Credit crunch won't affect us, say casual leaders

cafe.com and Boonty's Mathieu Nouzareth was the first to tackle the issue, explaining that he thought the current situation would be worse than the dotcom crash of 2000.

"I think that advertising will decrease," he said. "Many of the new startup companies will not survive around the next six months – I think it's going to be worse than 2000. Salaries will be OK: I don't think staff will move around, but it is going to be very very tough."

Playfish's Kristian Segerstrale disagreed with his contemporary, pointing to the microtransaction model as something that would help during this period. "One of the nice things about the microtransaction model is that you don't have a big charge up front, you only buy the things you want - which will appeal to those tightening their belts.

"It will be harder to be a startup for sure, and it will probably be harder to secure advertising dollars. But is it really going to be tough times for the market as a whole? I find that difficult to believe, but I don't think it's time to get into the bomb shelter yet."

Next to give his opinion was Ami Ben-David, Oberon Media's senior vice president of international operations, who suggested that playing habits don't change during economic recessions. "We looked at our charts on the bad days and amount of games played didn't change."

"If advertising goes down a little bit – and it hasn't – we can turn up microtransactions a bit," he said, echoing Segestrale's previous comments. "You can push and pull the levers so long as there is a market that wants to play."

At this point, Nikitova's director of development Jon Hare provided a view from the audience, saying that casual's scaled-back nature would appeal to people looking to tighten their purse strings. "You don't get rid of stuff when you budget - you scale down, because people still need entertainment, and casual gaming is a great way of providing scaled-down entertainment."

Bringing the discussion to a close, Nouzareth ended on a more positive note. "It's a great time to be a startup; all of the big companies you know started during tough times – it's just extremely hard to secure finance. But it's during these times that people in their garage will come up with innovative solutions and maybe change things."