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Department of Computer Science 50th Anniversary Lecture

Wednesday - 22 November 2017

Giving the game away

Ian Harper

Managing Director and Co-Founder, Future Games of London


6.15pm - 7.15pm: 50th Anniversary Lecture in the Oculus - OC1.05

Our 50th anniversary celebrations will continue with a 50th Anniversary Lecture on Wednesday 22 November. This will be given by Ian Harper, Managing Director and co-founder of Future Games of London, a company acquired by Ubisoft in 2013. Ian is a Warwick Computer Science Department graduate, and is now recognised as one the most influential people working in the British computer games industry. In 2016, Future Games' Hungry Shark had over 250M downloads and was ranked the number one game in over 100 countries.

Ian will talk about his experience in moving from selling games for an upfront price to giving them away for free and monetising later. He will discuss a range of media industries, including music, books and newspapers, and how they have fared since the arrival of the Internet and digital distribution. Uniquely in games, it has been discovered that strong business models cope with rampant piracy and consumers' perception that digital content should be free. Ian will talk about Chris Anderson's influential books "Free: The Future of a Radical Price" and "The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand", and examine the Price Demand Curve in the context of digital distribution.

Please note that places are limited, so pre-registration for this event is required.


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