Shadow’s Edge Summer Conferences

This summer, we’ve been busily spreading the word about Shadow’s Edge – and when we say “we,” we mostly mean our game producer, Rosy, who’s been racking up the frequent flyer miles from Brazil to Montreal to California to Switzerland. Here are Rosy’s thoughts on a couple recent events.

Serious Play Conference, Montreal, Canada, July 10-12

This week I had the pleasure of representing Shadows Edge at the Serious Play Conference in Montreal Canada – and I couldn’t resist a little graffiti hunt for Shadow’s Edge while I was there! 

While the conference was not huge, with just over 350 participants, it was a great opportunity to let people know in more detail about Shadow’s Edge and our mission to help the teens and young adults gain emotional strength.

In my speech at the event, I talked about our impact study showing preliminary evidence that playing Shadow’s Edge can help chronically and seriously ill teens build resilience – and I offered some of the heartwarming and heartbreaking testimonials from our players. After the speech, quite a few attendees came up to me to relate their own experiences or their loved ones’ experiences with illness, and we talked about how exploring the emotions surrounding an illness can lead to healing and even growth.

Other presentations focused on how gaming and simulation games can be used to educate patients and healthcare professionals, for example, a VR game that showed the dangers of vaping. Another fun game from researchers at University of Pittsburgh had players role-play drug company executives, starting a company and guiding their drug through clinical trials.

Still, I found that Shadows Edge is still a lone frontrunner in supporting emotional health through gaming. And we were very excited and thankful to be selected by the Serious Play organization as the gold winner of the International Serious Play Award!

VidCon, Los Angeles, July 10-14

After Serious Play, I jetted down to VidCon in Los Angeles, the largest influencer conference in the world, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this summer. This time I wasn’t speaking, but wanted to dip my toes into the world of social media stars to see how influencer marketing might help us spread the word about Shadow’s Edge.

I also took the chance to talk with some health charities and organizations at the conference about their influencer marketing strategies and how social media could help promote cause-based communications.  

Basically, I wanted to listen and learn about how to make Shadow’s Edge known around the world. 

Coming from the tight-knit Serious Play conference, VidCon was a bit of a shock, with over 10,000 visitors and tickets sold out months in advance. The exhibition hall included huge displays from brands like Nikelodeon, Adobe, Glamcore, PicsArt, and Dodo. 

You can find anything from content creators, to charities, to universities in media, to whatever you need to be a social media star from cameras to makeup. There were a lot of activities involving the audience’s favorite creators in sports, music or lifestyle. 

Of course, there were panels on about a billion subjects, for both businesses and for influencers, ranging from outreach strategies, to building an audience, to creating great content, to hair and makeup tutorials for social media influencers. Meet and greets had hour-long lines just for a photo op with some YouTube and Insta stars. As a dog owner, my favorite panels were those with pet influencers – you know, Doug the Pug?

In all, it was an eye-opening glimpse at how this industry works. It was also heartening to see how many young influencers connected with the mission of Shadow’s Edge and wanted to use their celebrity for a good cause. Watch for Shadow’s Edge social media content with famous faces – both human and of the four-legged variety!