The Next Web

The Digital Life Design conference (DLD) opened up this morning with a panel discussion between media heavy weights and tech giants around strategies for the future. Moderated by Thomas Künstener, Vice President of Booz & Co, Dmitry Grishin, CEO of Mail.ru, Ahmet Özer, CEO of Trader Media East, Arkady Volozh, CEO at Yandex and Paul-Bernhard Kallen, CEO of Hubert Burda Media tackled the digital future in the region. Gaming was seen as a real player that has changed from a niche activity to a mass market phenomena. Gaming takes up twice the time of video consumption in most markets. Dmitry Grishin says that gaming has cinematic qualities that will help it catch up with film and TV consumption. He says that games are now so realistic and we are already watching movies like Tin-Tin which is very close to the animation experience seen in games. Grishin says that the mobile market is spurring on the growth of games. He noted that in the US around 50% of users have smart phones while in Russia it is roughly a quarter and that games take up a lot of time for mobile use. But he also offered caution in entering the games business as a sole pursuit. “If you are just in the gaming business it is dangerous. We see that combining communication and game production means that social media provides the audience and gaming gives you an opporunity to create good content and deliver it together. In the history of gaming, there is no leader in the market for so many years. In the 70′s people thought Atari would lead the world, but now I don’t know if people know that name anymore.” (via How Russian Media is Changing for Growth)