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Chris James reposted thisChris James reposted thisSandra Kawar is the first woman in the MENA region to be recognised as an Unreal Authorised Instructor by Epic Games... and she’s joining us at PGC Jordan in a few weeks! Kawar will take to the stage with her talk “AI as a Creative Partner: The Future of Game Art & Cinematics”. In the clip below, she shares what you’ll take away from her session. She’s an award-winning director and Emmy judge, and leads the official Unreal Engine community chapters in Amman, Jordan, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. PGC Jordan tickets are here: https://lnkd.in/dRTqGA_j You can watch the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/gP5pGf_G
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Chris James shared thisCalling all my UK Mobile Games Folk! Interested in publishing or investing in the world's fast growing games market, MENA? We have a fully funded opportunity to come out to our Pocket Gamer Connects Jordan event on 7/8th to get a first hand look at some of the leading developers in the region, as well as a chance to visit Petra, one of the wonders of the world! Contact me or Bobby for details. First come, first served!Chris James shared thisFully-funded opportunity for UK games industry professionals to attend Pocket Gamer Jordan! I have a fully-funded opportunity for 2 UK-based gaming professionals or companies to head to Amman, Jordan for Pocket Gamer. The Offer: Your event ticket, return flights, and accommodation will be 100% paid for. The Details: Event Dates: November 7th–8th (Fly out on the 6th, return on the 9th) Focus: The event heavily features mobile games. Obligation: Zero. There is no requirement to speak on panels or give talks. Your only goal is to attend, network, and meet talented developers in the region. Eligibility & Deadline: 1) You or your company must be based in the UK. 2) You should be open to signing/investing in a mobile game developed from the region. 3) Because of the travel logistics, I need someone who can commit and confirm within the next 24 hours. If you are available and interested, send me a DM immediately and I will connect you directly with the booking team to sort your travel. Help me spread the word: If you cannot make it, please tag any UK-based professionals you know that meet the eligibility above in the comments who should jump on this, or hit reshare to boost visibility. Time is of the essence!
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Chris James shared thisSo the 12th Pocket Gamer Connects Nordics (née PGC Helsinki) and 3rd Finnish Games Week are in the books. It wasn't our biggest ever (although 1,100+ attendees from 44 countries is hardly shabby!), but in many respects it was our best yet! Perhaps after all these years I'm finally learning that the best measure of an event isn't how many people turn up, but what happens when they do. The vibes in Helsinki were just spot on, and judging by the response on these pages, it wasn't just us who felt that way! So, in honour of our 12th outing, here are 12 highlights: i) We DID connect the Nordics! From a sizeable Swedish posse (thanks Jana Palm, Dataspelsbranschen / Swedish Games Industry, Embark Studios, Stillfront and James Newnorth 🔜 PG Connects Nordics in particular) to Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Estonia and our Finnish hosts, the region showed up in force. ii) The Finns were Fanntastic! Supercell, Josema Roig 🔜 Stardom, Next Games, A Netflix Game Studio, Fingersoft, Suvi Latva & KooPee Hiltunen of Neogames, plus hundreds more devs, pubs, indies, investors and students all supported, some after nine hour bus journeys! Even the Deputy Mayor popped in! iii) The halls looked fabulous! From Xsolla's bold entrance to the Netflix Games Couch Party. Huge thanks to Jez Bridgeman and the awesome events team. iv) 100s of talks delivered! Great insights and debate throughout. 'Charming' Charlie Scowen worked his content planning magic, the SM team weighed in, and I even hosted two panels! v) Indie energy was high! 35 showcase tables and two cracking Big Indie Pitches, the latter overseen by SM newcomer Michael Eardley vi) The Pocket Jammers were simply heroes! Five teams made genuinely impressive games in just 36 hours! vii) The food was great. And the coffee too! ☕ viii) After-hours events were something special! From Xsolla Connect to the PG Party, via mixers, dinners, karaoke and Fingersoft's night-two send-off. Helsinki knows how to party! ix) The AI Game Changers Summit was exceptional! Standing room only, all led by our in-house automaton Dave Bradley. x) Roundtables rocked! Our evolved format sparked brilliant off-the-record discussions. xi) The community stepped up to support! IGDA and Oleg Paliy's Career Corner provided much-needed assistance. xii) Connections were made! Thousands of meetings and accidental encounters sparked new ideas, friendships and future business. And ultimately, that is the name of the game! PLUS: A Wonderful Wider Week! Even more of the same energy was served up at the IGDA Finland Leadership Summit before and the W Love Games event that ended the week. Kudos to Natasha Skult, PhD and Christopher Hamilton for that, and everything they did! More about that here: https://lnkd.in/p/egHgsgNe Huge thanks to our partners, speakers, exhibitors, delegates and especially the incredible Steel Media Ltd team both in Finland and back home. Kiitos to all who came to Helsinki. You were Finntastic! 🇫🇮❤️
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Chris James shared thisRunning events is certainly not the easiest way to make a buck, and it can be pretty relentless, exhausting work [especially if you try to do as many as the Pocket Gamer Connects team]. However, when you read posts like this from smart, talented and passionate game developers it honestly does make the whole thing worthwhile. Thanks so much for sharing Maria Fernanda Martinez, delighted to play a small part in your journey!Chris James shared thisI thought day one at Pocket Gamer Connects Nordics was busy. Day two took it to another level 😅 Fiona Keil and I spent the morning pitching Xenoetiquette to seven judges at the Big Indie Pitch. My first experience of anything like this, and I’m so glad we did it together. Thank you, Fiona, for being such a brilliant pitching partner, and Michael Eardley for helping all participants prepare and supporting us throughout! Meanwhile, Niklas Malinen and Miro Aurela kept the playtests going. People swapped roles up to three times, brought friends over and told others about our game. Watching them laugh and work out puzzles together was my favourite part of these two days. I filmed so many of those moments! We’ll be sharing them across our social channels soon, so you can see the teamwork, confusion and laughter for yourselves 👽 We came to PGC with ambitious goals and left with three big milestones: 🛸 Showcasing Xenoetiquette and getting valuable feedback from players and industry professionals. 🛸 Pitching at the Big Indie Pitch. 🛸 Our first publisher meeting as a team, after a PC publisher selected us for a meeting. We’re taking plenty of feedback and ideas back into development! Thank you to everyone who stopped by, shared advice, played or voted for us. It was lovely to see familiar faces and finally meet people I’d only spoken to online. Patrick Rose🌹, thank you for taking the time to learn about our game. I really appreciated your interest! Olga Kryuchkova, thank you for your support and wonderful photos! And Henrik Svensson Dalgren🔜Nordic Game Conference from Nordic Game, thank you for our team’s very first interview. I’m looking forward to sharing it! Congratulations to our table wonderful neighbour, Juho-Kustaa Kuorikoski, on your Audience Choice Award! An incredible and atmospheric game made by a solo developer who also found time to share advice and encouragement with us. It was a pleasure sharing a table with you 😊 Thank you to Chris James,Dave Bradley and the whole PGC team for giving emerging indie teams these opportunities. The demo space, pitch and industry conversations made these two days incredibly valuable for us. And to my team: hats off. I know how much work went into getting us here. We set ambitious goals, worked hard together and made so much happen. I’m proud to be part of this team. We’re leaving tired, happy and eager to keep going. To everyone who played Xenoetiquette: your smiles, your teamwork and the laughter around our table were the biggest reward for me. Those are the moments I want us to keep creating. 🩵 #PGConnects #XenoEtiquette #IndieGames #GameDev #CoopGames
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Chris James reposted thisChris James reposted thisI was one of the remaining 50-ish people at BioWare who lost their jobs today with the closure of the studio and the cancellation of the next Mass Effect. It's a truly sad day to see the studio where I started my career 29+ years ago close its doors. I left BioWare after the release of Mass Effect 2 to get some fresh experience in the industry, which in itself is a rollercoaster of a story for another time. I came back in 2021 to help get what would become Dragon Age: The Veilguard back on track and out the door. It was a herculean effort that tested the limits of even my workaholic mindset, and I'm proud of the level of polish we were able to pull off in the Frostbite engine. Seriously, you have no idea the craziness going on under the hood of that game to make a variable player character work across 3+ hours of cinematics, and the number of conditions to account for in the scenes towards the end of the game. I was one of the lucky ones who stayed with BioWare to start on the next Mass Effect, where I believe we were making something special: a level of autonomy and choice that no other game has been able to match. We saw what Larian and CD Projekt were bringing to the table with their latest offerings, and started down a path to bring Mass Effect to the next level while remaining true to the Trilogy. I'm sad you won't ever get to see what we were cooking, and sad for the small, talented group of devs who were all punching above their weight to make something special. Please consider those who stayed with BioWare until the very end. They are truly some of the most talented people I've had the pleasure of working with throughout my career. With that, if you need someone who knows cinematic production, blending gameplay with cinematics, the tools, the tech, and has the know-how to realize complicated narratives — a true production expert with nearly three decades of experience who isn't afraid to roll up their sleeves and create content — please think of me. I'm once again looking for the next studio and project where I can use the breadth of my skills to make a difference.
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Chris James reposted thisChris James reposted thisXsolla is at Pocket Gamer Connects Nordics 2026 Oct 20th-21st, connecting with mobile game developers and exploring what it takes to launch, grow, and reach new players. Find the team at our booth to talk about your next big move. See you in Helsinki!
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Chris James shared thisA slightly more polished look at PG Connects Nordics Day 1. As mentioned elsewhere, I've been blown away by the energy, creativity and love in Helsinki and from the whole Nordic region... not to mention the other 40+ countries represented. Thanks to James Gilmour from our awesome media team. He really is a dab hand with that camera... and is apparently also available for weddings, graduations and children's parties!Chris James shared thisDay 1 at PGC Nordics is done 🎉 Packed stage sessions, nonstop publisher meetings, and games running across the expo floor all day. Rest up tonight. We do it all again tomorrow for Day 2!
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Chris James shared thisAI never sleeps... and neither it seems does Pocket Gamer Connects 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘀! 🤖🎮 🇫🇮 Despite a heavy night of dinners, mixers, parties and the inevitable after-party karaoke, Day 2 of the Helsinki show is off to an absolute flyer! Standing room only for the AI Game Changers Summit, helmed by Steel Media's own Mr AI Dave Bradley! Just as well I got my coffee! We've already had Luke Dicken explaining how to 'survive the hype cycle', and Wilma Ramona Ikäheimonen discussing differentiation, clarification and impact, before a panel of Super Drama's Jari Pauna, Bit Magic's Markus Hjort and Dodreams Mikael Gummerus tackled the question: 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗨𝗔𝗟𝗟𝗬 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴? A few choice quotes from the morning 💬 "Stop reading about it, and just start to tinker!" 💬 "Get everyone in your studio involved." 💬 "You can improve the game in every single run, in a way that wouldn't be possible before, and engage your audience much earlier with much better prototypes." Of course, there's plenty of debate still to be had. In yesterday's panels, AI was variously described as 'just a hammer' and 'basically a thief', while today's speakers have repeatedly stressed the importance of retaining creativity and control. But the overriding sentiment from the stage so far seems to be one of optimism, summed up by another quote: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝗲 𝘀𝗼 𝗺𝘂𝗰𝗵 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿! Plenty more to come today as we move into 'Practical AI' featuring Gamepack's Ruslan Zelenskyi 🔜 PGC Nordics 🔜 DevGAMM Lisbon, PGC regular Chris Hong 🔜 PGC Helsinki (PGC Nordic) of Cosmo Universe, plus a panel of Ted Verani 🔜 PG Connects Nordics, Wooga's Holger Wurst 🔜 PGC Nordics Helsinki, Quantum Shake's Markus Vahtola, Higher Agency's Patrick McGrath and Hege Tokerud of Aiba AI And that's just one corner of the show's final day! We've also got conference tracks covering Growth, Audience Acceleration, QA, Fundraising and Game Maker Insights, plus the PC Big Indie Pitch, a packed expo and Big Indie Zone, Publisher Speedmatch, Careers Zone, Netflix Sofa Gaming Challenge, the Pocket Jam finale and hundreds more business meetings. We're DEFINITELY going to need a rest after all that! Unless the karaoke bar comes calling again... 🎤
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Chris James shared this𝗛𝗲𝗹𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶, 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗹𝗲𝘁 𝘂𝘀 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻! 🇫🇮🎮 Pocket Gamer Connects 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗗𝗮𝘆 𝟭 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝘀𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝘆 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝗰! Overall, 1,100 delegates from c.500 companies across 44 countries on six continents descended upon the Finnish capital to connect, share ideas, discuss the latest trends and get business done. And boy, did we pack a lot in! A full day of talks on multiple tracks, hundreds of MeetToMatch meetings, off-the-record roundtables, Big Indie Pitching, Investor Connections, IGDA chat corners, game jam sessions, Big Indie showcases, cosy Netflix TV game demos, a Top 50 Game Makers reveal and much more! Then the posse took to the streets for a cornucopia of evening mixers, parties, Supper Club dinners and, inevitably, some late-night karaoke! 🎤 So many friends, old and new, to say thank you to, especially Jana Palm, Suvi Latva, Matej Jurcak 🔜 PG Nordics, Kadri Harma, Adrien 🐦🔥 Bacchi 🔜 PGC Nordics Helsinki 🐦🔥, Hind Toufga 🔜 PGC Helsinki, Saara Bergström, Wille Miljas, Mikko Wilkman, Natasha Skult, PhD 🔜 Finnish Games Week, Christopher Hamilton, Patrick Rose🌹, James Newnorth 🔜 PG Connects Nordics, Elena (Olena) Lobova 🔜 PGC Nordics, Teemu Vilen plus the incredible Steel Media crew who make all this possible. Also a shout-out to the wider game-making royalty in attendance from the likes of Supercell, Next Games, A Netflix Game Studio, Fingersoft, Zynga, Remedy Entertainment Plc, Embark Studios, Voodoo, Rovio Entertainment, WEBZEN Inc., Colossal Order Ltd, Wooga, Red Bull Media House, OUTFIT7, Kolibri Games, plus all of the excellent indies and of course our superb sponsors, led by Xsolla, FastSpring, Epic Games, Tebex, SuperScale and Meta I'm utterly exhausted, but very happy... and looking forward to doing it all again tomorrow! 𝗞𝗶𝗶𝘁𝗼𝘀! 🇫🇮
Chris James commented on a post
1d
Great to be working with Nordic Game at Pocket Gamer Connects and beyond! Keep on trucking!
Chris James commented on a post
1d
As you say, it's a privilege these days to make moves entirely on our own terms, and definitely sad to step back from the games industry, but 33 years is a bloody good innings! Hope you have exciting plans for the future.
P.S. I also heard that Nvidia hasn't done too badly in recent years either... ;p
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Chris James reacted on thisChris James reacted on thisBack in the day, I used to sing for my supper. While I spent the evenings of my 20s chasing rock’n’roll stardom in the pubs and clubs of the capital, I earned my actual lunch (and dinner) money singing jazz standards in restaurants south of the river, alongside our band’s keyboard player, Phil. Well, the music industry took a light nibble and spat us out, needless to say. I moved into PR & Marketing, but never quite lost my love of singing. As anyone upon whom I've inflicted a karaoke session over the years will confirm… So this is gonna be fun. I’m performing at PR Has Talent! On Tuesday 17th November, I'll be swapping my usual work routine for the stage at London's iconic Soho Theatre I'll be joining 15 other acts from across the PR and communications industry for an evening of comedy, music, spoken word and, I suspect, a few surprises. Better still, it's all for a brilliant cause, with all net proceeds supporting Soho Theatre's New Writing Programme. Thanks to Graham Goodkind and Farzana Baduel for pulling it all together (and to David Hamilton for the tip off!) I'd love to see some friendly faces in the audience. Moral support, enthusiastic applause and a touch of light heckling (within reason) all welcome! Tickets (£30) are selling fast. Grab yours via the link in the first comment!
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Chris James reacted on thisChris James reacted on thisThe exhibition celebrating 50 years of Stevenage Football Club ends tomorrow and the town itself will soon mark 80 years since becoming the first post-war new town on November 11th, 1946. Dubbed 'Silkingrad' by the original 6,000 village inhabitants, the Minister of Town & Country Planning Lewis Silkin was deemed too dictatorial in his approach to state planning. It was to be a town built for people like my mum and dad, who left London dreaming of a job, a home. And a school for their kids. Wherever you're at, be proud of where you're from.
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Chris James reacted on thisChris James reacted on thisOur game Huss Valley was called out in Roblox's letter to shareholders and mentioned twice in their earnings call yesterday! It's a dream to be able to make waves on the platform we've all grown up with, and a privilege to be able to work alongside the talented developers here at Creator Games. And of course thank you to the players supporting us, making videos, and giving us all the (often unfiltered) feedback in the comments. We'll keep cooking!
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Chris James liked thisChris James liked thisHow do the best Web Shops in your genre actually perform? Our new report draws on 800+ live shops to show what the top performers achieve, and how.
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PG Connects
Building on the back of our industry experience and profile, we launched and ran Pocket Gamer Connects, a dedicated mobile games industry event uniting c.700 of the biggest names in the industry from all over the world with insightful sessions, a vibrant expo space and some top quality networking both on site and via our fun evening events.
It all went rather well, staggeringly so in fact that we responded to the clamour for another one and are doing it all again in Helsinki in June.Other creatorsSee project
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