Casual Games SIG/Conference Calls/January 2009

International Game Developers Association

Notes taken by James C. Smith 1/13/2009

Contents 1 Role Call 1.1 Who's Here 1.2 Who's Not 2 Initiative Updates 2.1 Quarterly Newsletter 2.2 Whitepaper Update 2.2.1 Lessons learned 2.3 Mailing List 2.4 Developer Publisher Attribution 3 SIG Logistics 4 Future Direction 5 Conference Call Logistics

Role Call

Who's Here

James C Smith, Vishal Gondal, Dave Rohrl, Michael Thornton Wyman, Dan Prig, Alfredo Chaves, Kirsten Duvall, Alex Ionescu

Who's Not

Brian Robbins, Rex Sikora

Initiative Updates

Quarterly Newsletter

Michael Wyman / Alfredo Chaves

• Not much progress since last meeting – But James and Michael still plan to have content ready in February
• Dave will contribute whitepaper teaser for future quarterly
• Dave will ask Playfish to write a piece about best practices on social gaming
• Dave suggested using whitepaper content to get other article ideas

Whitepaper Update

• Draft sent to SC today, final will be published shortly
• Waiting on Bios and last few edits
• Turned out to be a 188 page “monster”
• Some sections with great content and some just okay

Lessons learned

• 15 month project.
• Lots of content and hard to manage
• Lots of great info
• Will try to avoid another 15 month cycle in the future
• Some sections finished last July and some still not finish in January
• Has become a huge book with many sections that should really each be their own paper
• Dave wants SC members to review the whitepaper draft
• Should pole the community to ask if the info is useful
• Need a way to track the downloads. Looking for volunteer to host it
• Dave will ask Jason if there is a way to track downloads on IGDA
• We want to issue press release when it is done
• So far not much traction getting separate white papers for Social gaming, casual MMOs, iPhone. No writers volunteered.
• Kirstin wants guidelines to give to writers. She will review what Dave sent
• Main whitepaper can be used as model for these smaller papers. Especially strong sections are Micro transactions, skill games, casual games overview
• Dave will send e-mail to casual list to announce main white paper and looking for contributors to other white papers (Social, MMO, iPhone)

Mailing List

James C. Smith / Alfredo Chaves

• Nothing to report

Developer Publisher Attribution

Rex Sikora / Dan Prig

• Dan will ping Rex to get status update

SIG Logistics

Dave will provide payment info for basecamp and get himself reimbursed

Future Direction

• White paper is struggling to figure out how to make it work. New growth areas are best targets for future writting
• Quarterly is going well and we want to continue
• Mail List & Credits: Future is uncertain
• Further discussion tabled until next call

Conference Call Logistics

• All future meetings will be pushed back an hour later at 10:00 AM PT on the first Tuesday of the month
• Next call Feb 3rd at 10:00 AM Pacific
• James will setup conference call dial in logistics