The DeanBeat: It’s an interconnected gaming world

I spent time on three continents this year, and I’m more and more convinced that we live in a ridiculously global gaming village. I went to ChinaJoy in Shanghai, E3 in the U.S., the Videogame Economics Forum in France, and Casual Connect Europe in Amsterdam, all important events in video game industry. In each place, I’ve heard unbridled optimism about the gold rush of opportunities in games, the expansion of the industry’s borders, the explosion in indie game development, and the opening of new territories and new audiences.

The borders are melting. It’s an interconnected world. Dong Nguyen of Hanoi, Vietnam, set the world on fire earlier this year with a frustrating and addictive Flappy Bird game that just about everybody played — and threw down in disgust. In Helsinki, Supercell has dominated the revenue charts with its Clash of Clans and Hay Day games, while Japan’s GungHo Entertainment raked in the money with the wonderfully misspelled Puzzle & Dragons. Sweden’s King (which has its chief executive in London and its formal headquarters in Dublin) is crushing it with Candy Crush Saga. The Americans, not to be outdone, have come back with their finest: Glu Mobile’s Kim Kardashian’s Hollywood. This wave of global games is just the beginning. What will the next wave carry in?