Casuality Seattle Announces Gordon Keynote, Details

The Casual Games Association has announced a specific date and location for its event Casuality Seattle: A Conference for Game Developers, Publishers and Distributors, as well as revealing a keynote from Bing Gordon, co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Electronic Arts. The conference will be held at Benaroya Hall in downtown Seattle on June 27 and 28, 2006, with full-day workshops on June 29. This date is a full two months ahead of the original announcement, in a move apparently designed to debut the conference ahead of the also announced Game Initiative Casual Games Conference, which is currently scheduled for July 13-14, 2006 in Seattle. [UPDATE: Jessica Tams of Casuality Seattle has issued a statement to Gamasutra indicating that the date of the conference was moved due to "venue and attendee feedback that the event was too close to back to school time", and has denied that the move was due to the other events in the space.] According to organizers of Casuality Seattle, Bing's long history in the games industry and his expertise makes him the perfect keynote to discuss casual games and the valuable lessons that the entire industry (development, publishing and distribution) can learn from the genre. Bing will help attendees explore the casual gaming market, drawing from EA's experiences with leading online games sites Pogo.com and Club Pogo. In relation to his keynote announcement, Gordon commented: "There is nothing casual about casual games! Casual game players are just as intense as 'core gamers', but like shorter, more social experiences. Casual game designers are just as creative as the 'core game' designers, without the burden of big staffs and expensive expectations." [UPDATE: 8.12am, 01/17/06 - added Jessica Tams statement.]