Social Games Track

GDC China Social Games Track Few areas within the games industry have witnessed as swift a rise as social games. From QQ Games to Farmville on Facebook, some of the most popular games played worldwide today are played within social networks—capturing millions of mainstream players never before considered "gamers." Amidst this paradigm shift in players are new development and business issues to consider such as price point sensitivity, maintaining innovation, and player retention.

The Social Games Track sits at the intersection of these converging trends, bringing together leading thinkers and business professionals to engage very issues and opportunities. Join the Social Games Track to learn about the new generation of mass multiplayer markets, how virtual worlds are changing to meet the demands of an ever-growing audience, and about opportunities for new players in both mature and emerging markets.

Continue checking back for 2011 session content announcements!

Social Games Track Schedule

	Saturday, November 12
	Time	Session
	9:15-10:15	Monetizing Social Games: DeNA's Secrets for Success Kenji Kobayashi (Director \| DeNA Co., Ltd.)
	10:20-11:20	"Micro" Era for Games Yunli Liu (CEO Assistant and General Manager of Games Department \| Sina)
	11:25-12:25	The Importance of Multi-Platform for Social Gaming Randy Lee (Director of Business Development \| CrowdStar)
	12:25-13:45	LUNCH
	13:45-14:45	Globalization of Social Games: Challenges and Strategies Binsen Tang (CEO \| XingCloud & ELEX Technology)
	14:50-15:50	Getting Social Games to Play Global Rony Xu (Chief Product Officer \| Happy Elements)
	15:50-16:10	COFFEE BREAK
	16:10-17:10	The Smurfs™ & Co – How to Develop a Successful Facebook Game in China Richard Tsao (Managing Director\| Ubisoft Chengdu)
	17:15-18:15	Project Managing a Social Game for the Western Xiaojuan He (Project Manager\| Ubisoft Chengdu)

	Sunday, November 13
	Time	Session
	9:15-10:15	Everything You Need to Know about Facebook Ads: How Much do I Need to Pay to Get 1 Million Players to My Game? Hussein Fazal (CEO \| AdParlor)
	10:20-11:20	Making RPGs That Stand the Test of Time Brian Fargo (CEO \| Leader in Exile)
	11:25-12:25	Building Console-Quality Games on Facebook Ludovic Bodin (CEO \| CMUNE)
	12:25-13:45	LUNCH
	13:45-14:45	Social Games Development and Operating Experiences in Asia, especially in China and Japan Patrick Liu (CEO \| Rekoo)
	14:50-15:50	Creating MMO's for Social Platforms Hendrick Sukardi (Executive Producer \| Kabam™)
	15:50-16:10	COFFEE BREAK
	16:10-17:40	PANEL: The Road to HTML5 Games: Challenges and Opportunities Moderator: Qi Chen (CEO \| Spil Games Asia) Panelists: Alex Mendelev (General Manager & Head of Studios \| GameHouse) Samson Mow (Founder and CEO \| Pixelmatic) Andy Riedel (Vice President, Mobile \| Kabam) Jia Shen (CEO \| RockYou Asia) Tim Teh (CEO \| Kano Applications Inc.)

Social Games Track Sessions

Making RPGs That Stand the Test of Time

Brian Fargo
CEO | Leader in Exile

Brian Fargo has been playing and making RPG games since the 1980's and is still making games to this day. He will look back over 3 decades of RPG games that began with the Bard's Tale and Wasteland and eventually onto such hits as Stonekeep, Fallout, Baldur's Gate, and Icewind Dale and most recently with Hunted: The Demon's Forge. Mr. Fargo will discuss his history with Role-playing games and how he approaches each aspect of the game creation. Topics to include storyline, character development, balance and production philosophy. What are the elements you need to make an immersive game that will stand the test of time and have people say "I spent hours playing your game when I was a kid and loved it."

Social Games Development and Operating Experiences in Asia, especially in China and Japan
	Patrick Liu CEO \| Rekoo Asia social gaming market is rapidly growing, how to leverage the common cultural background of China and Japan, to develop and operate successful social games in Asian market? Rekoo will elaborate its scalable approach to release and operate popular social games using its "Sunshine" brand series social games.

"Micro" Era for Games

Yunli Liu
CEO Assistant and General Manager of Games Department | Sina

The booming of social networks and social games across the global in the past few years has created great numbers of entrepreneurial success stories. However, social games in China grow slowly due to much scattered social networks, undefined government policies and a lack of profit models. This presentation will explain how you can build a real impact for your games in today's China, where microblogging gradually becomes a mainstream form of social media and social network.

Globalization of Social Games: Challenges and Strategies

Binsen Tang
CEO | XingCloud & ELEX Technology

In recent years, Chinese social game companies have achieved remarkable results in overseas markets. However, at present, no Chinese game company is able to globally synchronise their updates in 20 different languages. Mr. Binsen Tang will talk from the importance of global synchronization to social game companies. By sharing the experiences and learnings from the games that Elex has developed and operated, he will then illustrate the successful operational cases on minority language platforms, including how to use minimal effort and time to publish social and web games globally, as well as how small and medium game development teams can achieve data-driven operations. Lastly, he will share how game developers can utilize XingCloud's platform to future achieve global synchronization of social game operations.

Getting Social Games to Play Global

Rony Xu
Chief Product Officer | Happy Elements

Social games' life cycle has always been a controversial topic. How to extend the life cycle of social games and improve the revenue at the same time has been the main concern of social game developers. Haining, from Happy Elements, will share his experience on how to make My Fishbow, the 9th Social Game in Facebook in terms of DAU, operating on Facebook. It has been 2 years and the game is still being played by millions each day all over the world ---the success comes from the continuous update and operations. At the same time, Happy Elements has successfully launched its games globally, on 14 different social networking platforms from such as Facebook, China, Japan and Korea. During today's speech, Haining will share insights on his experience in Facebook, Japan and what it takes to succeed globally.

Building Console-Quality Games on Facebook

Ludovic Bodin
CEO | CMUNE

With the increase in popularity of social networks such as Facebook and social games, and the development of new technologies such as Unity3D which allows browser-based 3D experiences, gaming companies have an opportunity to shape the next-paradigm in gaming. This session will outline the main opportunities and challenges in building console-quality games on social platforms. We will discuss how CMUNE has faced these challenges and created UberStrike, Facebook #1 3D First Person Shooter and #1 game in 50+ countries on the Mac App Store.

The Smurfs™ & Co – How to Develop a Successful Facebook Game in China

Richard Tsao
Managing Director | Ubisoft Chengdu

The Smurfs™ & Co is the number one Facebook game developed by Ubisoft reaching a number over 10 million monthly active users. Among its achievements, it became the Number 1 Licensed based game and reached at its peek the Top 25 applications on Facebook. In the presentation, the speaker will illustrate the key factors that determine the success of the game from the point of view of a Ubisoft Studio Managing Director operating in China. The presentation will include topics oriented in recruitment, resource allocation and high level overview on Facebook development, and also other important decisions that ensured the development of the game and its success on Facebook.

The Importance of Multi-Platform for Social Gaming

Randy Lee
Director of Business Development | CrowdStar

CrowdStar was founded in 2009 and has become a leader in web and mobile social games. With hit game titles such as It Girl, Wasteland Empires, Happy Aquarium, Top Girl, Zombie Universe and others, CrowdStar has tens of millions of players a month enjoying their games. In this session, CrowdStar will talk about the importance and various strategies around expanding their global reach to go multi-platform around the world.

Everything You Need to Know about Facebook Ads: How Much do I Need to Pay to Get 1 Million Players to My Game?

Hussein Fazal
CEO | AdParlor

Buying ads on Facebook is part art and part science. In this talk we will review many important concepts related to Facebook ad buying. We will begin with the basics such as creative rotation and analyzing key metrics such as Click Through Rate (CTR) and Conversion Rate (CVR). We will then discuss the constantly changing supply and demand within the eco-system and narrow in on pricing – looking at the factors that affect the Cost Per Acquisition. Finally – we will put all this together to try and answer the question – how much do I need to pay to get 1 Million players to my game?

Monetizing Social Games: DeNA's Secrets for Success

Kenji Kobayashi
Director | DeNA Co., Ltd.

Successful games follow a pattern. It's not enough to have agile leaders who are aware of industry and user trends. Rather, developers must approach game creation from both a developer's and service provider's perspective. Each of DeNA's most popular social games on its Mobage platform generates monthly sales of over 13 million US dollars, and Mobage itself boasts an average revenue per user over ten times greater than that of Zynga's. In this session, we will provide you with a behind-the-scenes peek into the development and operation of our most profitable titles as well as insider tips on how you can make social games successful as "services".

Creating MMO's for Social Platforms

Hendrick Sukardi
Executive Producer | Kabam™

Kabam was the first company in North America to develop Facebook games for hardcore gamers and since then has grown to become the segment leader. The company creates massively multiplayer social games (MMSGs), games that combine the deep gameplay found in MMO's with the interaction models found in social games. In this session, the audience will learn about popular SNS features in Kabam games and about critical success factors for developing games on Facebook and beyond.

The Road to HTML5 Games: Challenges and Opportunities (Panel) HTML5 games and engines are appearing on the horizon, but how far away are they from coming to the mainstream social gaming ecosystem? Is HTML5 just a fad? Is this the right time to focus research and development efforts on HTML5? Will a product development strategy without HTML5 allow your company to continue to thrive in the future? Answers to these questions and more will be fielded by experts versed in web, social, and mobile games from Kabam, RockYou, Pixelmatic, Spil Games, Kano Apps, and GameHouse.
Moderator:
	Qi Chen CEO \| Spil Games Asia
Panelists:
	Alexander Mendelev General Manager & Head of Studios \| GameHouse	Samson Mow Founder & CEO \| Pixelmatic
	Andy Riedel Vice President, Mobile \| Kabam	Jia Shen CEO \| RockYou Asia
	Tim Teh COO \| Kano Applications Inc.

Project Managing a Social Game for the Western Market

Xiaojuan He
Project Manager | Ubisoft Chengdu

The lecture illustrates strong project management practices in developing social games for western countries based on the experience of developing two Facebook games: The Smurfs™ & Co and Castle & Co, currently ranked as number 1 and number 3 in Ubisoft developed Facebook games. In the presentation, the speaker will provide insight on how to successfully lead the team through different project phases as a project manager, share best practices and lessons learned from the development of the projects as well as insight on what it takes to successfully enter the Facebook market. Special attention will be given to key factors in the production phase of both projects, such as making a western social game with a Chinese production staff, problems encountered throughout development, handling team moral over a very short "crunch mode" development cycle, and post launch operations.

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The Road to HTML5 Games: Challenges and Opportunities (Panel) HTML5 games and engines are appearing on the horizon, but how far away are they from coming to the mainstream social gaming ecosystem? Is HTML5 just a fad? Is this the right time to focus research and development efforts on HTML5? Will a product development strategy without HTML5 allow your company to continue to thrive in the future? Answers to these questions and more will be fielded by experts versed in web, social, and mobile games from Kabam, RockYou, Pixelmatic, Spil Games, Kano Apps, and GameHouse.
Moderator:
	Qi Chen CEO \| Spil Games Asia
Panelists:
	Alexander Mendelev General Manager & Head of Studios \| GameHouse	Samson Mow Founder & CEO \| Pixelmatic
	Andy Riedel Vice President, Mobile \| Kabam	Jia Shen CEO \| RockYou Asia
	Tim Teh COO \| Kano Applications Inc.

	online track
	global track
	social games track
	indie games summit
	mobile summit
	tutorials
	sponsored track

Social Games Track

Social Games Track Schedule

Saturday, November 12

Time

Session

Sunday, November 13