#PGCLondon 2016 speaker Reforged's Teemu Vilen on the rise of hardcore niches

Pocket Gamer Connects London will kick off the 2016 in style on 18-19 January.

Tickets are still available.

So to give you a hint at what you can expect, we're shining the spotlight onto our speakers to provide a deeper look at the personalities who will be taking the stage.

• Teemu Vilen is the CEO of Finnish startup Reforged Studios, which gained $2.5 million investment from Chinese publisher NetEase.

PocketGamer.biz: Tell us about your company's role in the mobile games industry.

Teemu Vilen: Reforged was built as a craftsman workshop, a super-team from Riot Games, Blizzard, Games Workshop and EA.

We believe in competitive, connective quality gaming experiences, developing communities and engaging franchises, and serving a growing - and more demanding - mobile gaming audience.

2015 was another hectic year for the industry, what were the most important developments?

New design patterns emerged, became prominent and almost already got overused. Some massive successes have gone unnoticed.

It'll be an interesting challenge how to both build more ambitious projects at cost, and stay ahead of the curve when the pace just keeps going up.

PG Connects kicks off 2016 in a couple of week, so give us a prediction or two of what we can expect to see in the new year.

The trends we're seeing in competitive gaming and eSports will start to realize more concretely through new products. More new hardcore niches will be carved out on mobile especially.

Gaming will continue to take a more dominant role in the mainstream as a source of new IPs.

I also expect to see very clever solutions to the UA and CPI problems.

You can check out all our Speaker Spotlights here.