We attended the Pocket Gamer Connects conference in London last month. Our team had a great time meeting up with developers, publishers, investors, service providers and other professionals in the mobile gaming industry to learn more about all their newest products and services. We also shared with other attendees just how our consumer intelligence solutions can help them keep pace with changing player preferences and trends throughout the three stages of a game's lifecycle: pre-launch, launch, and post-launch.

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Here are a few of the hottest takeaways from the two-day event: 

• The rise of generative artificial intelligence in gaming, which encompasses the use of AI to automatically generate video game content such as level design, characters and other elements to keep games unique and varied (beyond what manual human input can accomplish). It is becoming more widespread, as this approach can be used to enhance the replayability of a game, to generate new content on-the-fly, or to create vast, procedurally generated game worlds. At the conference, much of the conversation centered around the potential of generative AI to lower expenses and to provide a platform for experimentation with different parts of the game development process, from concept to marketing.
• Gen Z and mobile gaming was a topic of interest as this group tends to play more frequently, download more new games, and access a wider variety of games on their mobile devices. Experts recommended that to effectively reach this generation, companies should consider involving them in the creation of new games. One approach is to gather input from them in a hands-on focus group setting - without forgetting to reward their contributions. As a generation that is well-known for demanding authenticity, gaming professionals should take the time to understand their existing communities, listen to their needs and create experiences that cater to them.
• The evolving business landscape was covered, including the fact that the gaming space has not avoided widespread layoffs, affecting thousands of jobs. In addition, there was an examination of the growing merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in the industry, such as the recent Playtika offer to purchase Rovio Entertainment, at a valuation of around $900 million USD. With the entrance of non-traditional gaming companies such as Netflix, Meta, and Amazon into the market, the M&A trends in the gaming industry are expected to persist.

We talked about our capabilities to provide: detailed market intelligence to better understand target audiences before releasing new games or features; competitor intelligence metrics that illustrate exactly how much users are playing a company’s games and their competitor’s games on a weekly basis; and consumer intelligence that shows exactly how individuals are spending time on their phone - gaming and beyond. 

Want to know more about the data we provide to help gaming companies succeed? Reach out today. 

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