We’ve come down to the wire for the GamesBeat@GDC conference, which takes place on Wednesday at rooms 305/307 in the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. This year we are inside the Game Developers Conference.
Tickets are still available if you buy them in person. You can buy one on-site for $399 if you want to get into GamesBeat@GDC only. You can also get in if you have summit pass or an all-access GDC pass. And you can get into our event if you have a GDC press pass.
It’s going to be an action-packed day. The full agenda is here. We start the day off with a bang with a keynote speech by Steve Perlman, chief executive of OnLive, the games-on-demand startup that promises instant gratification for gamers who like playing high-end games online. You won’t want to miss what he has to say about disrupting the games business as we know it.
We have a fireside chat between John Schappert of Electronic Arts and Alex Pham of the Los Angeles Times, and Geoff Keighley of Spike TV will talk about how to build a blockbuster franchise with Bungie’s Joe Staten and BioWare’s Ray Muzyka.
The day will start with an introduction by VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall and Dean Takahashi. Then Perlman will show off OnLive’s service in a keynote. He’ll be followed by a panel moderated by Matt on what venture capitalists and investors see coming in the future. Then Dean will moderate a panel on disruptive platforms. We’ll break for lunch and then return with the fireside chat with Schappert and Pham.
After that, Justin Smith of Inside Social Games will moderate a panel on next-generation social games. Game journalist Chris Morris will moderate a panel on Disruptive Innovation. Then we move into our fireside chat with Keighley, Staten and Muzyka. We’ll soak in game news from around the world in a panel on international game markets moderated by longtime Asia analyst Lisa Cosmas Hanson of Niko Partners. We then move on to a look at the future of games on mobile devices in a panel moderated by business consultant Mark Friedler. And we’ll close with our game startup contest highlighting five cool companies. Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Ventures will moderate the judging and he’s making everybody introduce themselves with a haiku poem.
The thing that everybody shares in common is the theme of disruption. We’ll talk about how they change things up to get an edge in making games that are fusions of art and technology.
As a reminder, here’s our theme:
Disruption 2.0. We’ll focus on the next disruptions that will happen in the video game industry. In the past couple of years, social games with virtual goods business models have proved themselves and shaken up the status quo. The iPhone has become a hot platform, and Apple hopes to extend further into games with the iPad. Digital distribution and online games are growing. Will these trends gather more momentum and prove to be sustainable, or will new platforms and business models disrupt the disruptors?
The big game companies and brands are maneuvering into the market, even as successful startups are consolidating their gains and acquiring companies. Are console game makers poised to make a comeback as the recession ends? As growth returns to the industry in 2010, who will be poised to take market share and define the next-generation of games? Game companies that are doing the disrupting, adapting and growing will be speaking at the conference.