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Remember coffee with your squats – Building a company culture
The development of a sustainable and positive company culture is a critical component of organizational success, particularly within the mobile gaming industry.
- Dirtybit successfully scaled from 8 to 17 employees by prioritizing cultural fit during recruitment and maintaining a flat organizational structure.
- Company culture is defined by daily rituals and shared experiences rather than written values, requiring intentional efforts to preserve intimacy as a team grows.
- Physical office space acts as a critical hub for social interaction, facilitating informal communication that extends beyond strictly professional tasks.
Games in 2020 – The future of entertainment, esports and beyond
The presentation explores the evolution of gaming toward a future defined by cloud-based infrastructure, interactive spectating, and the convergence of players and viewers.
- The gaming industry is transitioning from local, hardware-dependent play to a cloud-native ecosystem that utilizes server-side rendering to bypass local processing limitations.
- The 'Experience 3.0' model dissolves the traditional barrier between passive viewers and active players, allowing audiences to influence live game events through real-time inputs.
- 5G technology is a critical infrastructure requirement for this shift, providing the low-latency connectivity necessary to offload complex compute tasks from consoles to the cloud.
Prototyping and production process – The core of the Gram Games company culture
Gram Games, a mobile game developer with offices in London and Istanbul, maintains a unique organizational philosophy that treats company culture as a product requiring constant iteration, bug-fixing, and development.
- Gram Games treats its organizational culture as a product that requires constant iteration, bug-fixing, and development to maintain a high-performing environment.
- The company operates on a flat organizational structure that removes traditional management hierarchies in favor of data-driven and evidence-based decision-making.
- Operational success is built on five core tenets: a flat structure, constant iteration, a familial environment, a commitment to learning from mistakes, and transparent communication.
Panel: Influencer Marketing Uncovered
Successful influencer marketing in the gaming industry relies on prioritizing authentic creator passion and long-term relationship building over superficial metrics like total view counts.
- Prioritize long-term partnerships with creators who genuinely enjoy the game, as these authentic collaborations yield higher ROI than campaigns focused solely on high-reach, top-tier talent.
- Niche influencers frequently outperform larger personalities by delivering superior conversion rates and fostering the audience trust necessary for player retention.
- Move away from transactional, one-off promotional videos in favor of sustained collaborations that allow for high-effort content like live-action stunts and community challenges.
An update on mobile esports progression and opportunities
Mobile esports represents a rapidly evolving sector characterized by high accessibility, a massive global user base, and a unique capacity for rapid community engagement.
- Mobile esports currently accounts for less than 10% of global esports viewership, representing a significant growth opportunity due to its high accessibility and lower hardware barriers compared to PC gaming.
- Mobile titles achieve financial sustainability by moving away from pay-to-win models toward monetization strategies centered on in-game purchases, licensing, and high-production-value tournaments.
- Mobile esports tournaments often achieve immediate cost recovery through in-game microtransactions, a financial efficiency rarely seen in traditional PC-based competitive gaming.
Leveraging inclusion to build better teams – and games
The game industry is currently facing a critical juncture regarding its internal culture and workforce composition.
- Inclusion is a strategic business imperative that directly enhances creative output and commercial success rather than being a mere demographic quota.
- Systemic bias in performance reviews creates disparate feedback patterns for women compared to men, contributing to talent turnover and perceptions of inequity.
- Unconscious bias frequently influences hiring decisions, as managers often incorrectly perceive diverse teams as disruptive to the development process.
Culture is hard
Building a successful, diverse studio culture is a complex, ongoing process that requires intentionality and a willingness to embrace friction.
- Prioritize cognitive and identity diversity over team homogeneity to avoid mediocre compromises and foster high-quality, innovative creative solutions.
- View studio culture as a living, imperfect process that evolves with every new hire rather than a static goal to be achieved.
- Replace superficial office perks like beer fridges with practical benefits such as flexible working conditions and family support to improve long-term inclusivity.
The esports trends power panel
The esports sector is undergoing a significant transformation, shifting from a niche PC-centric hobby to a mainstream entertainment powerhouse projected to reach 286 million interested individuals.
- The esports sector is expanding toward a reach of 286 million interested individuals, driven primarily by the accessibility of mobile gaming platforms.
- Long-term industry success depends on platform-agnostic content that prioritizes the quality of the entertainment experience over specific hardware requirements.
- Aggressive franchising models that mimic traditional sports structures risk creating market bubbles and alienating stakeholders; developers should instead focus on sustainable, community-first growth.
Panel: The influencer’s perspective
The influencer industry has matured from a landscape of hobbyist content creation into a complex professional ecosystem requiring sophisticated business management and team oversight.
- The influencer industry has evolved from a hobbyist landscape into a professional ecosystem that requires sophisticated business management and team oversight to mitigate market volatility and digital footprint risks.
- Creators are prioritizing platform diversification, specifically shifting from static video uploads to real-time engagement models like Twitch streaming to ensure long-term sustainability.
- Brand partnerships are most effective when companies grant influencers creative autonomy, as rigid, traditional advertising formats often alienate established audiences.
The next generation of mobile esports
The mobile esports sector is currently undergoing a significant transformation, driven by advancements in hardware, the rollout of 5G technology, and an increasingly mature audience.
- Mobile esports is transitioning from a niche category to a professionalized industry with distinct profit-and-loss models that mirror traditional sports.
- The shift from 4G to 5G technology is critical for competitive viability, as 5G reduces latency from 50–80 milliseconds to under 10 milliseconds while resolving bandwidth congestion at live events.
- Mobile esports viewership now frequently rivals or exceeds that of established PC and console titles, driven by the ubiquity of mobile devices and a lower barrier to entry.
How to get seven billion views On YouTube
Achieving long-term success on YouTube requires a strategic blend of personality-driven content, platform-specific optimization, and extreme patience.
- Sustainable growth on YouTube is driven by prioritizing audience retention and engagement metrics over raw click-through rates.
- Creators should maintain a consistent publishing schedule of at least three videos per week, with optimal video lengths ranging between seven and sixteen minutes.
- High-quality audio is a non-negotiable production requirement that is more critical to viewer retention than visual fidelity.
5 secret hacks to winning on Snapchat!
The primary objective of this presentation is to provide mobile app developers and marketers with actionable strategies for driving app downloads and user engagement on Snapchat.
- Successful Snapchat campaigns for the 17-to-21-year-old demographic must prioritize interactivity, cultural integration, and emotional connections rather than repurposing traditional, polished advertisements.
- Brands should design ads that invite active user participation, such as screenshotting or engaging in back-and-forth dialogue, to avoid the high skip rates associated with static messaging.
- Integrating advertisements into existing cultural moments and memes allows brands to appear as native content, reducing the perception of ads as intrusive interruptions.
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