On June 25, 2015 GameDuell hosted the games.net berlinbrandenburg and BERLIN meets POLAND ROUNDTABLE. About 50 developers, publishers and marketing specialists of various games companies and representatives of industry associations and the political sphere discussed their experiences and strategies for user acquisition and online marketing.
Five Polish and German panel speakers including our GameDuell Co-Founder and Marketing Director Boris Wasmuth shared their expertise with a view to the German and Polish markets. Karsten Bubinger, Director of Advertiser Management at crobo, presented a keynote, before Cornelia Geppert, Co-Founder and Creative Director at Jo-Mei, Tim Nilsson, CEO at glispa and the Polish speakers Lukasz Hacura, CEO at Anshar Studios, and Jakub Duda, Founder of Incuvo shared their opinions at the discussion moderated by Michael Liebe, Ambassador at game.net berlinbrandenburg.
The year 2015 – overall, a positive future lies ahead for the games industry in Europe. About a third of the population plays games regularly and in gaming history, it has never been so easy to reach billions of possible players on their smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and consoles around the globe. Yet, it has also never been so challenging to prevail against an increasing number of competitors. So, simply creating a great game is not enough in order to stand up to these challenges. Developing tailor-made marketing strategies that fit budgets, are workable and suit a product’s needs, and using the right tools to implement them is inevitable for acquiring users and monetizing the games. To do so, many decisions have to be made – from the choice between in house solutions, external agencies and publishers to the composition of a proper toolset to monitor and evaluate big data and real time traffic.
Besides these topics, new technologies such as Virtual Reality and Smartwatches were addressed in the open talks as well. Yet, the mass market potential of these devices was evaluated very differently by the participants. However, glispa CEO Tim Nilsson does not see Android’s and Apple’s dominance as acquisition channels altered in the near future, although he expects some more fragmentation due to developments by other companies like Amazon and Microsoft. Concerning user acquisition through Social Media Marketing, Boris Wasmuth sees room for improvement: “Just being retweeted and shared and being on some blogs will not bring us to a higher level. That is only the sugar on top of the cake. First we have to undergo a very strong analytical process and after that we put some PR and Social Media on top.”
The Roundtable discussion and joint outlook to the future proved fruitful. Collaborations between Germany and Poland are promising and should continue to be fostered, as the specific know-how of both countries complements each other very well. The Polish industry can learn from German and especially Berlin-based companies such as GameDuell that are experienced and internationally leading in marketing of web and mobile games, while Polish companies can provide expertise they gained with numerous globally successful productions of the recent years and knowledge about commercialization in the Eastern European market vice versa.
The games.netROUNDTABLE was established by games.net (a unit within media.net berlinbrandenburg) to create a platform for networking and exchange of c-level management in games companies. It was followed by some words by Andrea Peters (Chairwoman of media.net berlinbrandenburg) on the project extension over the summer of BERLIN meets POLAND and the intention to build up a platform for interactive media companies with a focus on Games, Startups and Digital Media. Celebrating this, we all enjoyed a nice summer evening on the roof terrace with delicious food (Liebe(r)Essen) and drinks (kindly sponsored by GameDuell).
Thank you to our partners and sponsors, especially GameDuell for being our host and for the review text and to our speakers from Berlin and Poland, the moderator Michael Liebe and all the guests! We look forward to seeing you again at one of our next events!