Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco 2018
2018-05-14..2018-05-15
San Francisco, United States
[Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco 2017, Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco 2018, Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco 2019, Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco 2024, Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco 2025]
who it's for
mobile monetisation managers, user acquisition managers, ad operations managers, growth marketers, game analytics engineers, data scientists for games, privacy and compliance officers
topics
Unity Analytics IP Promo; Unity Remote Settings; rewarded video ads; rewarded interstitials; playable ads build pipelines; header bidding for apps; GDPR consent flows; Facebook CBO value optimization; AI purchase personalization; offline TV-to-digital halo; ad mediation and floor pricing; battle pass progression monetisation
| title | author | length |
|---|---|---|
| Data-driven optimisation for in-app purchases and gameplay | Angelo Ferro | 19m |
Unity Analytics adds a built-in pipeline to instrument IAPs across Apple, Google and Facebook and exposes two products: IP Promo as an in‑game ad unit to… | ||
| Free-to-play monetisation – Surviving past the loot box | Jeremy Horn | 24m |
Industry revenue is projected to hit 51% mobile share and then a November backlash cuts about $3 billion from valuations, prompting policy shifts: Apple now… | ||
| Monetisation from the trenches – Lessons from the fight to maximise ad revenue | Robert May, Robery May, Victoria Lin, Matthew Brown, Adam Carey | 25m |
Panelists argue that rewarded video delivers the best engagement and completion rates and that a new variant, rewarded interstitials, targets non‑paying users… | ||
| The future of the mobile monetisation and user acquisition market | Bryan Buskas, Matthew Brown, John Parides, Brian Sapp | 47m |
Panelists argue that playable ads are the dominant innovation, driving long ad sessions (45–60s or more) and higher conversion when authentic to the game… | ||
| GDPR – How to be compliant and what that means for your company | Natalie Portier | 21m |
Shows concrete compliance work: a new privacy policy that lists which fields and which of ~60 demand partners get user data, contract addenda to push GDPR… | ||
| The future of UA – Facebook ad best practices, creative marketplaces and UA bots | Brian Bowman, Tom Young | 41m |
Claims that a mid‑February algorithm change penalizes frequent bid/budget edits and pushes advertisers to broader audiences with value optimization; machine… | ||
| AI that boosts in-app purchases and monetisation | Doron Kagan | 16m |
Game of Whales builds a real-time AI automation that watches in‑game actions, creates 1400 behavior segments, and runs experiments with a held-out control… | ||
| How offline advertising can boost your mobile and digital acquisition performance | RICHARD DOWNEY | 19m |
Claims that running TV and other offline channels lifts mobile installs, session depth and LTV by creating a measurable halo effect on digital and higher… | ||
| Understanding the impact of header bidding solutions on mobile apps | Boris Logvinskiy, Sen Sun, Mark Ellis, Colin Behr | 39m |
Panelists argue header bidding for apps flattens the waterfall by running a unified auction so every demand partner bids in real time and publishers get true… | ||
| Clear Vision: From hospital bed to hit game | Dan Erhard Olsson | 14m |
Begins from a hospital bed origin where recovery time leads to self-taught programming, animation and Flash development, producing the Clear Vision series… | ||
| Games company bootstrapping | Matthias Hoechsmann | 21m |
Berlin studio 231 Play launches two casual free-to-play games: Pepe Pairs flops commercially while Mahjong City Tours scales successfully. Advice: pick proven… | ||
| Augmented reality games for kids – Lessons learned from Sky Whale AR | Valentine Dessertenne | 19m |
A Nickelodeon add-on called Sky Whale AR (built in Unity, released April 2018) adds a 3D AR mode using ARKit/ARCore but keeps AR optional by mirroring content… | ||
| Talking narrative in games | Thomas Wu | 23m |
Argues for building a platform for episodic interactive fiction and testing hypotheses rather than trusting historical patterns, citing mobile story content at… | ||
| Game design tactics | Bozhidar Grozdanov | 22m |
Claims a molecular design method that breaks every action into player-centered parameters (not character stats) such as time-to-react, movement direction… | ||
| What does live ops mean for your indie game? | Oscar Clark | 22m |
LiveOps means building systems not features: map the player lifecycle, automate events and promotions, and ship content on a cadence so players return… | ||
| Indie starter guide to brand building | Natalie Griffith | 15m |
Argues that brand is more than a logo and that clear, written values plus a simple strategic foundation — do a SWOT analysis and decide who you are, what you… | ||
| The future of games publishing | Mickael Bougis, Josh Bakken, Masaru Ohnogi | 43m |
Publishers report concrete shifts: average mobile development budgets rise from half a million to $3–5M, live ops run for years and portfolios enable… | ||
| Fireside Chat: The real role of production in game development | Katherine de León | 24m |
Career arc moves from Second Life to console and mobile with concrete results: PlayStation Home 68,000 concurrent users, later scaling to 3 million MAU with 3%… | ||
| Niantic's AR mapping lead on using Earth as an AR gameboard | Ross Finman | 21m |
Niantic frames the real world as a game board by combining device tracking, 3D mapping and persistent shared anchors to support planet-scale AR with tens to… | ||
| Grasping success from failure | Maya Gurevich Kagan, Mohammad Agha, Tara Mustapha, Graciela Ruiz | 43m |
Panelists say mobile success hinges on metrics and concrete moves: measure day 1 day 7 day 30 retention, soft‑launch (often in Southeast Asia), iterate with… | ||
| Recontact Istanbul: Eyes Of Sky postmortem | SIMAY DINC | 20m |
Recontact Istanbul is an interactive mobile cinema that combines real actors and locations with hidden‑object detective gameplay, shot as long video and… | ||
| Stupid questions every games developer should ask | Oscar Clark | 33m |
Nine pragmatic questions for design choices: identify the non-game love that informs a mechanic, strip features until the game breaks to find its core, and… | ||
| The evolution of mobile games | Christian Allen, Bill Rehbock, Dave Rohrl | 43m |
Discussion highlights how Unreal and modern engines let teams build high-end mobile ports fast — one case gets a playable build 10 days to get a version… | ||
| nothing matches | ||