Today we’re revealing the sixth set of speakers for our third annual GamesBeat 2011 conference. Our newest slate of speakers will be part of a panel on the free-to-play mobile gaming market. They include Jeferson Valadares, general manager of games at Flurry; Gabe Leydon, chief executive of Addmired; Lou Fasulo, chief operating officer of Z2Live, and Dave Casteluovo, CEO of Bolt Creative.
Free-to-play and in-app purchase business models on mobile have changed the gaming landscape – thanks to a new segment of mass market casual gamers, proliferation of connected devices and revolution in digital distribution. In this new world, monetization now depends on engagement, retention and driving micro-transaction purchases.
This panel, “Making succesfull free-to-play and in-app purchase driven mobile games,” addresses the challenges and opportunities head on from the point of view of the studio, and is made up of successful free-to-play and in-app purchase mobile game studio leaders, who have learned from trial-and-error, constant measurement and relentless iteration. The panel discussion is led by Jeferson Valadares, a veteran studio exec who has held various senior production roles at Playfish, EA Mobile and Digital Chocolate.
The GamesBeat 2011 conference takes place July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.
Jeferson Valadares is the general manager of games at Flurry. He has more than 10 years of experience in leading mobile and Facebook game studios. He has built critically acclaimed original games as well as titles for brands such as EA Sports, FIFA, Harry Potter, Need for Speed and Hasbro. At EA, he was the first creative director for EA Mobile and was studio director at Playfish for both Facebook and mobile games. Prior to EA, he ran Digital Chocolate’s largest studio, based in Finland, and was responsible for hits including Tower Bloxx, Crazy Penguin Catapult and Rollercoaster Rush.
Gabriel Leydon is co-founder and chief executive of Addmired, a mobile social gaming company that created top-grossing hits such as iMob Online, Original Gangstaz, and Global War. Before Addmired, Leydon spent seven years in the coin-operated arcade business working at Atari, Tsunami Visual, and Global VR.
Lou Fasulo runs day-to-day operations at Z2Live and oversees two hit franchises: TradeNations and MetalStorm. He previously led the publishing team at New York-based Sonic Boom Games. He was also vice president of distribution at Vivendi Games Mobile and helped launch the hit game Surviving High School. He also held positins at AT&T Mobility, Earthlink, and GroovePort.
Dave Castelnuovo is a veteran flash games developer, entreprenuer and consultant. He is the CEO of Bolt Creative, creator of the enormously popular mobile game Pocket God. Castelnuovo founded Bolt Creative in 2001 and helped lead the charge onto the iPhone in 2008 and 2009. He has worked at a variety of game publishers, including Electronic Arts.
Our previous announced speakers include David Marcus, founder and CEO of Zong; Rich Wong, a partner at venture capital firm Accel Partners; Chris Bergstresser, executive vice president of online gaming portal Miniclip; Neil Young, founder and CEO of Ngmoco; Andrej Nabergoj, founder and chief executive of Outfit7; Jason Citron, founder and chief executive of OpenFeint; Steve Perlman, chief executive of games-on-demand firm OnLive; Bart Decrem, head of mobile games at Disney and former chief executive of Tapulous; Trip Hawkins, chief executive of Digital Chocolate; Peter Relan, chairman of YouWeb and chief executive of CrowdStar; Si Shen, chief executive of PapayaMobile; David Ko, senior vice president for mobile at Zynga; our keynote speaker, longtime game entrepreneur and founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell; Tim Chang, partner at Norwest Venture Partners; Daniel Terry, co-founder of mobile game maker Pocket Gems; and Bing Gordon, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and former chief creative officer at Electronic Arts; Jennifer Lu, director of business development at TinyCo; Sana Choudary, CEO of game startup accelerator YetiZen; and Tim Merel, managing director of Digi-Capital.
Each year, GamesBeat follows a big trend. In 2009, we focused on how All The World’s a Game, with the explosion of games onto a global stage. Last year, GamesBeat@GDC focused on Disruption 2.0. This year, our theme is Mobile Games Level Up, and it focuses on the busy intersection of games and mobile technology. We’ll focus on everything from smartphone games to tablets and handhelds.
Console games dominated the news in the past, but the center of attention is rapidly shifting toward mobile as more and more users play games on the run. While there are hundreds of millions of gamers on Facebook, analysts believe the number could be much higher for mobile games. Our speakers are right at this intersection of gaming and mobility. GamesBeat 2011 targets an audience of CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs, investors, marketers and other key figures in the game business. Stay tuned for more speaker announcements.
We’ll be exploring the most disruptive game technologies and business models at our third annual GamesBeat 2011conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the disruptive trends in the mobile games market. GamesBeat is co-located with our MobileBeat 2011conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us atsponsors@venturebeat.com. To pitch a startup at the Who’s Got Game contest at GamesBeat 2011, click here.