Ah, Casual Connect. That very name brings back plenty of good memories of my time there at Casual Connect Amsterdam 2016 last month. However, as it was a business trip and all, I have packed my schedule almost to the brim with meetings and interviews in order to maximize my time there as an attendee.

Not to mention, with the very helpful Pitch and Match system that the organizers have in place, it does make my job of setting up meetings and well, interviews a lot easier! That said, I’m sure some of you might be curious to know how ‘packed’ my schedule is. Well, wonder no more - here’s a helpful glimpse (in chronological order) of my time there.

After a 13-hour journey, I arrived at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam in the wee hours of the cold wintery morning on the 15th of February, 1 day before the date of the actual event. I waited a few hours for my colleagues to arrive and we head over to the hotel to check in. After a quick rest and bath, we went out for lunch. Right after that we bought ourselves a nice ‘dessert’ – Amsterdam’s famous fries, before heading back to the hotel for a longer rest.

I was actually a bit worried about the questions I have prepared for the interviews so instead of resting, I spent most of my time double checking my questions – removing redundant ones and adding new and more insightful questions. Although I was not a scout in this lifetime, I suspect I must have been one in my past life as I have this unshakeable habit of preparing… and perhaps over-preparing anything special that I need to do.

Time passes by really quickly when you’re doing something I believe, and well, dinner time arrived pretty quickly. My colleagues and I subsequently went out for a rather nice Indian dinner with a fellow company partner... his treat! We also went to a hotel pub to meet the CEO of our partner company and I had my first night view of Amsterdam from the top of a rather tall hotel building. It was, needless to say, awesome!

However, being on an airplane for extended periods of time does take a toll on us and we went back for a good night’s sleep in preparation for tomorrow’s hectic day of ‘casual connecting’!

Day 1 of Casual Connect. After getting my press pass and a goodie bag from the staff, my colleague and I had a cuppa (tea for me though) before I head off to Meeting Point 1 (there are 7 meeting points in total) for my first meeting of the day with a fellow Chinese, the Director of Overseas Marketing from CoolPlay. She introduced her company’s latest games to me including one very awesome-looking shooter game that casts you in the role of a roller-skating android.

After the meet, I wandered over to one of the booths up front which had caught my attention – a booth that is promoting a realistic-looking survival game called Novus Inceptio. I have had a rather lengthy conversation with the developers of the game – I’m a huge fan of survival games – and well, hopefully, the a few suggestions that I have for them might be able to help improve their game. The game’s still in early access though, so the chances of improvement are really high. However, from what I can see, the game looks very promising and may be even more fun that Everquest Landmark (Note: I’ve been in the Everquest Landmark beta event and that game was pretty awesome).

So, after a hearty lunch, I head over to a panel discussion on the future of gaming – you can read all about it right here: Understanding the Future of the Games Industry. Immediately after that, I rushed over to Meeting Point 1 once again to meet up with the Communications Manager of Nordcurrent, the company behind amazing time management games like Cooking Fever and Happy Chef. Once we’ve concluded our chat, I had to rush over to my next scheduled lecture (now, I sound like some university student #joking) about eSports and its future. You can also read about the exciting rise of the eSports phenomenon to learn more about what eSports actually are.

As you can see I tend to schedule meetings back-to-back, so you can imagine me rushing over to my next meeting with Jakub Marszalkowski, the head of the Game Industry Conference at another one of the many meeting points there. After introducing me to what Game Industry Conference, or GIC for short, is, Jakub asked if WWGDB would be interested to become GIC’s official media partner. I was quite surprised – it was a pleasant sort of surprise though – and rather happy that WWGDB is starting to gain some recognition in the gaming industry. And well, the cat’s out of the bag now – there’s a chance we might be able to bring more exciting news from the GIC event at the end of this year.

With my head still reeling from the amazing surprise, I head over to the Indie booths to meet the developer of a uniquely odd (in a psychedelic-kind of way), adventure game called Karma: Incarnation. I had gone there earlier but the developer asked me to return later as their booth wasn’t ready yet. I was given the chance to try out their game and well, it is a quite challenging puzzle game that has its own charms. It’s no wonder the game has won plenty of indie game awards from a variety of events last year, such as the Indie prize, DevGamm awards, Indie Game Cup and Intel Level Up contest.

Once done, I head over to my first interview of the day with the CEO of Simplaex, Jeffry van Ede. Admittedly, this was one of my best (and my first) interview experience, particularly when Jeffry, once he understood that I don’t have any marketing background and that I’m writing this interview for readers who are laymen just like me, used simple analogies and terms to help explain the marketing aspects. The company’s co-founder, Moti Tal, was also present and he added a few points now and then to help clarify certain parts that I had trouble understanding. Not to mention, the concept that Simplaex is founded on itself is incredibly simple yet ingenious, and it does make a rather interesting topic to write about.

After bidding farewell to Jeffry and Moti, I left to meet up with my colleagues. We later went to a party held by our partner company, had dinner and retired for the night.

On the 17th, my colleague and I went for breakfast at a nearby café and we then head over to our first meeting for the day with 6Waves. After that, I went straight to meet Yacine, the founder and CEO of Salmi GmbH, the company behind a rather unique reflex-based puzzle game, Ellipsis. I even get to try out Ellipsis on their GearVR, and trust me, if you’ve enjoyed playing Ellipsis on your mobile, you’ll surely love it even more when you play it using head-tracking. That said, if you like to find out more about this game, feel free to check out our review of it.

Next, I head over to meet Lee, the Producer of Bridgeside Interactive, who then introduced me to a rather interesting clapping-based kids’ game that is aptly named Clapper. By using the camera to track your claps as well as the different types of claps, the game is able to let your child learn rhythm as he or she play the game with you or another family member. It’s pretty incredible and honestly, I’m curious to see how they can further develop this unique game mechanism and add it into other types of games. I’ve hopped around a few more Indie booths and have talked to various representatives from indie game companies like Mad Jimmy Games (Portal Battles), and RocksPlay (Decolorize! and Ivanych vs Eared Beast) about their games.

Afterwards, I went to meet the Marketing Manager of Qubic Games. He wanted to introduce me to his company’s brand new mobile game, Geki Yaba Runner. You can learn more about the game via our review. After the meeting, I rushed over to Meeting Point 1 once again to meet Nini, the PR Manager from Mobius LLC, to learn more about their virtual sports games, namely their most popular title, Mini Football Head Soccer.

My colleague and I subsequently had lunch with Nini, and once lunch is done and over with, I head over to a series of interviews with Optimove and with Darion from Gamblit Gaming. It’s interesting to learn more about how games are being marketed to players and how Gamblit Gaming has managed to integrate gambling elements into conventional games to make them uniquely different and more fun to play. I went to another lecture next – this time, it’s about a female game developer’s personal experience in developing games, before another interview with Rob Laverty from Miniclip to talk more about the company and what role he plays in the publishing process of new games on Miniclip’s website. After a lecture on the monetization of kids’ games, I met David from Softgames to discuss about the possibility of embedding more games on our websites.

It was a rather tiring day today, and as my colleagues are leaving for home that very night, we had a farewell dinner at a Japanese restaurant. I have to say, the sushi there tasted a lot better than any of the sushi I’ve tasted before. It’s amazing.

The third day of the Casual Connect event is a bit less packed for me. This is a rather lucky arrangement as I somehow caught a rather nasty bug and was feeling a tad bit poorly. That said, I still went to the convention and met with a number of indie developers, such as the developers of Swap Swap, MediaPod, the developer of Magic Flute (a rather unique 3D platform-moving puzzle game), Lablike, the company behind a series of educational games, Lipa Learning, and the company that has developed a range of free-to-play mobile games including Epic Arena and Los Aliens, Shadow Masters. I’ve also met with the VP of Business Development from Black Wing Foundation, the game company behind some of the best mobile games, such as Steampunk Racing and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (Note: They did the mobile version), as well as PC games like Chaos Domain.

The last event I went to in Casual Connect is a lecture on getting the most out of VR. However, unbeknownst to me, the lecture is actually intended for developers, people with technical knowledge, so I had quite a hard time trying to understand what was being said. However, I’ve understood a few critical points though – with the technology (vastly improved GPU performance which can used to add more lighting, and hence, leading to reduced feelings of nausea) that MaxPlay VR can provide, mobile VR will definitely be able to advance really rapidly. With so much to look forward to, particularly for virtual reality gaming, it’s truly an exciting time to be alive right now!

That concludes my time at Casual Connect Amsterdam 2016, and if you’ve read every single word that I’ve written, bravo! You’ll probably have a very good idea of the stuff that I will be putting up on WWGDB in the future. If not, you will still get a glimpse of what I’ve managed to do and obtain... and well, when the game reviews and articles start churning out, you’ll be able to enjoy reading all about them all the same!

All in all though, I had a very enjoyable and eye-opening time there, and despite the unfortunate illness that followed, I believe that every moment I’ve spent there was very well worth it. After all, it’s not every day that a somewhat hardcore gamer like I could claim that they have walked through the curtains on the stage and peeked into the backstage of the gaming industry.