I had the pleasure of moderating a panel on Smartphone Gaming at "Socialize - Monetizing Social Media" conference at The New Yorker Hotel in New York last week.
The panel included international experts providing international perspectives on the mobile gaming industry, which is growing at an alarming rate. Silicon Valley California, Japan, China and Germany were all represented on the panel, which revealed:
- the importance of an international strategy when creating a mobile game;
- how to build games easily for multiple platforms;
- how to take games viral to maximize downloads and users;
- how to monetize mobile games; and
- how to best use mobile games for brand marketing.
It was an extremely interesting discussion, and very topical considering the successes being registered by smartphone gaming companies, like Rovio, every day. Rovio is the developers behind the hugely popular game Angry Birds, which according to Wire UK, is played a total of 200 million minutes every day!
Rovio typifies the business successes being registered in the smartphone gaming business, recently raising over $40 million in funding to further advance its empire.
Anybody thinking of coming up with 'the next big thing' should stop and give some thought to games that may become highly addictive, international and monetize-able :)