SXSW Highlights
Posted on 26 March 2008
The trip to Austin for the annual South by Southwest Interactive Festival was so much fun and educational.
As I stated before, I was most excited to see Facebook.com Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, give his keynote talk. I wrote a post about my experience on my company’s blog called, The Infamous Mark Zuckerberg Keynote at SXSW. It was quite the keynote with a unique audience reaction.
I was also surprised to learn just how many people out there are using Twitter. If you are not familiar with Twitter, it is basically a mini-blog with 140 character posts similar to an IM away message. Without being a member of the site, I always thought it was a waste of time. However, seeing its incredible popularity by SXSW attendees of all ages, I think it might play a pivotal role in the future of communication. Check out my other LevelTen article, Is Twitter the Future of Communication?
I also learned in one panel called “The Female Takedown of Casual Gaming,” that more women are playing “casual” games than men. The term casual game, refers to desktop, mobile and internet based games; basically any game that is not played on a console unit. Females prefer to play games on computers and 62% of the PC casual only gamers are women. I had never considered myself a “casual gamer” before, but the fact that I was one of the women who purchased the 6th most popular game of 2007, Diner Dash by PlayFirst.com, made me realize that I fall into this category. Yes, I can admit this.
So the issue now with many of these companies that make casual games and market them to women like PlayFirst.com, is how to get more women designing, producing, and programming the games. At one point Pogo.com, whose users are 60-70% women, had absolutely no women working there. At PlayFirst.com, currently 26% of the designers and producers making the games are females but there are no female programmers.
Another interesting statistic for virtual worlds, is that half the avatars are women but it turns out that only 10% of the actual users are female. I never would have guessed that so many men like to play with female avatars, but I guess that is why games like Laura Croft Tomb Raider do so well. The attractive female character.
The panel believes that this female market is not just a trend. Females will continue to drive this casual gaming market especially as it becomes more social with chat boxes and forums integrated into the games.
Here are a few photos from the trip:
This was at Club de Ville.
Here I am hard at work, blogging and chatting with other participants in the SXSW Meebo chat rooms. (Photo taken by Stephanie Norsworthy)
This was the Lego play area, not only for kids.
Some of the LevelTen girls and myself.
Stephanie and I at the Google Party.
Beautiful downtown Austin (taken by Stephanie Norsworthy and edited by the creative Alice Noyes)
3 responses to SXSW Highlights
awww that was so much fun…memories!!
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