I attended Casual Connect, the Casual Games Conference, in Seattle last week. It was an exciting scene that certainly lived up to its name, as I saw plenty of old friends and met a lot of new folks doing some great work in this burgeoning market.

On the dev side, new technologies and core games crossovers, like Torsten Riels keynoted NaturalMotion biomechanics modeling animation engine, shows innovation will always impact software practice. More generally this field has clearly reached a new level of maturity, with its practitioners having a level of understanding that enables production to be far more routinized than even a year ago., Clearly this and the changed finance situation, with a growing number public companies understanding the space, will drive more waves of consolidation. The packed rooms in the financial track, including presentations and panels hosted by Corums speakers Nat Burgess and Dougan Milne, reflect this and augur not just continuing, but a new stage of, M&A activity -- coming right up!