What's Casual Connect and Why Should I Care?

You may have seen Larry C.'s recent Twitter updates talking about his trip to Seattle this week for Casual Connect. Hint: it's not a singles retreat. Casual Connect is actually an annual conference where people who create, write about and play casual games (like you!) get together and exchange ideas about the future of the genre.

This year's Casual Connect in Seattle kicks off today and runs until Thursday -- hundreds of game publishers (including big names such as PopCap and Mochimedia, whose games like Bejeweled and Blockular are featured on our site) are showing off new games that they've been working on as well as participating in panel discussions about everything ranging from developing for the iPhone/mobile devices, gaming and health, audio, virtual economies and more.

It may sound like a lot of business nonsense for an activity that most of us see as just... well, 'fun,' but rest assured that a *lot* of innovation usually comes out of these conferences. Sure to be hot topics this year are microtransactions (paying for small items in games like additional levels, clothing for your characters, etc) and casual games integration with social networks, like our Games.com Roulette game that you can play from straight inside Facebook (if you haven't checked this out yet, do! Our dev team did a great job integrating with Facebook features).

You can find more information on the conference at the Casual Connect website. Larry C. will be updating live on the show floor at the Games.com Twitter (psst -- we recently added the feed to the left-hand sidebar so you don't even have to leave our site to read the notes!). If you're Twitter-savvy, you can even follow real-time updates from everyone else at the conference with the #casualconnect hashtag.