how people are gonna travel and

connect and move around the world i guess but yeah it's really hard i don't know i think we just have to be ready for anything i suppose i hadn't thought about it before but i guess with vr and things as well that that's going to be interesting when we start getting people with their headsets on in a in a talk anyways it just came to my head you know that's that being a game changer to be honest with events as well but yeah nobody wants to see me in vr nobody right my screen in the back of me but yeah now i know um leon do you have any any thoughts on this as well on how we're going to see if live online for sure for sure and then now we'll have to jump on another column sorry yes of course sir um hybrid for sure i think what will happen um it's

first of all we need to all chill as event managers it's gonna be okay relax relax breathe in breathe out yes it's all it's all a change and it's all very scary and all that kind of stuff but realize that people need physical events uh and even when it's not possible you see what happens with all these like illegal illegal raids and all these kind of things that are going on which i do not promote however at the same time people have people have a need to meet up so i think that what will happen for sure sunshine nice is that there will be a hybrid um where where possible indeed you will have physical event what you already saw for example at china joy which took place a few weeks ago it was a fiscal event um they had a few thousand people in that in that room all with faith mass on these kind of things but it's it's still possible so i am hopeful for the future i do think that from the perspective of return of investment you will see yeah more investment in digital events because the return of investment is much higher on that

however we have this need to meet up and hug yeah hug hugging is good what a loving thought a nice way to end um right we'll wrap up there um because obviously leon you have to get off and i'm sure we're all very busy but thank you um all for joining us both the panelists and uh the attendees um we will have another one of our round tables in a couple of weeks i believe that one is on pitching to publishers i will not be presenting that one because i am on holiday and it'll be luffy um and also we have pocket game at connex helsinki coming up in a few weeks um that is getting remarkably close now um so if you do not have a ticket and you are interested in coming please do get a ticket it will be magnificent and wonderful and excellent and great um that's it from me and that's it from our panelists thank you so much for joining us and we will see you all next time goodbye you