Obscure

I attended the inaugural Northern Exposure gaming conference yesterday, which took place at York Racecourse. The event was organised by North-based games networks GameHorizon and Game Republic and was focused on the future of games publishing and the impact of digital distribution. There were a number of interesting and lively talks given by a variety of speakers including:

Hugh Mason, (Pembridge Partners LLP) “Apocalypse? Success strategies for disruption and chaos:”,

Mark Morris, (Introversion), “Introversion Software: 6 Years, 4 Games and still playing with Pixels”

Martyn Brown, (Team 17) “Global Worming”

Ed Bartlett, (IGA Worldwide) “Generating Revenue”

George Bray, (MumboJumbo), “Go Casual or Go Home”

For me, the most interesting points were George Brays comments regarding the conversion ratio of the casual game Luxor on Live Arcade (5% of demo downloads converted to sales). Compare this to the norm for casual games, which George stated was between 0.5-1.5% and it seems that Live Arcade is a good place to sell casual games. However, if you compare it to the conversion ratio for Team 17s latest Worms outing (600,000 downloads, 200,000 sales – 33% conversion ratio) its clearly an even better place to sell non-casual games.

The one day event wrapped up with a very lively panel session in which traditional publishing went head to head with upstart indie/digital self publishing. After three rounds the fight was ajudged a draw. Standard publishing deals will continue and retail will not die any time soon, but digital distribution and indie self-publishing is on the up and will make up an increasingly important part of the business mix, especially for small indies.

Aftermath: The event itself was followed by a socialising/networking (drinking) event at the nearby Pitcher and Piano. I made the sensible choice of moving on from their to a local curry house for a civilized meal with Charles Cecil (Revolution), Darren Jobling (Eutechnyx), James North-Hearn (Sumo) and a number of the more sensible attendees. Charles Cecil’s jacket, on the other hand, went on a drinking spree with Martyn Brown (Team 17), Joe Lewis & Paul Smith (Strawdog Studios), Sean Crooks (3rd Dimension Creation), Graeme Boxall (Blast) and a number of others until three in the morning. The jacket was last seen floating off down the river Ouse (there is every chance that someone was wearing it at the time).

Quote of the morning after “[i'm] never drinking anything passed to me by Martyn Brown again!”