Game Developer

My reflections on ICE - both on the conference and my takeaways. Firstly, well done again Alex Pratt and Clarion Gaming team. Apart from the long queues when entering on Day 1, everything else seemed to run really well like last year. Even though I didn't schedule back-to-back meetings, I didn't manage to get around to wonder around hall 4 and only saw half of hall 1. I think there are more opportunities to improve the ICE app and happy to join any sessions. I'd love to be able to state my preferences e.g. meeting operators, game providers and not interested in payments, affiliates etc and be able to filter attendees to contact. I've heard rumours that ICE 2027 will be expanding the floor space again - hoping all the online games related stands will be within a couple of halls! In terms of takeaways for Pocket Rockets Gaming, I met up with some small game studios looking for an RGS. If the Engage platform was production grade today then I'm sure we'd have a couple of these studios signing up. For now, they are going with some other RGS platforms! The PvP game is what I'm most excited about though. I've only spent about a week developing it but I received some great feedback from some legends (Justin Chamberlain and Thomas W.) and most of their improvement suggestions were already on the roadmap. I'm expecting the core game to be feature complete and ready for wider play testing in a few weeks with the social elements being built in parallel. I've started building a list of people interested in testing. Please comment with "Beta" and I'll add you on the list. Due to the interest on the game, my focus will be in productionising the RGS and game for social/sweeps and add in other regulatory features for regulated markets later. This approach would allow me to harden the RGS quicker. Finally, last month I said that I wasn't going to look at investment. Following the discussions at ICE and the desire to get the game to production asap, I'm now setting up some follow-up discussions with some investors! Never say never! #ice2026 #pvp #multiplayer #rgs