Speaking at Launch Conference: Games & Digital Meetup

We have just returned back from another fantastic Launch Conference but this time Matt Hidderley, Birmingham Science Park, invited us to lead the ‘Show & Tell’ Games Showcase with a postmortem on our iPad game ‘Ski Solitaire’. We divulged how Greenfly Studios came into existence, the problems we had in raising awareness and networking success following Launch Conference: Meet The Games Press.

Stephen was understandably nervous as it was the first time Ski Solitaire would be showcased in front of a large audience (a crowd of 140 people!) but any pre-speaking jitters were washed away after encouraging words from Suresh Sudera, Head of Games from the Vodafone Group – a man who has given speeches in stadium sized conference halls!

Caroline Norbury, CEO of Creative England (based in Birmingham Science Park), led the keynotes by outlining the impact of funding within the UK creative space and the increased need to identify further sources of investment as well as the upcoming tax breaks. Suresh Sudera followed with a presentation on increased mobile competition, fast rising markets, such as India, and the upcoming Vodafone App Store, a curated list of android apps representing only the best to offer.

After their quick Q&A, it was then our turn to present Ski Solitaire. The five minute talk seemed to fly by with people eager to hear our story. We were then quickly followed by Neill Watson, 2Fold20 Play, with their Facebook title ‘Enjoy Karaoke’ – they were also showcasing the game in the main foyer but luckily we didn’t get the chance to grace everyone with our lovely singing voices (count yourselves lucky!) Rounding off the session was Simon Prytherch, Chromativity, with their iOS title ‘Fluid Football’ – an exciting free-to-play app with 2D real-time football strategy. Simon talked about their background and got the audience involved with a communal vote on their proposed icons.

It was then wrapped up with another Q&A, in which we responded to such a wide variety of questions so definitely had to have our thinking caps on, and then to the game developers staple of pizza and networking. As always, it is a enlightening experience attending Launch Conference with lots of new industry connections and catching up with existing friends.