CTIA Details Mecca For Games Conference Track

As part of the upcoming CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment conference in Los Angeles, the organizers of GDC Mobile (owned by CMP, as is Gamasutra) have announced the MECCA for Games bonus track, offering sessions on mobile marketing strategies, the state of the mobile industry, and mobile design case studies. The MECCA for Games track is scheduled for Monday, September 11th as part of the Billboard MECCA conference at CTIA, and is offering four sessions throughout the day. The first session, Reaching the Consumer: Novel Marketing Strategies for Mobile Games, will investigate the best ways for mobile companies to raise awareness with consumers, through direct-to-consumer campaigns and innovative mobile marketing strategies. Moderated by The NPD Group's mobile content research director Drew Hull, the panelists will include Jill Braff of Glu Mobile, Anders Evju of I-Play, Allen G. Lee from GAMEVIL and John Lee of Hudson Entertainment. The second session, Pessimists vs. Optimists: A Debate Over the Future of Mobile Games, looks at an industry plagued with handset fragmentation, porting costs, disparate networks, lack of consumer adoption, and market consolidation, and will debate the subsequent challenges and opportunities, and identify specific actions that might advance it. It will be moderated by Douglas Soltys of QuicklyBored.com, with Matthew Bellows of Floodgate Entertainment, Jason Ford of Namco Networks, Justin Hall from the Creative Artists Agency, Robert Tercek of MultiMedia Networks LLC, and Mike Yuen of QUALCOMM. In the third session, Mobile Game Design Postmortem: ORCS & ELVES, president and founder of Fountainhead, Katherine Anna Kang, will look at the challenges and hurdles of Fountainhead's Orcs & Elves, specifically delivering on both BREW and J2ME platforms while keeping faithful both to each other and the original design. Wrapping up the MECCA track, Mark Stephen Pierce of Super Happy Fun Fun will perform a similar postmortem on his company's 3D Tilt-A-World, looking at opportunities faced by developers and publishers in bringing an innovative control technology and 3D graphics to the mobile market. MECCA for Games will be held Monday, September 11, 2006 at the The Westin Bonaventure Hotel's Santa Barbara Room, Lobby Level. To register, visit the CTIA's online registration site.