This past Saturday I had the chance to moderate the keynote panel at Play: The Berkeley Digital Media Conference, an annual Haas Business School conference that covers a variety of tech, media, and business issues. It was a gorgeous day to be back at Cal where I graduated, and in a nice added touch, Cal stomped UCLA down in LA.
The keynote panel was entitled “The Monetization Game,” and the panelists included Peter Moore, president of EA Sports, Neil Young, president of ngmoco, and Kai Hwuang, co-founder of RedOctane, plus little ol’ me. The topic was as broad as they come: How is the video game industry changing the way it’s monetizing the sales of games?
I brought an outline that ranged from discussing the emergence of social games, smart phone games, retail versus digital distribution, next generation consoles, the recession, death of the music genre, and more. we had one hour to discuss it all, and we covered almost everything in front of a 90% packed auditorium. IGN, Games Radar, and Kotaku covered it.
Here are their stories:
IGN: EA: Core Business Model a ‘Burning Platform’
Kotaku: Talking Points Brought to you Mostly By Peter Moore
Kotaku: Guitar Hero, Madden, Eliminate Play the Money Game
GamesRadar’s page was broken tonight. I’ll update their link when it’s back up.
There should be video of the conference available in a few days, too. I’ll post the link when it’s ready.
