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Gaming industry learnings at Reboot Develop Blue 2024

Gaming industry learnings at Reboot Develop Blue 2024

Reboot develop Blue i3dnet partnership
Jaunius Satkauskas - Product Marketing Manager at i3D.net
Jaunius Satkauskas
Product Marketing Manager
Linkedin
16 May 2024

Gaming events have been hugely successful over the last decade, in both the business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) spheres. With the year being completely packed with events, sometimes with even two or three of them per month, one of the events really stands out from the crowd — Reboot Develop Blue Dubrovnik 2024.

Table of Contents

Surrounded by beautiful mountains and beaches with turquoise water, Dubrovnik makes you feel like you are on vacation, even if you are there for an extremely worthwhile work event. With all the vacation vibes going on, Reboot Develop Blue Dubrovnik 2024 really becomes a “work-ation”, where people are relaxed and enjoy the company of industry friends rather than just getting down to business. One of the main drivers of this is the fact that the conference does not have an official meeting system, meaning that if you wanted to do business it is really up to you to approach the people you want to speak to and start a conversation or reach out to them via LinkedIn beforehand. This allows the attendees to break the ice before going into the meeting and getting down to business.

Of course, it’s not only about making meaningful connections with people and building relationships, but also learning about the industry we are in. There were over 155 speakers during three days on eight parallel tracks/stages, with knowledge being shared aplenty. From talk about game design to legal actions and, of course, the technology behind gaming that makes the industry tick, the sessions truly had it all.

That being said, here are three key takeaways from the conference below. These are themes that will remain important in the next year (and maybe beyond) for the industry at large.

Indie studios are looking for an easy way into the industry

The industry is saturated and getting funding for games is difficult, with indie studios often looking for full investment packages, with development, marketing and PR budgets, as well as QA testing all included. Once the funding is received, indie studios, yet again, are looking for an easy way to make the game available to wider audiences without the technical headaches that are part and parcel of the process — figuring out the hardware needed, connectivity requirements and testing, testing and more testing. One of the main requirements for an indie studio to scale up is to have data on player engagement and other metrics to make data-driven decisions, which often provide insight into the future needs of the studio. This opens the door for providers and partners that can help take some of this burden off the indie studio.

Game studios have been openly talking about how expensive it is to maintain their games online

The majority, currently working with public cloud providers, are looking for alternatives to cut costs in every possible corner to survive in this highly competitive market. Recognizing the lock-in with their current provider, studios are looking for solutions that would easily integrate with their game’s backend and the services they have running in their provider’s ecosystem.

Tech knowledge sessions were not as popular as game design or creativity sessions

This makes sense, as tech discussions are not always the most fun topic, but conversely, knowledge sharing on something that each and every online multiplayer game requires and will most likely end up being the biggest cost center for the game studio in the long run is an important discussion to have, nonetheless. Often, it’s about the known-unknowns; everyone is aware of the necessary technical proficiency to run an online multiplayer game, but the knowledge is limited to the “knowns”, where “unknowns” are left for the third-party to figure out, often entering the vendor lock-in situations due to deep integrations with the provider’s systems and little technical knowledge on the studio’s side which does not allow for the studio to foresee those things.

Reboot Develop Blue Dubrovnik 2024 was indeed a blast. Whether it was the weather, the food or beautiful Croatian coastline, one common denominator there was the people. Over the last 3 years i3D.net attended Reboot, we have seen the conference grow together with the people and the partners that make this event so special. Excited for the years to come and see you next year Dubrovnik, you were amazing!

Main Take-Aways

This article takes a look at themes that were significant in Reboot Develop Blue this year and will likely be key issues for the gaming industry to contend with over the next year. 

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