Casual Connect Seattle 2010 in Review

Last week, hi5 sponsored Casual Connect Seattle 2010 and hosted an event to celebrate the launch of the hi5 Developer Portal. The developer portal is designed to expedite the deployment and launch of games on hi5.com. On the portal, developers now have access to Virtual Goods and Gifts APIs for hooking into the highly active hi5 gift economy. Additionally, developers can access API documentation (both OpenSocial and Facebook-compatible interfaces) for all integration points, sample source code, and reference guides on promoting and monetizing games on hi5. Developers can also submit their games and applications to hi5 for approval directly from the portal, and manage all their applications on hi5 from one place. Visit http://developer.hi5.com for more information.

Leading up to the main event last week, we released a video trailer depicting hi5's President and CTO Alex St. John challenging Facebook to a sumo wrestling smackdown. Representing Facebook at the main event was three-time World Sumo Champion Byamba. The main event was held last Tuesday among a large audience of game industry professionals attending Casual Connect Seattle. While the battle between Alex and Byamba was fierce, hi5 came out victorious as the sumo wrestling champion! To watch the video trailer and footage of the sumo smackdown event, visit:



In addition to our announcement of the hi5 Developer Portal, several other casual game companies made announcements at Casual Connect Seattle, including: Oberon launched a new e-commerce platform for social and casual game distribution called Blaze, GSN and Arkadium partner to create a skill-based version of Facebook app Mahjonn Dimensions, and Offerpal Media launched a new user acquisition and re-engagement solution for social game developers called SocialKast.

Prior to this week's announcement that Disney acquired social game developer (and hi5 partner) Playdom, CEO John Pleasants gave a talk at Casual Connect Seattle 2010 about growing pains in the social game market. Pleasants expressed why scale truly matters, and how success stories on Facebook platform are now concentrating on a fewer number of games gaining a larger portion of the audience. Additionally, he discussed the industry need to design social games that are truly social and engaging. To video video footage of the presentation, visit: http://www.socialtimes.com/2010/07/casual-connect-playdom-ceo-john-pleasants-discusses-social-game-growth-video/.

Ohai's Susan Wu presented on social game design principles at the conference - sharing learnings from Ohai's development of City of Eternals. Some of the key takeaways include: all social games need to have a clearly defined daily loop, women will play MMO games (70% of the most active audience playing City of Eternals were women), and less than 3D graphics can still provide a deep gaming experience. You can view a snippet of Susan's presentation on the hi5 YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/hi5networks1#p/a/u/2/IJovnwPCcKQ

Next up, hi5 representatives will be attending GDC Europe in Cologne (August 16-18). If you're interested in meeting with our team during the conference, please contact us to request a meeting: http://developer.hi5.com/php/contact.php