GamesBeat Summit 2024 will be about resilience and adaptation

GamesBeat Summit 2024 will take place on May 20 to May 21 in Los Angeles and address relevant real-world issues facing the game industry.

We know that the game industry has had a rough year and an even rougher January when it comes to layoffs. Why is this happening? Is this part of a cycle, or is there something structurally changing in the game industry? And how can companies and people be more resilient and adapt to the change?

These are some of the questions will tackle at our next big event, which drew more than 900 people a year ago to Los Angeles. This year, we’ll have the event at the same spot — the Marina del Rey Marriott.

Our conference will address how to adapt to a rapidly changing world, and will address big topics like GenAI, cross-media adaptations (games and Hollywood), and the challenge of layoffs in an industry that is becoming part of mainstream culture. We’ll look at how the industry is responding with innovation, creativity, resilience, and collaboration.

We are seeking the best speakers we can possibly get, but we’re also going to be looking for fresh faces. Diversity remains an important topic for our event. We’ll have another Women In Gaming Breakfast on the morning of May 21, sponsored by Xsolla. And we aim to get about half of our speakers coming from diverse backgrounds.

As Matthew Ball noted in a long piece on the game industry, gaming has strong secular tailwinds that signal good years ahead. The new generation of kids plays a lot of games and they’re replacing generations that rarely played games. Players are getting access to more platforms with access to quality games.

Gaming culture is being elevated to the mainstream, and gaming is evolving as an art and tech platform. Access to high-quality gaming devices continues to improve. Gaming culture continues to proliferate, and the art form of gaming continues to evolve. But these tailwinds do not guarantee that every year will see uninterrupted growth, significant growth, or profitable growth.

In other words, growth isn’t guaranteed. We have to work at it. We’ll bring the top minds in the industry to discuss these topics in an interactive format.

I’m busy signing up speakers for the May event, including Purnendu Mukherjee, founder and CEO of Convai, which is producing some amazing AI-based non-player characters for games and virtual awards. I did a demo with Mukherjee at CES 2024 and was surprised how I could have human-like conversations with NPCs. He’s the first speaker among dozens we’ll highlight at our event. You can pitch us on speakers at this link.

We appreciate the support of our sponsors including our longtime partners Xsolla and Modulate. But we could use more support to make the conference into a great event that will be as memorable as last year’s event, which featured Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead. You can contact us for sponsorship information here.

I’d like to put out a call for help now because we realize how tough it will be to get people to back our events and come to them in such a tough environment for gaming. The gaming media has struggled as well. We are not immune to that, but I believe our events have a real community following and something special to offer.

We could also use sponsor support and speakers for our other events, including GamesBeat Next on October 28 to October 29 in San Francisco and GamesBeat at the Game Awards on December 12. We’ll be launching signups for those events as well. Our sponsorship team is at sales@venturebeat.com.