The fourth iteration of Casual Connect Asia organized by Casual Games Association is being held at Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore from 19-21 May with more than 1000 attendees expected this year. After the Amsterdam chapter, the Asian edition is second in line for this year with more editions to follow in Tel Aviv and San Francisco.
Casual Connect, a conference held for the mass market games has been providing educational resources and community support for those involved in creating games for the consumer. Be it any platform, casual games are available a plenty and with the ease of distribution and varied monetization methods, Casual Connect serves as a bridge between the developers, publishers and distributors to create an ecosystem for the gaming fraternity.
This year will see some exciting activities for both the organizers and attendees with topics pertaining to new and noteworthy technologies used in games today along with the ones being adapted to games. Also, more and more game types are being covered this year as the definition of a typical casual game is being redefined – since recently game types are getting intertwined.
The Asian chapter will have session tracks including Overview of Industry Insights, Market Navigation, Self-Publishing, Next-Gen Design and Research, Growth: Expansion Strategy, Research, Funding and Capital, Growth: Platforms & Distribution, Game Development & Production, Game & Studio Management. With some of these sessions boasting names like Matt Hall, co-founder of Hipster Whale, the studio behind the successful game Crossy Road as well as Juha Paananen, co-founder of Nonstop Games, a King Digital Entertainment Studio and big names like Microsoft, Rovio, Google, Facebook, Yodo1, FunPlus and many more.
Last year, India had a good representation with Petite from Seven Summits Studio winning Best Game Story and Lucid Labs’ ROTO showcasing at the conference. This year too the Indie Showcase has games from Indian studios like Ether Games (Salvation Ultimatum), Apar Games (Scribbled Arena), Gear Overclocked (ATOM), Seven Summits Studio (Picto), underDOGS Gaming Studio (Skatelander), Horn Smashers (Taxi Run) and Csharks Games (The Legend of Groda).
And for the upcoming event in San Francisco from 11-13 August, the organization is planning more new technology sessions around Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and haptics, as well as more kids and family content.
