Ten Takeaways from LA Games Conference

1. The strong financial performance of the game industry continues despite the bad economy
2. The rise of free to play – see FreeRealms.com as an example
3. The power of virtual currency, goods, commerce to monetize play and turn communities into economies (Got to wonder when will Facebook and Myspace figure this out?)
4. Apple doubled the mobile games market almost overnight
5. Phones will become one of the interfaces for games
6. Mobile applications are emerging as a new ad unit
7. The mobile game/iPhone application market is creating a huge merchandising problem
8. Integration of games/real world – See Nolan Bushnell
9. Rise of electronic Distribution – Steam
10. Emergence of cloud based distribution – Onlive