Pocket Gamer Connects London 2023
2023-01-23..2023-01-24
London, United Kingdom
[Pocket Gamer Connects London 2015, Pocket Gamer Connects London 2016, Pocket Gamer Connects London 2017, Pocket Gamer Connects London 2017: Show Me The Money, Pocket Gamer Connects London 2018, Pocket Gamer Connects London 2019, Pocket Gamer Connects London 2019: Growth, Pocket Gamer Connects London 2020, Pocket Gamer Connects London 2022, Pocket Gamer Connects London 2023, Pocket Gamer Connects London 2024, Pocket Gamer Connects London 2025, Pocket Gamer Connects London 2026]
| title | author | length |
|---|---|---|
| Keynote: Scale Your IAPs With Purchase Behaviour Targeting Insights | Dale Lawrence | 19m |
Bango processes billions of dollars from millions of apps and claims purchase behavior targeting lets UA teams reclaim payer accuracy without IDFA or cookies… | ||
| Panel: The Ultimate Growth Hack: The Smart Approach to Paid & Organic User Acquisition Campaigns | Michal Prokop Grno, Hagop Hagopian, Arunabh Madhur, Ryan Cook, Peggy Anne Salz, Dale Lawrence | 42m |
Carriers deliver scale: 800M addressable devices and ~60M new devices every quarter, with first‑day placements hitting 6–8% conversion on carrier new‑device… | ||
| Demystifying Machine Learning for Programmatic UA & Retargeting | Joseph Iris | 21m |
Describes concrete ML work for programmatic UA: models update daily to “remember yesterday,” run predictions and 100–300 ms bidding in real time, and use… | ||
| Device savvy, Growing Gaming Competition Along With a Volatile Economic Climate | Duncan Blackett | 19m |
Ad spend drops ~30% year‑on‑year and ROAS falls 36%, UA teams grow from ~3 to ~4 people, and first‑party data becomes mandatory for attribution. Device-level… | ||
| The Growth & Potential of the Gaming Industry in the MENA | David Fernandes | 16m |
Saudi Arabia drives a government-led push under Vision 2030 with a reported $38B budget to build local gaming infrastructure and targets like 250 games… | ||
| Power Up Performance – How To Maximise Performance in a Privacy-First Advertising Landscape. | NEASA BANNON | 13m |
Claims four concrete levers to recover scale despite loss of user-level data: Automation via Advantage Plus app campaigns to let algorithms pick best times and… | ||
| Fireside Chat: In the Sandbox With Adam & Piyush | Adam Smart, Piyush Mishra | 22m |
Explains that supply-side tech runs auctions so SSP/exchange/mediation differences matter for SDK vs SDK‑less delivery and which buyer sees the impression… | ||
| Panel: Location, Location, Location: Why Is “Where” You set Your Studio up, Still Important | Solon Bucholtz, Dylan Gedig, Mike Wozniewski, Rhoda Campbell, Emma Bullen | 41m |
Shows why British Columbia keeps winning studios: teams move fully remote but rely on Trello and Discord workflow, monthly in-person whiteboard sprints and… | ||
| Keynote: The Multiplayer Compass | Mark Val | 24m |
Claims Photon runs 1.4 billion monthly players across 4,000+ games and powers titles like Goose Goose Duck (600k+ CCU), Stumble Guys (≈160M installs, #2… | ||
| Panel: Playing Together How To Boost Retention by Adding World-class Multiplayer Options | Mark Val, Tibi Tircomnicu, Jon Middleton, Miguel Tomas | 52m |
Panelists argue that adding synchronous multiplayer using middleware cuts development time (team sizes drop from ~20 to 5–10) and raises retention — one case… | ||
| Keynote Evolving Game Monetisation Retention | Don Reilley | 23m |
A new SDK embeds a universal rewards currency that lets players earn and spend “scooties” across games and a marketplace, with 1000 scooties = $1, no crossplay… | ||
| Keynote Beyond Revenue | Teis Anker Mikkelsen | 22m |
Unleashed is a subscription service that integrates the subscription into the game rather than putting the game into a platform bundle, with 22 games live on… | ||
| Panel: The Future of Mobile Game Subscriptions. | Teis Anker Mikkelsen, Jami Wardman, Louise Shorthouse, Maria Sayans | 42m |
Subscriptions account for 5–6% of global games spend and are growing but far from dominant; Game Pass shapes expectations while Apple Arcade and Google Play… | ||
| Keynote: Workplace Connection & Community. | Martyn Swinkels, Elaine Obeng, Meng Jiang | 19m |
Product Madness describes concrete steps that strengthen connection across 800 employees in seven global studios: regular engagement surveys, focus groups… | ||
| Keynote: Gen Z Thinks Your Brand Is Cringe | Matilda Kivela | 13m |
Gen Z has roughly $340 billion purchasing power but only 8% of Gen Z says ads resonate and over 78% think brands “talk the talk” without action, so fix… | ||
| Panel: Accessible Marketing: How to Promote Growth With any Budget | Will Freeman, Aras Senyuz, Matilda Kivela, Daff Kjellström | 31m |
Advice: prioritize fast tests and community over polish — run tiny paid tests (start with £2–£5 ads), iterate on what returns a positive ROI, and A/B 100… | ||
| Keynote: Blockchain Technologies in the Gaming Industry | Alex Van Hulle | 19m |
Redlight Finance builds a gasless blockchain that claims zero transaction fees and requires no tokens in user wallets, letting existing AAA games add NFTs and… | ||
| Keynote: The Sound of Incremental Revenue: Why Audio ads are What’s Next in Ad Mon | Amit Monheit, Ryan Rummery | 24m |
Odio and DAX Global describe an in‑game audio system that runs non‑intrusive ads in the background while gameplay continues, delivered via an SDK and a… | ||
| Panel: The Monetisation Menu: Picking the Best Business Model for Your Audience. | Nick Murray, Felix Braberg, Cyril Cael, Don Reilley, Shalom Michaeli, Eado Avinoam, Guy Kashtan | 36m |
Panelists push concrete levers not platitudes: a claimed $1.2M per year from 100k DAU by adding a three‑part system — g‑commerce marketplace + rewards +… | ||
| Keynote: WTF Is AQI Ad Quality Index | Kim Grewal | 22m |
Defines an Ad Quality Index (AQI) as (users who saw an ad minus users who quit during/after it) divided by users who saw the ad, and shows a concrete example… | ||
| How NFTs Will Change the Gaming Landscape | Tim Dierckxsens | 20m |
Tim Dierckxsens, Co-founder & CEO at Venly, talks about, How NFTs Will Change the Gaming Landscape .
Speaker: Tim Dierckxsens, Co-founder & CEO, Venly
Pocket… | ||
| Panel: Shifting the Balance Will NFTs Disrupt How Games, Brands & Creative Media Interact? | Romain Schneider, Alex Amsel, Kelly Vero, Stefan Colins | 34m |
Claim: NFTs are useful when they add game value not just quick funding; brands licensing digital goods (Nike, Adidas, Porsche’s 20% sell‑through) point to… | ||
| Panel: The Esports Expansion: How Technology, Brands & Audiences Are Changing the Face of Gaming. | James Dean, James O'Leary, Lirui Ding, Peggy Anne Salz, Eric Bernofsky | 45m |
UK's longest-running ESL Premiership holds the largest online audience for UK esports; Riot shutters Wild Rift esports outside SEA/China after a failed global… | ||
| Keynote: ASO Trends to Watch out for in 2023 | Emily Sugrue | 20m |
Predicts three concrete shifts for 2023: custom store pages (Apple: screenshots only, compatible with ASA but not organic; Google: whole-page edits, ~35 custom… | ||
| Panel: Getting Your ASO Kicked: Dealing With ASO in the Current Saturated Mobile Market. | Alicja Drozdzyk, Emily Sugrue, Oscar Clark, Guy Ulmer | 42m |
Practical steps and benchmarks: treat the store page as a product, pick one KPI and focus on it, test one change at a time, and expect only a few seconds of… | ||
| Panel: Go Big or Go Home: From Indies to Big Conglomerates.... | Cassia Curran, Gavin Johnson, Andre Krug, Terry Li, Ben Jeger, Sam Collins | 44m |
Panel argues generative AI becomes a core creative tool: GPT-3 (175B) vs GPT-4 (100T) drives faster concept art, pitch decks and music stems, but outputs need… | ||
| Fireside Chat: The Great Expansion Mobile Gaming’s Multi-Platform Future. | DAVE BRADLEY, WILLEM DEMMERS, JOHAN EILE | 21m |
Mobile ad tracking changes (IDFA/ATT) break performance UA and force old‑school product work; publishing to desktop web and third‑party stores restores fast… | ||
| Panel: To Infinity & Beyond: Where Will Technology Take us Next? | Joanna Haslam, Stanislaw Fiedor, DAVE BRADLEY, Alex Van Hulle, Benjamin Troy Drysdale | 35m |
Panel discussion presents concrete advances and experiments: generative AI produces art and a text game in days, a military command system is rebuilt with AI… | ||
| Brands Are Now In-Play: Creating a new Revenue Stream in a Seamless Way | Chloe Cave | 15m |
Adverty’s in play format injects real brand billboards into game scenes (replace fake ads in stadiums, lobbies, runners) and runs alongside existing… | ||
| Why/How Does Web3/Blockchain add Value to the Players & to the Game Studios | Adoni Ioannou | 19m |
Argues that blockchain delivers real ownership with legal status, built on a stack: base chain, scaling layer, and forever hosting (200+ years), allowing… | ||
| Future of Payments in Gaming | Faisal Al Bitar | 15m |
Claims that MENA has 70% underbanked or unbanked and a mobile games market around $5 billion set the stage. Post‑COVID digital payments rise from 9% to 70%… | ||
| Ads, IAP & Beyond | Thomas Coulon | 19m |
Survey of ~500 developers (IDC) shows 93% use ads and over 30% report higher LTV when ads are combined with IAPs. Developers place rewarded video in daily… | ||
| Raising Capital in 2023: State & Evolution of Sources of Sources of Financing for Developers. | Patty Toledo, Kristian Segerstrale, Olya Caliujnaia | 23m |
Overview of where capital actually goes now: venture funding for early-stage games falls roughly 80% year‑on‑year in some reports, publishers and strategic… | ||
| Funding Early Stage Gaming | Zvika Pakula | 13m |
Early-stage mobile games need fast prototypes and real market tests rather than full builds: aim for Market sensing with quick KPIs like D7 retention and… | ||
| State of Mobile Gaming 2023 | Chris Uglietta | 15m |
Global mobile use rises — time on phone up to five hours daily and total hours up 9% year over year — while spending falls despite downloads hitting 90 billion… | ||
| Superstar Panel: Beyond The Code Live | AZ Zayed, Keith Adair, Conrad dispute, Phil Williams | 35m |
Argues that concrete tools—not buzzwords—cut crunch: a modular Unity Gaming Services stack with built‑in cloud diagnostics plus analytics and A/B testing lets… | ||
| User Acquisition AI, Past, Present, & Future | PHIL SHPILBER | 20m |
GameChangersSF reports being acquired by Pixis AI and shows concrete results: a codeless browser plug-in runs governance AI for bid and budget across campaigns… | ||
| Curated Panel: Working With Creators at Scale: UGC for Paid User Acquisition | Joseph Flesh, Adam Kalmanson, Philippa Layburn, Or Perry, Deniz Kirca | 47m |
Panelists give concrete wins and workflows: a platform deploys 2,000 creators in 10 days for a Fortnite season, a TikTok campaign cuts CPI by 90% for a… | ||
| Fireside Chat: Navigating the Evolving World of Influencer Marketing in Mobile Gaming. | Björn Karlsson, ROBIN ASTROM | 21m |
Positions influencer marketing as primarily for community building and early creator input in alpha testing, not just UA, and recommends starting with micro… | ||
| Panel: How To Guide Game Development Into Web3? | Stefan Colins, Flavien Defraire, Roman Frank, Maciej Burno, Dallas Johnson | 44m |
Practical steps and tradeoffs for moving games to blockchain: a live game example is Alien Worlds on WAX with on‑chain NFT attributes and DAOs that receive… | ||
| 4 Fundamentals for Building a great Live Ops Department | Alex Hayley | 21m |
A practical playbook: four fundamentals — keep things simple so events are configurable and repeatable, document calendars and ideation to avoid lost… | ||
| Panel: Increasing the Value of Your Games Through Better Player Support | Ed Jamieson, Eric Ve | 42m |
First five minutes determine day-two retention and planning player support up front avoids scrambling. Case studies: custom bots and smart FAQs deflect spikes… | ||
| Re-Inventing LiveOps Strategy: Adapting to the new Norm | Yeshas Nakshathri, Jonathan Garrity | 21m |
Shows a concrete system for building and iterating Live Ops with minimal engineering by wiring interconnected in‑app messages and remote configuration into… | ||
| Panel: Interaction & Iteration: Best Practices for Getting the Most out of Your Live Ops Strategy. | Josh Nilson, Gleb Platonov, Yoav Kedem, David Tyler, Samantha Pang, Iwan Morris | 38m |
Mobile live ops is built for fast iteration not bolt‑ons: start live ops and support from day one, design for backend changes and run one to two A/B tests per… | ||
| How To Offer High Quality Player Support & Great Data Practices | Blazej Zawadzki | 17m |
Argues for player‑dedicated agents, not generic contact‑center hires, and for game‑specific documentation from day one; defines three setup principles: define… | ||
| Panel: The Gaming Roadmap to 2030: What New Tech, Trends & Models do we Need to Prepare For? | Taewon Yun, Jacki Vause, Chris Hainsworth, Liam Baloh, Alex Van Hulle, Barak David | 45m |
Panel argues the engine and language landscape fragments as a real technical shift: x86 to ARM shift and WebAssembly plus Rust/Kotlin open space for niche… | ||
| How Game Developers Have Solved Current Market Challenges | Brendan Fraher | 20m |
Game developers expand free‑to‑play beyond mobile to PC, console and new stores and avoid heavy R&D by copying top features then hybridizing them. Data points… | ||
| Maximising Your Odds of Success: Tips for Building Confidence in Your Game | Jai Dâvé | 22m |
Claims that most games launched this year will fail and offers step-by-step ways to reduce that risk: use cohort-based forecasting and iterative UA tests, run… | ||
| Panel: What Are Publishers For? Getting the Most Out of Your Publishing Deals. | Bobby Wertheim, Christopher Kassulke, Erik Pontiskoski, Miikka Lindgren, Daniel Helmhold | 45m |
Explains what publishers actually deliver: simultaneous cross‑platform launches, porting and QA, sales channels and long tail revenue, plus UA funding tied to… | ||
| Panel: Keeping Up With the Times: What Do Developers Need To Know.... | Taewon Yun, Rafael Vivas, Paul West, Cyril Barrow, Maggie Mesa | 39m |
Panel reports concrete experiments: a compliant NFT marketplace called Vessel sells coins via App Store in‑app purchases; an idle Bitcoin Miner uses Zebedee to… | ||
| Succeed by Failing – A Game Dev’s Journey Into a Mobile Dev Ops Tool Chain | Mac Clark | 21m |
Covers a real mobile devops pipeline: Backtrace ingests SDK crashes, fingerprints 2,180 identical occurrences and claims up to a 70% cut in mean time to… | ||
| Panel: Tutorial Mode: What Every Developer Needs To Know Before Joining the Games Industry. | Martine Spaans, Emil Kjaehr, Simon Iwaniszak, Maya Hofree, Aneta Mrozek | 31m |
Advice for joining games centers on concrete habits and realities: studios move fast, hits are rare so expect many shots on goal and treat failures as… | ||
| Panel: Beyond the Dawn: What to Expect From Blockchain Gaming in 2023 | Daniel Griffiths, Yahsir Qureshi, Paul Flanagan, Jon Jordan | 40m |
Panel argues 2023 is less hype and more execution: teams are shipping real titles after long builds — one drag‑racing blockchain project spends 18 months with… | ||
| Why Trust & Transparency are Crucial to Your Ad Monetisation Strategy | Maggie Mesa | 14m |
Claims that mediation is a black box get countered with concrete numbers and fixes: 90 billion auctions per month across Chartboost's SDK footprint and a push… | ||
| Understanding SKAN 4.0 & Its Implications | David Philippson | 23m |
SKAN 4.0 adds concrete mechanics: three postbacks (day 0–2, 3–7, 8–35), a conversion-value hierarchy of low/medium/high and richer source identifiers (campaign… | ||
| Panel: A Love Story: Essential Strategies to Attract (& Keep) an Audience. | Jacki Vause, Imre Jele, Alexandra Zheleva, ROBIN ASTROM, Jeppe Konig | 48m |
Teams test identities with fake companies and run focus test before prototyping (one group ran 10–12 concept companies) and target growth by finding one… | ||
| Panel: Web2 or Web3 Gaming - Who is Going to Survive? | Hugo Furneaux, Goncalo Martins, Anil Das-Gupta, Jason Scott, Benas Baltramiejūnas | 37m |
Panel asserts adding web3 increases revenue without cannibalizing IAP and even decreases CPI, but converting regular web2 players remains “almost impossible.”… | ||
| Mobile Ads Monetization: The Tips & Tricks That Make a Difference | Oleg Shlyamovych | 26m |
Sums up concrete monetization moves and hard numbers: use a mediation layer rather than single-network AdMob (AdMob holds ~70–75% share) because mediation can… | ||
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