Edinburgh Interactive Festival Market Report

The Edinburgh Interactive Festival (EIF) is a high-level games industry conference which takes place annually.  In 2009 Interactive Ontario (IO) and one of its member companies – Capybara Games – attended the festival to explore opportunities for Ontario games companies, establish connections, and to promote the Ontario interactive media industry.

EIF is founded and run by UK games industry leaders.  Chris Deering, Chairman of Codemasters and former Chairman and President of Sony Computer Entertainment, is the festival’s Chairman. The speaker list at the 2009 event featured a list of equally impressive names such as Ian Livingstone (President of Eidos), Peter Moore (President of EA Sports), Ray Maguire (Head of Sony UK), and Kristian Segerstrale (CEO & Co-Founder of Playfish).  EIF is an intimate event, though there is no official attendees list posted, IO would estimate the attendance number between 100-150 people which was a great size for quality networking with the high-level speakers (who where present for the duration of the event) and attendees.

The EIF itself took place August 13th & 14th, 2009 at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange - a venue located a short drive outside the city centre - during the height of tourist season, which is driven by the famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  The main activity of the conference is split into two large rooms.  The first room was the conference session room for industry, the second room was an exhibit hall sponsored in part by Nintendo for the public (and industry) to experience games.  Additional rooms for screenings and press are also part of the conference.

With the support of Ontario International Marketing Office in London and OMDC, IO was an event sponsor.  We found this sponsorship to be very useful as first time attendees to the event.  Attendees knew the organization, at least by name, and there was recognition in at the festival that Ontario was a location of interest, there was awareness of our advantageous tax credits and, in some conversations, a view that Ontario has emerged a strong competitor for UK companies in the games space.
 
EIF program hosted a range of interesting sessions but upon conclusion of the event the most memorable sessions from my view were :

Lessons from Social Games – Kristian Segerstrale, CEO & Co- Founder of Playfish (whose ‘Pet Society’ is one of the leading games on Facebook with 5 million daily players) A discussion on how social games have experienced explosive growth and are at the forefront of broader industry trends such as free-to-play, games as a service, social game design, user-generated content and digital distribution.

Segerstrale was an engaging speaker whose presentation discussed ideas of social emotions as a driving factor of industry growth and who offered lessons from Playfish’s success such as avoiding franchises in social games.

The Great Debate – This Conference proposed that the Great Age of Big Blockbuster Games in Coming to and End – Ian Livingstone, Life President of Eidos, Peter Moore, President of EA Sports, Ray Maguire, Head of Sony UK, Kristian Segerstrale, CEO & Co- Founder of Playfish.

This session was a lively classic style debate that split the room and emphasized how there is no unified vision on the future of the industry or who is going to profit from it.   An obvious point perhaps but a very interesting, impassioned and well presented discussion nonetheless.

What Facebook & Twitter can teach us about building online communities around our games? – Kieran O’Neil, MD & Co-Founder of Playfire Publishers and developers spend significant amounts of time, money and stress building the online website components to accompany their games. However, as we can learn from the leading lights in the web world, our users may be able to lend a hand.

Had all the speakers at EIF spoke as quickly as 22-year old successful serial entrepreneur the event would have been over in a matter of hours!  But within his fast talking presentation was an interesting approach to games and social media.  Playfire (http://www.playfire.com ) is O’Neil’s third start-up and is a social networking application designed entirely for video gamers.  His company played interestingly into his presentation and though not the thesis of this presentation, the memorable piece of this talk was the current and future possibilities for tracking gamer activity.

EIF has a very solid program offering – a good mix of platforms, creative and business discussions.  Reviewing the program from the purely a business stand-point of potentially attending Ontario SMEs, as might have been assumed, the non-console based presentations had the most directly applicable business insights (e.g. lessons learned from Social Media, tips in browser games, marketing, etc.).  The larger companies, such as EA Sports, the insights into the workings of their projects while very interesting, the takeaways from these sessions are more high-level insights on publisher strategies, considerations publishers have while working with brands, etc. 


Notes on IO’s experience at the event:
•    Highest value aspects of the conference 1) high-level networking and relationship development, 2) access to industry press, and 3) quality programming.
•    Ontario companies looking to promoting recent or launching titles or developers with at least moderate existing experience in the international marketplace and looking to build relationships for new projects are likely the best positioned to take full advantage of the event.
•    While EIF is reasonably priced, hotel costs are significant during August in Edinburgh (the best rates are still over 300 per night)
•    If your company elects to attend be sure to contact Interactive Ontario and the Ontario International Marketing Office in London.  With enough lead time we can assist Ontario game companies make connections and make them aware of any existing Ontario lead activities at the event they may be able to participate in.

Notes on the EIF experience reported by Capybara Games :
•    The highest value aspect of the EIF as being meeting, promoting and discussing their titles to a great range of UK-based journalists. 
•    The screening aspect of the conference was very productive, as it was a great small venue to showcase their titles.

The best marker for any event is if you’d recommend it to others and if you’d attend again yourself.  IO would do both.