The conference took place in late October in Kyiv, Ukraine. It is traditionally dedicated to casual, mobile and social games development issues.
A great number of game developers came to discuss the most actual questions, share their experience and chitchat about the latest news of the IT world. Among the conferees there were such monsters of the game market as Big Fish, Alawar, Nevosoft, G5 Entertainment. We were also very pleased to meet guys from Rovio and two representatives of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, who came to introduce their new portable PS Vita game console and the new online-store of its content. Developers spoke much about their product’s success and encouraged young companies to launch their games under big company’s authority. That is a great opportunity for small developing companies to have a quick start on the market. By the way, the Big Fish Company had already launched over a billion copies, which gives them the world’s first place in some genres. Can you imagine that they launched more games than Electronic Arts! Unfortunately, one very important question regarding casual games remained unresolved. The issue is that almost all Time Management and Hidden Object games are very alike. The main differences are graphics design and plot. It is very important for developers to remember about it when launching the next casual game.
In conclusion we must say that the Casual Connect 2011 conference in Kyiv was extremely useful and interesting. All developers left the conference inspired, full with the new original ideas. We were very glad to be there and make friends with our colleagues. The conference finished with a grand Halloween party, and everyone had a great fun! We are looking forward for the new Casual Connect conference.