- After 49 conferences in 12 cities, in 9 international locations over three continents, Pocket Gamer Connects is celebrating its tenth birthday
- It is THE premier place for the cell video games trade to satisfy, join, swap tales and have fun. Here is its story
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Have you learnt the place you had been on twenty first January 2014? For the founders of Metal Media and round 500 cell trade consultants, the reply was Vinopolis, Central London for the primary ever reside PG Connects convention.
Whereas that occasion was an awesome success, it’s truthful to say that what started as the subsequent step in Metal Media’s plan to assist the trade – constructing on over eight years years of shopper opinions, b2b media, awards and networking drinks since we launched in 2006 – has grown into one thing larger than we ever might have hoped for.
Within the intervening decade (other than a Covid-enforced digital break), PG Connects has celebrated 49 conferences, 58,800 registrations, 5,349 audio system, 126,400 conferences, 17,800 corporations and an estimated $1bn worth of offers finished.
With our final occasion of the yr now behind us, these numbers embrace 2024 – the tenth yr of the PG Connects convention collection – a globe-trotting world tour of 5 occasions taking in London, San Francisco, Dubai, Helsinki and Jordan. 2024 alone noticed us welcome 8,800 attendees from 256 international locations, 8,456 conferences, 3,410 corporations and 690 audio system.
Pocket Gamer Connects stays THE premier place for the cell video games trade to satisfy, join, swap tales and have fun what has grown to turn into the world’s greatest slice of the leisure trade. Because the PGC crew prepares to welcome buddies previous and new to our tenth anniversary occasion on the Brewery London on twenty first January 2024, we wished to take the prospect to look again and ask, how did we get right here? So we’ve gathered collectively a few of PGC’s founding fathers to ask them exactly that…
Getting the celebration began
Metal Media opened for enterprise in 2006, lengthy earlier than app shops and smartphones we all know at the moment, launching shopper media large PocketGamer.Com and dealing with cell phone operators Vodafone, Three, T-Cellular and O2 in addition to handset giants Nokia and Sony Ericsson to assist promote cell video games by cell portals and in retailer magazines.
By 2008, we’d expanded our actions to extra straight assist the enterprise facet of the trade, by the launch of this devoted media channel, PocketGamer.biz, and a quickly increasing collection of networking occasions within the UK, US, Europe and Asia. These concerned a combination of legendary networking events (the legendary PG Events on Monday nights throughout GDC week grew to visitor lists of as much as 3-4K), Cellular Mixers (that includes panels and talks alongside drinks), awards and the Huge Indie Pitch.
From right here, in hindsight a minimum of, it might appear an apparent step to launch a convention collection. In any case, the Metal Media crew had made a behavior of pulling collectively its greatest names to share data and construct group. The common get togethers had turn into an important a part of the ecosystem however – spurred on by sellout success and smiling faces – the crew quickly contemplated if they might step up their party-starting and marvellous mixers to create an occasion that would do much more to share data, stimulate enterprise and have fun the success of this unimaginable trade.
Chris James, Metal Media’s CEO and co-founder units the scene. “We noticed this wonderful cell video games trade with a great deal of nice folks and many complexity however no-one was actually giving it any love,” he explains. “And when the smartphone period got here, all the things modified. Any individual got here to us and stated “ a number of cell folks, we wish to do a celebration at GDC. Are you able to assist us?” So we invited our shoppers and buddies and trade folks to come back and have a pleasant evening, chatting, getting drunk and connecting, and another person was paying! It was one of the best factor ever. That’s when our occasions enterprise was born.”
“We invited our shoppers and buddies to come back and have a pleasant evening, chatting, getting drunk and connecting, and another person was paying! That’s when our occasions enterprise was born”
Chris James
London calling
And that inaugural occasion – a full-on convention for the cell gaming group – was the primary Pocket Gamer Connects London which occurred at Vinopolis on January the twenty first 2014. Would the venue and AV maintain up, they puzzled? Would the audio system enrapture and entertain? And, most significantly, would anybody flip up?
“We had been pondering ‘If we are able to get 200 folks, we received’t lose our shirts right here’… However ultimately we bought over 500 and other people simply engaged with it,” says James. “We’d turn into the voice of an trade that didn’t have a voice. Our mixer occasions had been for the folks that made the video games, the monetisation folks, the toolmakers, the buyers, so we all the time wished that cross part for PGC. We wished to deliver everybody collectively. And I believe we achieved that.”
However what in regards to the logistics? Spiriting a convention out of nothing can’t have been straightforward? Jez Bridgeman, Metal Media’s artistic director takes up the story. “None of us had any expertise in constructing a convention, so it was a little bit of an unknown. However no person else was actually doing this for cell, so, for us, it was a pure development. It was just a bit bit costlier… With extra transferring elements… However that’s by no means scared us.”
Joao Diniz-Sanches, co-founder of Metal Media shares the key of their success. “One of many key issues for me was how reactive and the way tight the crew was. The variety of folks delivering that occasion was stunningly small, however that’s as a result of everyone performed their half very effectively and really effectively. We run this stuff actually tightly so all the things that got here alongside we overcame.”
From day one it was clear that PGC was simply what the cell trade wanted, placing each the occasion itself and the brand new wave of up-and-coming expertise that attended, firmly on the map.
And that first PGC had all the large names in attendance: King’s Tommy Palm, Rovio’s CMO Peter Vesterbacka, Gamevil USA president Kyu Lee, CocoaChina GM Lei Zhang, and Harry Holmwood, CEO of Marvelous AQL to call just some… It was two full days devoted to talks, pitch classes and a wealth of different actions geared toward small and medium builders, operating parallel to a give attention to the then rising Asian cell market. The components proved a recipe for fulfillment that the crew have since fine-tuned and improved over each successive occasion since.
Dave Bradley, Metal Media, COO remembers the primary PGC. “That first present had a really pleasant vibe which I believe we’ve maintained all through the ten years. I walked in and was instantly embraced by some indie builders and wound up having a drink with them and discovering out all about what they’d finished. That welcoming, video games trade vibe was there proper out of the field and it has been there ever since.”
“The phrase ‘household’ is commonly used at our occasions,” agrees Bridgeman. “There are individuals who come commonly to every occasion and after some time they begin to really feel like household, and equally they deal with us like household.”
We’ve began, so we’ll Finnish…
And with evident worldwide enchantment it wasn’t lengthy earlier than PGC unfold its wings. Later that very same yr PGC headed to Helsinki, Finland, repeating the magic for a second present, tailored for its incumbent, brand-new and burgeoning cell powerhouses.
“Most of our companions and revenues had been coming from abroad anyway,” explains James. “We’d been doing these mixer occasions in every single place. At any time when somebody stated ‘I wish to do an occasion for the cell trade in ‘blah’ are you able to do it?’ we had been ‘Yeah, alright’. So it was by no means scary.
“We truly virtually launched in Helsinki earlier than London. Helsinki is our religious second dwelling and we’d been speaking to folks about operating an occasion there. Peter Vesterbacka, the ‘Mighty Eagle’ of Rovio was saying ‘We should always do it!’ and we spent a month going forwards and backwards, so when the primary one in London went effectively, we had been already pondering “OK, let’s go and do it in Helsinki!”
“As we bought nearer and nearer to that first London occasion we had been pondering, truly, we are able to scale this up,” explains Bridgeman. “We will do that just about anyplace so why not do Helsinki? Despite the fact that we’d promised ourselves that we’d solely do one occasion in that first yr!”
A ‘actually’ international video games convention
After all, the expansion of the video games trade has all the time been a worldwide story, and cell much more so. With the fast growth of smartphone handsets placing sport consoles in billions of pockets, studios had been in a position to spin up with far decrease manufacturing overheads and frictionless advertising and marketing than common PC/Console enterprise, nevermind AAA.
Asia was notably necessary, with Japan and Korea main the way in which in cell early on, after which China increasing tremendous quickly to problem even the mighty US market by way of worth.
The PGC crew definitely took this on board. With 2014 closing out two profitable exhibits, 2015 noticed the present heading to Bangalore, India in partnership with Reliance Video games, and San Francisco within the States for the primary time, together with smash-hit return journeys to Helsinki and London. And with a routine set and a timetable locked in, 2016 noticed the addition of Vancouver, Canada to the circuit. By 2019 this had expanded to incorporate outings in Hong Kong, Jordan and Seattle.
“Inside just a few years we had been actually pondering internationally. Even proper after that first occasion we had been supporting different territories proper world wide in a approach that was very thrilling”
Dave Bradley
“Inside just a few years we had been actually pondering internationally in a approach that some far bigger corporations nonetheless don’t,” explains Bradley. “Seeking to Asia, trying to the Center East… PGC has embraced all these areas. Even proper after that first occasion in London we had been supporting different territories proper world wide in a approach that was very thrilling.”
Greater than cell – PC / XR / Blockchain Connects
Whereas cell video games stay on the coronary heart of PG Connects, the present has lengthy since broadened its attain to the broader platforms, applied sciences and tendencies that form the trade.
A lot of the content material on sport design, instruments, advertising and marketing, funding and enterprise is platform-agnostic anyway, however since 2017 Pocket Gamer Connects has featured particular tracks and entire facet occasions (corresponding to PC Connects, Blockchain Connects, XR Connects) centered on supporting completely different sectors of the trade and this stays very a lot the case at the moment in a world the place many publishers are pondering extra cross platform.
As James stated, “In the end, cell is our heartland, however these occasions are more and more designed to be platform agnostic actually. For me the video games trade and these occasions usually are not about applied sciences, they’re about connecting, celebrating and supporting the individuals who make the video games, or the instruments and monetisation techniques, or who make investments into the trade to permit all of it to occur.”
The present should go on
Even 2020’s international shutdown couldn’t stop the crew from persevering with the trigger and delivering enterprise as regular through ten all-digital Connects occasions throughout 2020 and 2021. “On the finish of February 2020 I had gone out to Jordan to have a look at a venue there – with a view to going onto GDC in San Francisco straight after – and whereas we had been there all the things simply stopped,” remembers James. “GDC was gone… However we’d already been speaking about ‘Can we do a small digital factor?’ and PGC Digital actually got here collectively that week. By April the sixth it was reside.
“We became a digital occasions firm in a single day. And we did ten of them over the Covid interval. At a time when everybody was furloughing folks, we had been hiring. We had been nonetheless wanted and that point actually underlined why what we do is necessary. The cement between the bricks remains to be required. Enterprise must proceed. It will possibly’t simply ‘cease’.
“That’s been my highpoint – that we all the time stored it going. And that’s turn into a logo of the corporate as an entire. We pivot, roll with the punches and all the time drive it ahead.”
The best present on earth – Be a part of us!
Thus PGC has continued to rock and roll into city all world wide and, after an unimaginable 5 occasions in 2022 in London, Seattle, Helsinki, Toronto and Jordan, we had been aiming for six in 2023 because of the addition of the Dubai GameExpo Summit to the combination in June (though subsequently PGC Jordan needed to be postponed as a result of stunning and tragic developments within the area).
With London, Helsinki and Dubai occasions confirmed, our newly introduced return to San Francisco in March 2024 already taking form and plans for additional exercise creating properly, 2024, PGC’s anniversary yr, is already all set to be the largest but.
Whereas the early success might have come partly from partys, and there may be all the time a way of enjoyable and celebration on the coronary heart of those occasions, the PGC crew understands that sustained progress and impression can solely come from delivering real worth to the trade – from supporting companies with the data, connections and inspiration they should survive and thrive.
We could also be 10 years previous, however PG Connects in 2024 will probably be much more laser centered on delivering actual worth to all our delegates, to make sure they arrive away with useful insights to implement and connections to assist get enterprise finished and develop their enterprise now and sooner or later. So don’t miss out. Be a part of the unmissable Pocket Gamer Connects schedule in London or a metropolis close to you all by 2024 and past – fInd out extra and guide your tickets right here.
PLUS you will be a part of PGC Tales proper now! Do you could have your personal PGC story to inform? A favorite present? Greatest second? Superb recollections, tall tales and extra, we wish to hear yours for our collection celebrating our 10 years on the prime. So do chip in and be a part of the motion right here or just share your recollections on LinkedIn right here. We’ll be selling these on our channels and on the present itself!
Lastly, from all at PGC, PG.Biz and the Metal Media (and certainly Fanatic Gaming) crew – thanks for all the things. We couldn’t do it with out you. Right here’s to a different ten nice years!