The games industry events programme for 2024 is already in full swing – and on 22nd-23rd January Game Republic attended the Pocket Gamer Connects London event, where hundreds of mobile – as well as console, PC and VR – developers from the UK, Europe, USA and wider afield, met for two days of talks, pitching, an expo, meetings and social gatherings.
We saw many of our GR members attending including Huey Games, Cooperative Innovations, Double Eleven and New Star Games, who actually had a stand to show off their brilliant New Star GP racing game, currently in Steam Early Access.
Talk highlights included: a multiplayer game design panel with guests including Jon Hare of Tower Studios (creator of Sociable Soccer) and Hilmar Veigar-Petursson of Eve Online maker CCP Games; a presentation on a new era of mobile gaming from Noam Zada at TikTok; a panel on Beyond Play, game development in Roblox with the company’s Adam Capps; and a thought-provoking panel on whether Allyship can Confront Toxicity with guests including Gina Jackson (SkillFull), Darren Yeomans (Atomhawk) and Mick Morris (Psyop). The panel concluding that leadership had a big role to play in setting standards.
It was a very busy event – back to pre-pandemic levels – which was heartening to see and people were really excited to be properly back to networking and doing business face-to-face. As for topics and trends being discussed, AI was a major subject, as well as rumours of a forthcoming new console from Nintendo, but the main issue was the state of the industry and the job losses in 2023 and into 2024, something that Chris Dring from GamesIndustry.biz touched upon in his talk at the GR event on 18thJanuary.
However, despite the uncertainty, there was a lot of enthusiasm and positivity from attendees – many companies were busy making games, completing plenty of business deals and looking to expand and hire more people. The number of new games companies and new titles was staggering, especially in the mobile space, and so as we begin 2024, it looks like being an exciting, albeit complex picture across the industry.
