Recap of Crypto Games Conference
Dear friends,
My name is Vladimir Tomko and I am the CEO of We Can Games, a company that brought you Blockchain Cuties Universe.
On October 17–18, 2018 I have attended Crypto Games Conference in Minsk. It was a great event, actually everything was executed so nicely that I’ve decided I had to write a recap about it. Funny enough, I only have time to do it when I’m traveling to conferences and back. So this article is being written somewhere mid-air (not Moon yet, but close).
I’ve attended the conference as a host, a speaker and a networker and thus was able to asses different aspects of the event. I attend quite some conferences every year, so you can consider myself both experienced and picky. With that being said, let’s start.
Crypto Games Conference in Minsk was the second conference organised by Eugene Lavrinenko and his team. First conference happened on May 18, 2018 in Kiev and was a major success. It attracted many participants from different countries both from crypto space and regular gaming world. I was able to meet with guys from PUBG, Huawei, Bitguild, Playtika, WAX, Parsec Frontiers and many, many more. In terms of networking it was great — we’ve made a lot of fruitful partnerships and were able to launch Blockchain Cuties on Bitguild among the first set of games. Because it was the first ever event dedicated to Blockchain Gaming, it had some minor issues, but Eugene and his team have managed to root them all out during the second conference in Minsk.
They’ve gathered feedback from the participants and listened. From my point of view, they’ve started preparing for Minsk long time before the conference itself. They’ve attended other industry events and took everything good from the best crypto and gaming conferences out there.
Place and Venue
Minsk is a great place to host an event — good weather (it was +19C during the day), cheap prices, no visa required (if you’re traveling by plane), adequate accommodation prices, great venue and a lot of nice places to party and network. Minsk is also very loyal to crypto and has a lot of IT and gaming companies that work on global market (Wargaming, Vizor, STARK and others). This means that organising event in Minsk could bring a lot of local professionals who has serious competences working with European, US and Asian markets (and so it was).
Venue choice was also very good — Marriott Hotel is a great place to hold conventions, it’s large, beautiful, has a lot of spaces for showcases, business zones, meeting rooms and leisure. It can also host several different panel sections simultaneously and provide accommodation for adequate prices. Stages in smaller halls in the hotel are quite big and have good lightning, which you can’t say about many other popular convention centres in Minsk. DevGamm has been using Marriott Hotel for their Autumn events 3 years in a row and picking it up over other venues in Minsk was a wise choice.
Event and Venue Networking
Conference gathered a lot of individual professionals and companies from different industries who are now already entering or at least considering to enter the crypto games market. There were many developers, indies, blockchain platforms and protocols, private investors and funds. A kind of company you wanna be part of, when industry only kicks off. Participant contingent was quite international, there were representatives from US, China, UK, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Japan, Israel, Netherlands, Norway, Moldova, Nigeria and many more, totalling in 25+ countries.
More than 600 people attended this event and a lot of productive networking was done in Minsk.
Event sported 2 separate panel sections that hosted lectures and discussions for two whole days.
There were:
- Market reports;
- Product owner stories where game developers shared their experiences;
- Panel discussion about dapps and infrastructure around them;
- “Future of the industry” stories;
- Discussions about platforms’ role on the market;
- Cryptogaming media and communities discussions;
- Investor panels;
- iGaming market lectures;
- Future of e-sport and cryptogames discussions;
- And a lot of networking.
For networking CGC had a lot of different spaces, starting from long halls with comfortable siting places, separate meeting points and a business lounge. It also hosted an indie game hall, where small developers could show off their blockchain game projects. And, of course, there were lots of booths with all kind of projects related to cryptogames (starting from casino games and ending with infrastructure solutions). There was no ICO shilling, just pure blockchain gaming content — people who are delivering real products were sharing their expertise and were trying to understand how to help cryptogames market grow faster.
Besides networking on the conference itself, event hosted two well executed parties and a free beer mingle after the gala event on the second day. Locations of the parties were picked nicely — all where rather close to the venue, so people could travel there easily. For those of you who like to have grab some snacks and free drinks (both light and strong) during the parties — Crypto Games Conference got you covered.
Here are some photos from the party:
Conclusion
Crypto game market is just a year and two months old. It was started by AxiomaZen when they released CryptoKitties on November 28, 2017. The industry is still very young, but it matures extremely fast — as does everything built around blockchain. Being an immature market that misses a lot of tools, procedures and standards, it also brings a lot of opportunities — opportunities that can be taken right here and right now.
Events such as Crypto Games Conference serves as the frontier, the verge of the industry — a place where things happen, deals are being made and new big players emerge. It’s a place where people share their experience, plans, speak about the problems they try to solve and goals they try to achieve. It’s a great place to start building your personal brand, find future teammates or pitch your crypto gaming project to potential investors. All these things happen at Crypto Games Conference each time.
In my opinion, CGC is the most effective business oriented crypto gaming conference on the market right now and if you are in the market — attending it is a MUST. It’s a place to be. Period.
Next Crypto Games Conference is being held on 25–26th of April, in Minsk.
I suggest you get your tickets now while they are still cheap.
P.S. In my personal opinion, Eugene Lavrinenko, organiser and CEO of Crypto Games Conference did a lot for cryptogaming market last year. He played a crucial role in uniting the regular game developer, cryptogame developer and blockchain developer communities by hosting events where professionals could meet and share market insights and analytics, as well as try to overcome global problems together. Eugene helps the industry to mature and become more business oriented.
To emphasise that, we at Blockchain Cuties decided to portray him as an official Cutie in the game and nominated him one of the “Leaders of the Industry, 2018”. You can check his official Cutie here:
