Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco 2015 was two days of exhibits, talks and networking in the heart of San Francisco. Here are a few of the highlights from the event.

Very Big Indie Pitch

One of the established features from any Pocket Gamer Connects show is the Very Big Indie Pitch, where indie game developers do a speed dating-style interview and demo with several judges from media and publishing. The judges review and rate the games, narrowing it to three finalists. But, only one can earn the baseball bat and thousands in Steel Media ads.

Pocket Gamer lists all the finalists.

C4M’s “Battle Plans,” a mobile-friendly isometric strategy game featuring smooth, striking animation and Asinine Games’ “Puzzle Drome,” a twist on the classic match-three style of gameplay, where matches must involve mirror image matching, tied for second.

The winner of the competition was Shovelware Games’ “Zombie Match Defense,” an interesting hybrid game that, at first blush, will remind you of “Plants vs. Zombies” but actually plays more like a faster-paced match-three style game.

Virtual reality versus augmented reality

Tim Merel, the founder and managing director of Digi-Capital, in his talk on virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and wearables, shared a fascinating slice of data on the market potential between AR and VR. Between both emerging technology segments, Merel boldly predicts an ambitious 150 billion dollar total market value by 2020. While AR, at 120 billion dollars, may be worth four times the value of the VR market, AR is not predicted to chase after the gamer dollar the way VR will. In fact, almost half the VR pie might be in and around the game development community. Moral of the story: Almost half of a much smaller pie is worth more to a bottom-line-oriented game developer than a tiny slice from a gigantic pie.

Cash tournaments for games and events

Ryan Baird, the director of business development at Cashplay, spoke on the topic of cash tournaments and how they could intersect with mobile games, games of skill (versus games of chance) and with the fast-growing eSports.

For the potential consumers, monetization, retention, engagement and user acquisition are the benefits Baird touted for developers to plug in their free SDK across Android, iOS and Windows platforms. Longer play sessions, more in-app purchases and tournament entry fees via Cashplay were the direct values he listed.

Baird added context later on, via email, how he hopes Cashplay might have a hand in connecting cash tournaments with mobile games and events, like eSports and even meetups.

“Having a competition at a live event turns games from an individual game to a social game where people can see where they are on the leader board,” Baird said in an email. “I imagine a world where having a loud DJ is less present and having game tournaments becomes the new form of entertainment. It’s social, fun and competitive.”

However, there is a twist. Cashplay’s skill-based type of gaming is legal in most of the United States, in 42 of 50 states and more than 200 territories worldwide. Mobile developers and event organizers, take note.

In addition to the talk, attendees at Pocket Gamer Connects 2015 San Francisco had the chance to participate in one of Cashplay’s skill-based game tournaments to see the way it works in action and for the opportunity to win cash.

Eye-catching games

Many of the Very Big Indie Pitch games were scattered on the second floor, next to the giant pitch area and the dominant presence of both Samsung Developer Connection and Amazon Developer Services. There were several fascinating games among the lot, but a couple that caught my eye were these:

Necrosoft’s “Gunsport” was in the Amazon pavilion, and if you’re a fan of the golden age of arcade games (late 1980s and early ’90s, in my book), the look and feel of this cyberpunk rough-and-tumble sports game did not disappoint. I tried the game on an Amazon Fire TV-powered big-screen display with three people, but it’s best played with four. The game controls managed the character jumps and deflecting fire from each of the unique projectile weapons for the game ball. Like volleyball, if the ball strikes the ground, the point goes to the other team. “Gunsport” looks like one of a small class of fun party Android games playabkle on a large screen display.

“Impulse GP”, for the Android via the Amazon App Store and coming soon to iOS, is a fast, fast racer reminiscent of “F-Zero” and even, for some reason, of the old arcade almost-classic snowmobile racer “Arctic Thunder.” The control is based on accurate tilting of the tablet and on-screen controls, with speedy, smooth scrolling, with old-school fogginess in the backdrop. The most important mechanic to remember is to time the start and finishes of the boosts on accelerator strips on the race course. Get it wrong, and lose speed rather than gain anything. Like most mobile games, it’s a quick pick up and play, but at least in my experience, it will take time to master the timing.

Hardware and what’s next

Outside of the scattered VR headset demos, there were not a lot of demos sharing equal time with hardware, but one table in the corner, in fact, did. The Tao Wellness Shell, advertised as a “Tiny Gym in Your Pocket,” is actually pretty compact and robustly built. A user is said to be able to perform 50 exercises, alone or competitively, anytime and anywhere. For the purpose of my brief demo, I saw one exercise played out via a tablet demo of sumo wrestlers grappling with each other, while two real-world competitors repeatedly clasped the Shell device between their hands. The more aggressive of the two nudged the other digital sumo wrestler outside the ring. Simple, quick, easy … and effective, as it was apparently exhausting, or so the winner said.

For more of our coverage of Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco 2015 — in social media form — check out our Events for Gamers Facebook photo album and Events for Gamers Twitter feed from Pocket Gamer Connects.

With San Francisco now in its rear-view mirror, next up for Pocket Gamer’s conference roadshow will be Helsinki, September 7-8.