Session Name: | Is Publishing Dead? |
Speaker(s): | Mitch Lasky |
Company Name(s): | Benchmark |
Track / Format: | Business, Marketing & Management |
Overview: | In the last five years, the business of game publishing has completely transformed. Massive structural changes in the way games are created, distributed and consumed have eliminated the traditional choke-points that empowered publishers: scarce shelf space, expensive manufacturing of packaged goods, access to development money, and conventional media marketing. As a developer, it has never been easier to get a game to market by yourself. So, is publishing dead? In this session, game industry-veteran and leading venture capitalist Mitch Lasky will dig into the pros and cons of the competing next-generation publishing models: the super-developers, the ad networks, the platform players, the social/chat networks and others. Lasky's thesis is that industry changes have not eliminated the profound economic benefit of scale, and that scale is the key to value creation. He will explore these different approaches, untangling the core components of modern publishing: audience aggregation, customer acquisition leverage, engagement and monetization, electronic distribution, and hardware/software platforms. |