Festival of Games 2011

UTRECHT – March 14th, 2011 – Jointly they have over 200 million registered users: Bigpoint and InnoGames. The Festival of Games proudly announces both browser game companies for the game conference. On April 28 & 29, Nils-Holger Henning, CCO of online superpower Bigpoint will take the Festival of Games audience by the hand to the revolutions that are expected in the online game world. InnoGames’ Co-Founder, Michael Zillmer and project manager Tim Werner will share the secrets on community management, the asset that helped them grow tremendously over the past years.

Online gaming companies are generating strong ROI and are growing exponentially. Online games are played worldwide which is the reason that Bigpoint opened offices in the US and Brazil recently, while InnoGames opened its subsidiary in Korea. “Asia is a very attractive market for us and we needed closer and frequent communication with Asian companies. Especially in Korea, there is a very active online game industry and many game developers are located”, InnoGames Co-Founder Michael Zillmer explains.

In their efforts to take over the world, Bigpoint recently announced a strategic partnership with Electronic Arts that will commence at the beginning of next April. This will result in EA’s games being localized in more than 25 languages and available in over 180 countries.

The numbers are staggering, but what makes the companies different from one another? Tim Werner, project manager at InnoGames is pretty clear about one of their USP’s: Community Management. “We are currently maintaining a 60mil registered user community and have around 800 active volunteers involved with community management. We are maintaining high quality amongst our community managers by organizing specialised volunteer weekends and workshops and we have started to work with in-house community managers (a.o.t. work from home)”.

In the Q&A session of InnoGames, Zillmer and Werner, will share how developers and publishers can learn how to build a strong community and how to maintain it. During the interactive session, they will discuss the (dis)advantages of having a strong community and are open create a lively discussion on best practices.

CCO of Bigpoint, Nils-Holger Henning on the other will go into detail about how the evolution of games will continue to deliver exciting new experiences. Example: In the not too distant future sensors tracking the user’s movements or brain activity will translate into virtual avatar reaction. Games are revolutionary because they connect people all over the world anytime, and everywhere. “Through the application of new technologies, we are able to realize new game concepts which contain graphics with a quality similar to that of console games but can still be played without downloading anything”. according to Bigpoint’s CCO.

In his session, Nils-Holger Henning will share his thoughts on the question how games are influencing our daily life already and what kind of breakthrough innovations we can expect in the near future. But the session will not only be about the past and future trends: “It is my goals to convey our vision on how these changes will influence the target groups for games” according to Nils-Holger Henning, “The take-aways of the session can be implemented immediately in the daily business of the listeners”.

THE FESTIVAL OF GAMES

The Festival of Games takes place on April 28-29, 2011, at the Jaarbeurs Utrecht in the Netherlands. The 2010 event attracted over 2000 visitors, with 180 companies from 25 countries.

The Festival of Games is the most effective games industry event, that combines a conference, the international matchmaking event called Pitch & Match, a business Expo for trade visitors, and the largest games industry Career Fair of Europe. The Conference in 2011 is powered by GamesIndustry.biz and Gamer.nl

With the 2011 edition entitled "Games Anywhere", the Festival of Games will be all about how the eruption of games in every sector of the consumer market has interacted with the videogames business. The two-day Conference on April 28-29 will have a strong focus on convergence and transmedia, with the speakers Dan Winters, VP Developer Relations of Activision, Nicholas Francis, co-founder of Unity, Jurian van der Meer, Managing Director of Endemol Games and Scott Steinberg CEO of Techsavvy Global recently announced.

The Festival of Games is organized by the NLGD Foundation and is made possible by the Dutch ministry of Economic Affairs, the province of Utrecht and the city of Utrecht.

Not for publication

For more information please contact:

Mr. Fedor van Herpen

Marketing & Sales Manager

Festival of Games

Tel: +31 (0)6 – 12 42 68 84

E-mail: fedor@nlgd.nl

Website: www.festivalofgames.org