We’re no stranger to lauding momentous games industry milestones upon these pages, but it’s doubly nice to be able to raise a glass to one of our own, as we look ahead to the 10th anniversary of our live PG Connects conferences.
On 20th January 2014 the first ever PG Connects opened its doors to the games industry at Vinopolis London. After several years of serving up drinks via parties, pitches and mobile mixers, and sharing news on PocketGamer.Biz, the Steel Media team took the plunge to impart even more knowledge, facilitate business connections and generally play an even more active role in supporting the incredible games industry with a fully fledged conference.
Our mission then was simply to bring together a cross-section of the games industry, to champion the best and brightest, support the upcomers and innovators and generally help the business grow. Initially the focus was squarely upon mobile, but in later years the vision became more holistic with specific tracks and then whole side events focused on other formats and new technologies such as PC, console, VR/XR, blockchain/web3 and the metaverse.
By The Numbers
Whilst it’s not down to us to judge the success of our endeavours, the fact that the event is still going strong, and in fact stronger than ever, hopefully tells its own story. The numbers also have a tale to tell – we have welcomed over 45,000 delegates through the doors of 45 conferences in 14 different cities (and across the best part of four continents), facilitated well over 100,000 business meetings (formally at least, add in the casual encounters over coffees and beers and it’ll be many times larger!) and played some part in contributing (from what we can gather) to literally billions of dollars worth of deals.
Notably in the time the global games industry has also expanded from c. $81.5bn of which $25bn was mobile (Newzoo, 2014) to 2023’s expectation of $188 billion in total, of which around half, c. $93bn, will come from mobile.
Share your PGC Stories
Ultimately though, PGC has never been obsessed with numbers, it’s always been about the people first. The awesome individuals who make the games, who craft the essential tools and services, who do the deals that make the games industry the biggest and best entertainment media in the world. It’s about the people who travel the world to engage with our events and help create that special ‘games industry family’ vibe that has become the hallmark of our shows.
If you’re reading this then the chances are high that you’re one of those people! And if so, we want to hear from you, for a series we’re calling PGC Stories.
With PGC Stories we’ll be celebrating your happy memories, tall tales and the life-changing deals from Pocket Gamer Connects gone by, and sharing them with our community. To take part you can just fill out the form here, or share your memories on LinkedIn.
While we are celebrating the illustrious past, we also need to deal with the challenges of the current market and look ahead to the opportunities of the future, which is precisely what we’ll be doing again in 2024, starting with our flagship show PG Connects London on 22-23 January.
The full 2024 anniversary event schedule will be released soon, but ahead of that we still have opportunities to connect in 2023, taking place in Jordan (Nov 4-5) and Saudi Arabia (5-6 Dec) in the fast growing MENA games market.
