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Casual Connect, the leading casual games conference, was held in Seattle in late July and we both observed and helped deliver some great content at the three-day event. If you weren’t able to make it to Casual Connect yourself, read on for the key highlights of the event with this segment of Social Short-Cuts:

Playdom CEO, John Pleasants, kicked off Casual Connect and spoke in detail about the growth and trends of social gaming. He predicted that revenues from virtual goods would grow from $1 billion to $5 billion over the next few years. Pleasants also stressed the importance of increasing conversion rates in social games and creating more paid players. He notes that virality comes from retention, which comes from the quality and innovation of actual gameplay. To see a clip of his talk, check out this video from Social Times.  And in case you missed the news, it was just days after Casual Connect that an official announcement was released about Disney’s acquisition of Playdom.  Congrats to John and the entire Playdom team!

John Pleasants, CEO, Playdom

Tim Chang of Norwest Venture Partners called out the top social gaming trends of the past year and talked about what we can expect for the rest of 2010. Chang noted that Facebook’s removal of notifications makes it much harder for new games to make it big on the platform. Chang explained how iPhone developers are benefitting from in-app purchases. He also noted that social gaming companies are hot right now with many being propositioned for acquisitions. Dean Takahashi posted video excerpts of Chang’s chat on VentureBeat here.

It seemed that everybody at Casual Connect was talking about social games. Jon David, Director of PC and Online products at PopCap discussed how Facebook’s changes to their news feeds earlier this year affected downloads of Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook. Developers who create games for various social networks and platforms must be able to adapt quickly to changes in the platform. For example, Jon discussed how PopCap created a medal system in their game to bring back user growth in spite of the news feed changes. To read more on the “power of show and tell” and the importance of encouraging users to share their experience with friends, check out the Inside Social Games post by Soyon Im.

Jon David, Director of PC and Online Products, PopCap (Credit: CasualConnect)

Mari Baker, CEO of PlayFirst, spoke on “The Business of Building Engaging Brands” and the importance of focusing on the customer. Building a brand that fans love offers great rewards for a business, as customers — and even salespeople — recommend a particular product to other people. Mari identified three key attributes that signal a strong brand:  Likability, Trusted Quality and Engagement. She emphasized that having a strong brand will become even more important in the gaming market to stand out among the competition in the weeks and months ahead. Mari also pointed out the launch of Chocolatier: Sweet Society on Facebook as an example of how the game added social features while still staying true to the brand.

Mari Baker, CEO, PlayFirst

Recipe Book from Chocolatier

Mobile gaming also had a voice at the conference as a panel of key execs shared tips, trends and data surrounding the iPhone. Bart Decrem of Tapulous—also recently acquired by Disney—told attendees, “We set out to get a million users in a year, and we got a million users in ten days.” Gui Karyo, Executive Vice President of Operations at Majesco, noted the importance of distinguishing features on the iPhone versus the Nintendo DS when designing a game. Karyo also shared his insights on development costs, citing a range of $30,000 – $150,000 for porting DS games to iPhone depending on game design. To read more chatter about the Mobile games at Casual Connect, check out Evan Van Zelfden’s post on Edge.

The Monetization Track at Casual Connect was a popular series among developers given the importance of driving revenue and optimizing profit for online and mobile games.  From payment models to analytics to customer service, multiple industry leaders weighed in on the current state of the business and the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.  Some of the featured speakers included Matt Shea (Wild Tangent), Bill Grosso (LiveGamer) and Josh Larson (Mochi Media).  One insightful session featured data-heavy presentations from four monetization leaders:  Sometrics (Ian Swanson), PlaySpan (Lex Bayer), Tapjoy (Lee Linden) and Doubloon (Eric Gonzalez).  All four speakers shared data from across their network that was intriguing and useful for developers.

We were also pleased to be contributors to the Monetization Track at the event.  Our CEO, Vikas Gupta, shared his tips with attendees on creating, managing and optimizing a virtual economy. You can view his presentation here: “Creating a Bull Market: How to Manage a Successful Virtual Economy.”

Vikas Gupta, CEO of Social Gold, shares monetization metrics from the Social Gold platform

We also hosted the Cha Ching 2! Monetization Roundtables with four different tracks that allowed attendees to have in-depth, interactive discussions with senior members of the Social Gold team.  You can review the Cha Ching 2! Executive Summary of these sessions on our blog.

Social Gold’s Luke Bayes (Sr Software Engineer) and Mike Haswell (VP, Business Development) lead session on In-Flash Monetization during the Cha-Ching 2! Monetization Roundtables

Finally, a few lighter notes:

• We’re happy to formally announce our Casual Connect 2010 iPad winner, Mark Friedler of San Francisco.  Congrats Mark!

Mark Friedler, iPad Winner, and Social Gold CMO Mike Quigley

• You can check out more photos from the event on our Flickr gallery.
• Dean Takahashi’s post on VentureBeat also has some great pictures from the conference, including Hi5 President, Alex St. John, challenging a huge sumo wrestler representing giant social network, Facebook, in a battle royale.

Overall we thought the conference was a spectacular event.  Jessica Tams and her team put together a star-studded line-up of content and events that was both informative and entertaining.  The Casual Connect website will be posting all of the conference’s presentations in mid-August and we encourage you to check them out.