Casual games industry to Connect in Seattle next week

Put together by the Casual Games Association, the event runs from July 23rd to 25th at Benaroya Hall in Seattle.

Key leaders from a raft of companies are in attendance to to hold keynote talks, attend panel discussions and network with others in the casual games space.

Headline keynotes are planned from Nickelodeon, PopCap, Epic Games, and Big Fish. Paul Thelen, founder, chairman and CSO of Big Fish Games, will open the conference with a keynote session that reveals the results of study conducted with the NPD group. The study, the firm says 'profiles distinct casual segments of the market and the resulting business opportunities as well as comparing and contrasting these casual segments with the traditional core games market'.

He's followed by Digital Chocolate CEO Trip Hawkins, who promises to look at the emerging ultra-casual audience in his talk 'The Supercasual Social Revolution'.

Social will be a key topic for Nickelodeon too - SVP & GM of its Kids and Family Games Group, Dave Williams, is also presenting a keynote, called 'The Social Tidal Wave: The New Definition of Casual Gaming'. He promises to look at how the boundaries and definition of casual games has blurred and is crossing over with social games - and will no doubt touch upon how the sites he oversees at Nickelodeon are soon incorporating social networking-style features.

Elsewhere, PopCap's CEO Dave Roberts is promising to unveil new Peggle products in his 'The Business of Peggle' keynote. The talk will also profile how PopCap created one of the biggest hits of recent casual history at a time when casual games releases are ten-a-penny.

Lastly, a non-casual developer - Mike Capps, president of Epic Games, best known for hardcore shooters Unreal Tournament and Gears of War, and also the Unreal Engine 3 toolset - will take to the stage and explain why 'I Wish I Were a Casual Game Developer'. “Epic can give a talk without mentioning the Unreal Engine," jokes Capps in his description of the session, adding that he plans to explain why Epic recently acquired casual games  developer Chair and why the rise of casual games is "like a renaissance of the golden age of game development".

More details on the event, including a full schedule of the content and other sessions at the conference, can be found here.

And representatives of CasualGaming.biz will be on hand throughout - contact us to arrange a meeting.