These past couple of years have been brutal on the game industry. It has somehow been the worst of times, even as games make their way to more people around the world.
Our hearts go out to all of those who have lost their jobs and some semblance of stability, whether they are friends, family, colleagues or even people we haven’t met. We are all connected in our small tight knit community.
AI is coming on strong and workers are worried it will take away even more jobs. We have multiple wars under way in places where our friends make games. One of our speakers had to cancel due to conditions in one war zone. We have divisive presidential politics, an epidemic of loneliness, and we just have too many things on our minds. Our mental health is being negatively affected by all this, and we still have to worry about the economic climate change within the gaming business.
But our people around us tell us to focus on the things that are within our control. And the one thing that you can collectively control is bringing the joy of video games to the world!
It is through your powers of survival, inspiration and adaptation that games will continue to be made, marketed and sent out into the world to be played by billions of people globally. Recalling our hopes for joy is how we can drive growth for our industry.
There is nothing more important to us than bringing fun to the world at this time. There are so many inspiring stories of perseverance, like the struggles of Ukraine’s thousands of game developers to persevere with making games in an active war zone. One of those companies, GSC Game World, is bringing Stalker 2 to the market in a climate where developers say they’re loading guns with one hand and working on games with the other.
I want to pause to thank you all. Thank you for your service in the name of creating fun. Thank you for coming to our event, which we see as a celebration of games and a way to honor the best and brightest in the industry.
I have written more than 20,000 stories since I joined VentureBeat 17 years ago. I think of those stories not as my own accomplishments, but as stories told to me by people in the games community who have something important to say or celebrate or teach. They’re stories about people like yourselves who are part of our community. It is gratifying to check in with you about your progress in your career, your ups and downs, your journey as a human, and the joy you spread through the world.
Our approach is not unlike what Malcolm Gladwell said recently to inspire young people to become journalists. He said there’s no better way to start than to rise above your own world and go explore another. That’s exactly what you do in video games, and it’s a wonderful way to understand perspectives that are different from your own.
Just a short time ago we had a global pandemic, and we still have a wounded world. Ryan Douglas of Deepwell is here to tell us that those video games that put us in a state of flow, to help us forget the world – these games will soon be classified as medicine. This means that video games have the power to heal. Gaming can mend the hurts that divide us. Gaming is the welcome mat for the world.
Only magic can get us out of our world’s problems. Finding that something, that feeling of magic, is why we do GamesBeat Next. We are where business meets passion. And we believe that the people who create the fun should be at the center. We want to gather everyone to think and talk about the best paths to the future, for technology, business, investment, work culture and game design itself.
I am very thankful to be part of this community as it is why our journalism, our events, and our company are still here. We would not be here to tell stories without you sharing them with us. We would not be here without our generous sponsors.
Our conference in May was about Adaptation and Resilience. This one is about getting back to growth. When we created it, it was a hope. But we see daylight ahead, as our industry’s numbers guy, Amir Satvat, believes that hiring will soon catch up with firing when it comes to game job openings. Fingers crossed, we’re all going to stay alive until 2025.
We hope to put people back to work. No one has done that better than Amir, who can say that he has helped 2,800 people get jobs in the game industry. I challenge you all to beat him. My own way of helping is to regularly introduce entrepreneurs to game investors.
This event is organized around key topics of conversation including culture, industry, growth and technology. It’s our fourth GamesBeat Next event, and we’re finally getting organized with these categories. While GamesBeat Summit is about the center of gaming, this one is more about the edge. That refers to the edges of gaming that promise to expand the overall reach of games as it continues to rise from subculture to mass culture. While we may rightly be very suspicious of new experiments, we should note just how bad things can get if we do not accept any new things.
The future is always scary, but we’re here to remind you how far you’ve come. Our guest Peter Moore will tell us how, as he was launching the Dreamcast 25 years ago, some politicians felt video games didn’t deserve the protection of free speech. Tim Sweeney will tell us that the doors are still open on the path to the open metaverse. Neal Stephenson is here to talk about how far we’ve come since he coined the word metaverse in Snow Crash, which is 32 years old. And Amy Hennig will be here to talk about how to welcome people into your team.
Thank you to our staff, advisers, sponsors and speakers. This is the first event for Imran Khan, our new GamesBeat senior writer. We’ve all tried our best to make sure this event lives up to your expectations. We feel some of your pain. We have fewer sponsors this time. We don’t have a sponsor for our ninth Women in Gaming Breakfast (the sixth with actual food), but we are bringing it to you anyway as our way to welcome women into our event and our industry.
While these circumstances are not ideal, we are able to pull off this event before a sold-out crowd. And we hope you think our 97 speakers are awesome.
Last year, 47% of our speakers came from diverse backgrounds. This year, that number is 65%, and 41% are women. We’re proud of the platform we can create. One of our more interesting sessions here will be a roundtable screening of Resting Pitch Face, a dark comedy short film from Shelby Moledina about the difficulty women have raising money in games.
For the second year in a row, Lightspeed has organized the Game Changers top startups list, and that allows us to celebrate the best game startups, which last year were broadcast on the Nasdaq Tower in Times Square. Game Changers will close out our event with the unveiling of this year’s winners.
And please remember we have a new event coming on gaming and its intersections with Hollywood, on December 12 in LA, the same day as The Game Awards. It’s called GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games.
And be sure to look out for our extended partnership with Xsolla on the GamesBeat Global Tour where we hold dinners in cities around the globe for our community. This past year, we held dinners in Los Angeles, Austin, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, and Seattle.
We’ve also got GamesBeat Summit 2025 returning to Los Angeles in May 2025.
Lastly, remember to come out of the virtual world long enough to see what’s happening in the real world. Remember to vote in this year’s presidential election. You can even do this at the headquarters of Jam City in LA, which is an actual polling place. The stakes have never been higher. And so welcome to GamesBeat Next 2024.
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