Is Casual Killing Core Games?
(Sat, 6:00 pm) From the talks at the Casual Connect gaming conference last month, I’d guess the answer is no—there seems to be a lot more overlap between the “casual” and “core” gaming markets than most people thought. But maybe the core game developers have something to say about that. Rob Gruhl of Microsoft’s game platform strategy team moderates a panel of industry experts. —Sex in Videogames: A Comparative Study (Sat, 7:30 pm). Not sure what this is about, but I bet there was a lot of research done. Pink Godzilla, a Seattle-based video game store, will be part of a panel that discusses cultural differences between the U.S. and Japan when it comes to sex in video games. Interesting that the session is on a typical date night. (There’s also a session the next morning called “How to get your girlfriend into gaming.” I’m not making this up.) —Cambridge, MA-based Harmonix Music Systems is doing a panel on the company’s history (“The Rockening,” Sat, 1:00 pm), from its early days as an M
