(repost from my blog dipinsi.de)
I'm visiting Kiev next week for both Sociality Rocks and Casual Connect.
This spring I was invited to Sociality Rocks to speak about Farm Anthology, but during the unfortunate summer (sick for few months in a row) the project have stalled, thus I've never confirmed my speech.
The farming genre have greatly evolved since then: Farms -> Treasures -> Frontiers, replacing mindless leveling with collections, goals and other neat features. I hope one day this Xmas we'll sit in a comfy sofa for few evenings and compile a whole book filled with screenshots and reviews, explaining evolution of the genre: from classics and failures of Five Minutes and Rekoo to modern *Villes.
Meanwhile I was invited to participate at a panel on Casual Connect, covering perspectives on the Eastern European Social Games Industry. Last time I was speaking in Kyiv with Jason Kapalka (Co-Founder of PopCap Games) on how we made Heavy Weapon the coolest XBLA co-op title ever. This time I'm excited to share my experience of discovering the social tycoon genre and how the lack of IP protection in Russia have affected everyone in the region.
If you'd like to set up a meeting in Kyiv, send me a note to hello at innowate . com.
PS Oh, and in case you haven't noticed yet, Facebook has launched awesome Requests API and it's live in quite a few titles.