Social Gaming Summit – June 13th, San Francisco, CA

I’m way behind on blogging and here’s why:

I wanted to give you a heads up on an exciting event coming up in June. I’m working with Jeremy Liew from Lightspeed and David Sachs to organize a one day conference on social gaming in San Francisco and I hope you can make it out for what will be a great day. For those of you who were able to make it out to last year’s Virtual Goods Summit, the Social Gaming Summit will continue to advance the conversation around engagement, business models, and social interaction online by examining what’s happening in the world of social gaming.

We have a landing page up for the event right now but I wanted to give you a sneak peek of what we have lined up before we post more details about the event. I hope you can join us – feel free to share these details with friends and colleagues.

What: Social Gaming Summit (http://www.socialgamingsummit.com)
Where: UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center, San Francisco, CA
When: Friday, June 13th 2008
Register Here: http://socialgamingsummit.eventbrite.com/

Confirmed speakers already include the following list of folks:

* Dave Williams, Shockwave and AddictingGames
* Craig Sherman, Gaia Online
* Jim Greer, Kongregate
* Siqi Chen, Serious Business (Friends for Sale)
* Erik Bethke, Go Pets
* Daniel James, Three Rings
* Amy Jo Kim, ShuffleBrain
* Nicole Lazarro, XEODesign
* Matt Mihaly, Sparkplay Media

We’ll be announcing more speakers over the next week or so – we’ve got some great people lined up and I think you’ll really get a lot out of spending the day with us.

I’m also including some brief descriptions of the panel and discussion topics we’re planning to cover at the event – you can read more about the details below:

Casual MMOs and Immersive Worlds
Many so-called “casual MMOs” and immersive worlds are casual only in the sense that the point of the game is not to bash gruesome looking monsters or the game isn’t set in a sci-fi fantasy world. The engagement story around existing and upcoming casual MMOs is real and very compelling. This panel will discuss what it takes to build a successful casual MMO that users love to play.

Asynchronous Games on Social Networks
There are a lot of interesting asynchronous activities happening on social networks. Some of them are traditional games, others are games in disguise. Join us and hear from some of the leading voices in this space share their views on how to build great gameplay characteristics into social networking applications and what opportunities exist for gameplay to take advantage of the social graph.

Building Communities and Social Interaction In and Around Games
Social networking and games go hand in hand. Whether it’s taking advantage of the relationship data in social networks to build novel gameplay or building community among people who play games, game developers are discovering clever ways to build real communities around the games they’re developing. Hear from our panel of thought leaders about what it takes to successfully integrate community and social interaction into the next generation of games.

What Makes Games Fun?
We all like to have fun, right? What is it about games that makes them so fun? Is it gameplay? Social interaction? Achievements and accomplishments? Our panel of thought leaders will share their perspectives on what it takes to build a fun game and why building fun into games is more difficult than it looks.

Monetization and Business Models for Social Games
There are a handful of viable (proven) business models for social games. How should game developers go about choosing the best business model for their games? Our panel of experts will share their thoughts on the various business models and how to think through the right one for a given game.

Questions? Speaker suggestions? Want to sponsor the event? Just leave a comment or mail me directly.