I usually call Day 1 of the Game Developer's Conference the first day of the main sessions. There's actually always two days before that. This year, I went to the second of those two days. Come with me on an exhausting internal and external journey. This is super long, but you at least get some character arc here if you make it through.

Pre-Conference

I arrived and picked up my speaker's badge. I saw Steve Swink (formerly of Flashbang, now of Enemy Airship) and Matthew Wegner (Flashbang). They also had speaker's badges, but Matthew's had an extra green ribbon saying Session Advisor or something. We debated whether this made his badge more cool or less cool. Steve asked if I was going to the Independent Game Summit. I said no, what's what, I'm going to the all day thing on virtual currency in social games. He gave an expression of surprise and disgust and said "dude, you should really go to the indie game summit." Incidentally Steve and Matthew were running the summit. I explained that since I'm going to launch an online gaming site for Yomi, Puzzle Strike, Flash Duel, and probably more...and that that site will have at least basic social features like chat and friends lists, and virtual currency, that I feel obligated to go to this. Shouldn't I find out as much as I can about the various methods and tricks they use, so I can use some of them and write articles about how unethical the rest are?

Steve explained that the indie game summit would be interesting because of all the talk about how to develop experimental games that do interesting new things, but just as importantly, it's "the center of all heart and passion at the whole conference." I nodded and said it sounds really entertaining, but I maybe I'll be a grownup and go to the business stuff this time.

Mitch Davis (Live Gamer)

 Davis opened the so-called V-Con (I guess that means conference about virtual items, but they can't be bothered to use full words? Maybe a less lol-cat name would work better next time?). He gave us many impressive stats about the world of virtual currency. It used to be a thing that just took hold in Korea, but now it's really worldwide. His company, Live Gamer, is a service that handles virtual item payment stuff. In a kind of handwavy way, he said that all the backend to handle that well is very complicated and has a ton of parts. The thing is, I've looked into this a bit, and yeah he's right. Maybe I should be considering his service.

Anyway, the most interesting stats he gave were changes in ARPU per country and per year. APRU means average revenue per user (measured per month usually), and you have to say that as a normal word a lot when you talk about virtual items. Say it with me. Arrrrrrrpooooooo. His point was that yeah, the amount of money from virtual item sales has increased each year in basically every country worth mentioning, but it's even more than that. Also in every country, the NUMBER of users paying for virtual items has steadily increased and also the Arrrrrrpooooo has increased in every country. Even in established markets like Korea, each user is spending more and more each year. If I remember right (ALL of this is from memory, no written notes), he said US ARPU is about $24, in Japan it's gotten as high as $50 or $60 I think, and even South America musters up $4.

Then Davis introduced Dave Perry, and made the seemingly disingenuous remark that Enter The Matrix is one of his favorite games. (Really?) 10 hours later, a guy named Brandon who was not at this lecture coincidentally mentioned that he bought Enter The Matrix for $1 in a bargain bin.

Dave Perry

(If you're short on time to read, skip this section as it gets more interesting later.)

Perry showed us travel pictures of his trip to Korea and maybe China too, I forget. He proved to us conclusively that he's much taller than everyone there. He showed some graphs that mapped out various strategies taken in the online game space and how much money each were making. It gave us some perspective to see the big ones like Blizzard and Zynga, and Perry pointed out how scary it is that many major game companies do not even APPEAR on the graph because they have no discernable online strategy. Scary for them, he meant.

Then Perry talked about lots of ways you can approach selling virtual items. He has a short list of horrible ideas that you should avoid, like items that prevent you from playing with friends who don't have the items, or making people buy new items because their old items are literally broken by some change in the game. He had a long list of good ideas for items, such as anything to do with customization, and anything improving the social situation in the game. He said having scarce items means people will be more likely to flock to the guy who has the scarce item. (Hmm...) Anything that helps you express loyalty to your friends, or to break the ice with strangers, or to recognize people who are trustworthy, are all good areas, he said. Items like silly snowballs you can throw at each are ways to break the ice and start talking to strangers. He showed one game that was a boys vs girls thing, and after the game ended, people immediately left. But they added a thing where the losing team's avatars are shown wearing ridiculous silly costumes for losing, and it caused people to stick around and "lol" about it, sometimes even apologizing for bad behavior during the game, or congratulating each other. Maybe you could buy different silly costumes or something? I dont' know.

Then Perry went off the rails, as far as I'm concerned. He mentioned two things off-handedly