After a day and a half at the Social Gaming Summit, there were a few interesting takeaways that I wanted to share.
Opportunities Remain on Facebook
As I wrote a few months ago (my blog post), it is far too early to call the battle for supremacy in the social gaming space over. Julien Codorniou of Facebook made a great point in that of the top-4 Facebook game companies today (by MAU), two were not significant players at this time last year. Wooga (#3) was just gaining momentum while King.com (#4) did not release its first Facebook game until earlier this year. These company’s phenomenal success points to the opportunities existing in the space, where you can effectively go from 0 to top-5 in a matter of months.
Kiip is Cool
The best presentation I heard was from Brian Wong of Kiip. He, and Kiip, really get at the core of what advertisers need moving forward and it was quite interesting to see how social games can deliver on this. I had never heard Brian speak before and he was also one of the best presenters I ever came across. Made me want to work with Kiip just because I felt regardless of their offering he would make it a success.
HTML5 is Divisive
One of the more interesting side-shows here is the debate over HTML5. Several veterans, including the aforementioned Julien Codorniou, argue vehemently that HTML5 is the future and that we all should be using now or we are going to miss the next big thing. Others argue that it is a mess right now and not to even look at it for another year or so. For me, I am not convinced either way but will be devoting a lot of attention to HTML5 to see if it is right for fiveonenine.
A lot of other interesting presentations and takeaways but I think these three items are what I will remember most from my short trip to London.
The Business of Social Games and Casino 