IGS Video: Eric Zimmerman On Casual Games, Gamelab

Author: by Staff

The IGS organizers are continuing to put online key video lectures from the Independent Games Summit, the IGF-affiliated event that took place for the first time at Game Developers Conference 2007 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, on March 5th and 6th, 2007. (The Summit, created by the CMP Game Group, as is Gamasutra, is planned again for GDC in February 2008.) The video of the 2007 Independent Games Summit is being online "for free, in the spirit of sharing, and to help the indie community understand and better itself", and the latest lecture features Eric Zimmerman of Diner Dash creator Gamelab talking about 'The Casual Cash Cow', what independent New York game creator Gamelab does, and exactly how the company does it. (This is the fourth IGS 2007 lecture to be posted online for free, following Matthew Wegner's physics games talk, Gastronaut's Small Arms Xbox Live Arcade postmortem, and Telltale discussing Sam & Max and episodic gaming, with further lectures to be posted soon.) For viewing options for the Zimmerman talk, there is a direct Google Video link for the lecture, plus a downloadable .MP4 version and an embedded version: As the original session description from the lecture reads: "The Gamelab co-founder (Diner Dash) talks about how the indie aesthetic/mentality interacts with the casual market (and vice versa), talking about some of the things that helped Gamelab stay focused and alive in the casual and indie games market, such as keeping a sharp company vision, being aggressive on deal negotiation, and being an 'honest hustler'." [NOTE: Eric has some initial microphone echo issues which are resolved in the first few minutes of the video.]