We are live blogging from the LA Games Conference. The conference is being held at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California. John Welch, Co-Founder and CEO of Playfirst, is giving the opening remarks. He’s running through 20 slides really fast providing an overview of Playfirst, a large publisher of casual games like Diner Dash, Wedding Dash, Dairy Dash, and Pet Shop Hop. All people read, watch and listen to diverse genres of media on diverse platforms. Are games really any different? Casual games got started with Bejewled and others like it. Then we moved to $20 downloadables. The casual game sector is projected to grow to $5B by 2010.

The casual game platform needs to be accessible to everyone. Casual games need to be attractive to a large number of people. John points to three tests for successful games: Is it an attractive them, is it enjoyable, will you invite others into the game.

Key questions for this event: Who will be the winners and losers in the fully connected world? What do consumers want? How will Moore’s law play out in the living room? Who really wants a game console? Will the console become the portal for the internet?

Who will win the social game? How will innovation, pricing and distribution change?

When we look at the changes in the casual game sector, we are seeing changes where casual games have become online/downloadable. While the game console isn’t casual, the Wii and games like Rock Band are driving the casualization of consoles.

In the last year, the VC’s got it. The Big game publishers are getting it and Hollywood is taking notice.

[tags]LA Games Conference 2008[/tags]