On a chilly day in January, I broke out of my office – my living room – to attend Pocket Gamer Connects, nestled in the heart of London. The event took place over two days, with a brimming schedule of talks and a huge list of attendees eager to make connections and learn something new.
Pocket Gamer Connects is set across three floors in The Brewery venue, with areas to try out indie games, set up meetings, and of course, visit talks in four different halls. Talks took place in each hall at the same time, allowing me to pick and choose how I wanted to spend the day between grabbing coffee and tracking down people to talk to on the show floor.
The available talks covered topics right across the industry, inviting speakers from established studios, monetization platforms, AI companies, and freelance positions to educate people on their areas. Chances are, at least one talk is relevant to your interests no matter what area you’re looking to learn about.
Some talks highlight different sides of the same part of the industry. For instance, I attended Isabel Davies of law firm Wiggin’s talk about whether free-to-play games are fair to play, where she went through how the Digital Fairness Act works and touched on how live-service games keep players coming back with what is essentially fear of missing out.
A couple of hours later, I was at Paul West of Fumb Games talk called ‘Growing Revenue 10x In A Down Market’, where he explained that Bitcoin Miner employs strategies like daily rewards and bonuses to make sure players keep coming back. Both talks were very interesting and showed viewpoints and experiences of how companies and individuals interact with the same business models.
Another key talk was Maya Hofree of Supercell explaining the success of Hay Day – did you know over one billion barns have been built in the game to date? That’s a darn lot of players, and goes to show how truly big mobile games can get.
Pocket Gamer Connects not only provides a place to meet other industry hopefuls and professionals but gives an opportunity to learn key information you may not find anywhere else.
If you’re an upcoming developer, you can pop into the Journalist Lounge and ask a real-life industry member for some tips or advice, or set up meetings with any attendee, ranging from CEOs to publicists, to developers, and even Pocket Tactics staff writers, if you so choose.
For those eager to attend the next Pocket Gamer event, you can look forward to next year’s Connect, likely taking place around the same time in 2026. In the meantime, if you want to get stuck into some thought pieces, we recommend our features on playing Stardew Valley the wrong way and how handheld gaming provides an escape.