GameDevMike

KGC 2006 opened with a keynote from Ed Zobrist, President of Sierra Online. He talked about what it takes to bring a Korean game into the casual space in the US, using the game FreeStyle as an example. There were several sessions given by representatives from several companies, but I only attended two. I had time for one more, but there wasn’t really anything in the third round that I was interested in. Besides, I wanted to beat the rush hour traffic. The KGC was held at a rather new convention center outside the north of Seoul, about an hour on the subway from my house. Seoul’s subways get quite crowded in the evening.

The two sessions I attended were both focused on the casual games market. The first was given by James Gwertzman, Business Development Director for PopCap, titled “Understanding Casual Games in the West.” I’m really not in tune with the casual game market, so I took quite a bit away from it. The second session was a presentation by Daniel James, CEO of Three Rings, titled “Bringing the Item-Based Model to the Western Market.” This is the one I was most interested in, since I’m hoping to develop a game using such a business model. Unfortunately, I didn’t take as much away from this one as I did the other.

I’ve got quite a bit to do since I’ve been out all day. And I also am heading back out for the second, and last, day of the conference tomorrow. I’ll post more details about the keynote and each session in the coming days.

Technorati Tags: game industry, game business, Korea, KGC, KGC2006, PopCap, Three Rings, games