GamesBeat Summit 2024 will feature Women in Gaming Breakfast

We’re delighted to note that we will have another Women in Gaming Breakfast at GamesBeat Summit 2024, our annual game conference which takes place on May 20 to May 21 in Los Angeles.

The event at the Marina del Rey Marriott will focus on the theme of resilience and adaptation, zeroing in on the relevant real-world issues facing the game industry.

The Women In Gaming Breakfast will happen on the morning of May 21. Women can sign up here. Indie game devs at companies with fewer than 25 people can sign up here. And for the first time we have an indie sponsorship package listed for Rising Stars.

It’s been a rough year with lots of layoffs. But we also know that addressing diversity, equity and inclusion remains important for the wellbeing of game developers and even the health of the video game market. With that in mind, we’re so happy to be able to hold this breakfast for the women of the GamesBeat community again. And we think it fits well with our theme of resilience and adaptation. We’re thankful that Xsolla has become the sponsor of this breakfast for the first time.

A panel for women

Rachel Kaser, GamesBeat writer, will once again moderate a panel for the breakfast. We’re still figuring out the exact topic and panelists for the session during the breakfast, which is focused on women.

We’re also happy to have key women speakers at our event, including Lisa Cosmas Hanson, president of Niko Partners and the moderator for our session with Brian Ward, CEO of Savvy Games Group.

We’ve also announced a number of other women speakers including Jordan Fragen, GamesBeat writer; Caroline Stokes, founder/executive coach of Forward; Songyee Yoon, president and CSO of NCSoft; Kim Kunes, vice president of Trust & Safety at Xbox; Alina Soltys, cofounder of Quantum Tech Partners. We’re still naming a number of other speakers. And we aim to get about half of all our speakers coming from diverse backgrounds.

Return to Los Angeles

Last year, our event in Los Angeles at the Marina del Rey Marriott drew more than 900 people. We’ll shoot for a more intimate audience this year, but we remain committed to getting some of the most interesting speakers in the gaming world, including fresh faces.

Our conference will address how to adapt to a rapidly changing world, and will address big topics like GenAI, cross-media adaptations (games and Hollywood), and the challenge of layoffs in an industry that is becoming part of mainstream culture.

As Matthew Ball noted in a long piece on the game industry, gaming has strong secular tailwinds that signal good years ahead. The new generation of kids plays a lot of games and they’re replacing generations that rarely played games. Players are getting access to more platforms with access to quality games.

Gaming culture is being elevated to the mainstream, and gaming is evolving as an art and tech platform. Access to high-quality gaming devices continues to improve. Gaming culture continues to proliferate, and the art form of gaming continues to evolve. But these tailwinds do not guarantee that every year will see uninterrupted growth, significant growth, or profitable growth.

In other words, growth isn’t guaranteed. We have to work at it. We’ll bring the top minds in the industry to discuss these topics in an interactive format.

You can pitch us on speakers/sponsorships at this link. You can also sign up here to attend using You can get 25% off with this discount code: gbs24dean25.

We appreciate the support of our sponsors including our longtime partners Xsolla, Playtika, Modulate, TikTok, Scopely, Fastspring and Heroic Labs. But we could use more support to make the conference into a great event that will be as memorable as last year’s event, which featured Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead. You can contact us for sponsorship information here.

The gaming media has struggled as well. We are not immune to that, but I believe our events have a real community following and something special to offer. I hope you’ll all continue to see value in supporting GamesBeat as it also supports the game industry.

We could also use sponsor support and speakers for our other events, including GamesBeat Next on October 28 to October 29 in San Francisco and GamesBeat at the Game Awards on December 12. We’ll be launching signups for those events as well. Our sponsorship team is at sales@venturebeat.com.

Also, I’m recruiting judges for the Visionary Awards now.