iGame Radio

Cloud Technology…this was one of the key themes in a panel on Casual Games Trends at Casual Connect this year. Presented by Tim Chang of Norwest Venture Partners, the panel focused on the current state of casual games and where they are likely to go in the next five years.

Today’s economy is making it difficult for smaller companies to survive. Chang compared it to the “ant riding the back of the large elephants dancing.” Large companies are maneuvering in the corporate space, merging and just trying to survive, and the small company may only be able to survive by grabbing onto the tails of these larger monsters.

Chang’s key theme about the gaming space in this economic upheaval was a need for a re-invention of traditional media. This will involve, he said, participation and social interaction. To monetize this, advertising is not the way to go. Rather, virtual goods and other MTX (microtransations) will be the monetary theme of the future.

Chang sees growth in new App store clones, the Android, Netbooks/MIDs, social gaming, virtual goods, a shift to F2P (free-to-play), and utilizing cloud technology to expand casual game sharing.

Casual games, Chang says, have evolved from a simple downloadable, free web-based system where developers use exclusive distribution portals, to one that includes a variety of monetization methods, open and viral distribution social networks, and online social gaming. However, a large portion of players, an astounding 85%, still don’t pay for the games they play.

Not to worry, says Chang, there are ways to engage these players that will extend your brand and your game. Ideas he provided included engagement methods such as advertising and surveys, using them as viral agents on twitter and blogs to promote your games, engaging them to provide tags, reviews, and otherwise contribute towards your online community, and providing what he called “engagement currency”, benefits or achievements for loyalty towards the community or the game.

Casual 3.0, he believes, will introduce a new level in monetization…premium casual and social games. He analogized this with a nightclub illustration. Everyone wants to get into the exclusive nightclub, but once in, there is another layer of exclusivity where attendees can sit that costs money. And yet, those attendees will still pay for drinks and food on top of that (microtransactions).

This next level in casual games will also introduce cloud-based meta-gaming. An average casual game session can take between 5 to 30 minutes to play. However, says Chang, if you tie this into something else that is bigger and more compelling, the player feels part of a larger whole. This is the meta-game wrapper. It can be as simple as a credit or badge for another game the developer publishes, or as complex as connecting several developers together.

To encourage meta-gaming, one wants to engage the player everywhere and all the time. Cloud-based technology is the key. A player can access a cloud-based server with any device. This would allow for integrating many levels of social gaming as well as sharing, both between players and between games.

Chang sees many opportunities for casual and social games over the next 3 to 5 years. Over this time, more and more “digital natives”, those of us who were basically born with a mouse, keyboard, and tv controller in our hand, will be around, and fewer of those who grew into this revolution will. Gaming will thus become more mainstream, and become more of an engagement and monetization vehicle for all corners of society.

Chang also pointed to the rise and mainstreaming of cloud technology, opening up of more international markets, and XaaS (“everything as a service”) as a stimulator for more opportunities.

EVE Online just posted this cool vid about their universe.



I don’t know that I agree that the “Butterfly Effect” = the “Sandbox”. Say rather that the Sandbox can lead to the Butterfly Effect. But the Sandbox just means your ability to play within a universe without scripting or pre-laid story determining your moves.

Podcast covering the Casual Connect 2009 casual games conference. Includes an overview of the last two days of the conference, and interviews with Pat Khumprakob of Fresh Games, and Alisdair Faulkner of Threatmetrix.

Podcast covering the first day of the Casual Connect 2009 casual games conference. Includes interviews with Hunter Woodlee of Controlled Chaos, and Stefano Corazza of Mixamo.

The PAX 10 Independent Games Showcase list was announced recently.

Penny Arcade was pleased to announce today that The PAX 10 for 2009 are (in alphabetical order):

* CarneyVale: Showtime by the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Games Lab (Xbox 360)

* Closure by Tyler Glaiel and Jon Schubbe (PC)

* Fieldrunners by Subatomic Studios (iPhone/iPod touch)

* Liight by Studio Walljump (Wii)

* Machinarium by Amanita Design (PC)

* Osmos by Hemisphere Games (PC)

* Puzzle Bloom by Team Shotgun (PC)

* Tag: The Power of Paint by Tag Team (PC)

* Trino by Trinoteam (Xbox 360)

* What is Bothering Carl? by Story Fort (PC)

Notice all of those (PC) tags? A lot of them are also going to be available for the Mac (and some for iPhone). Specifically:

• Closure by Tyler Glaiel and Jon Schubbe (PC): You can see in their FAQ that Mac is a given…they are considering other platforms (iPhone?).
• Fieldrunners by Subatomic Studios (iPhone/iPod touch): The only solely iPhone game in the list. I’m interested in the decision process they used to determine this would be the game for the PAX 10…there are a lot of good iPhone games out there.
• Machinarium by Amanita Design (PC): I knew that this game would eventually come out for the Mac when I first investigated it for the IGF.
• Osmos by Hemisphere Games (PC): same as above for Osmos. IGF finalist, developer wanted the game to come out for the Mac, just wasn’t sure when.
• Puzzle Bloom by Team Shotgun (PC): This one I’m not so certain of. I mean, you go to the site, and you have to have the Unity web player installed to play it. Which gives the impression it was built on top of Unity. Which would mean it would be absolutely ludicrous not to have a Mac client. But people is dumb…

That’s 50% for those of you keeping score. I’ll be at PAX this year, and will give a report on all of the games, as well as interviews with all of the developers.

I’m now catching up with news articles that I missed last week on vacation, and this week at Casual Connect. So here are a few tidbits that you might have missed out on, too.

EA’s 8lb Gorilla: Name recognition means everything…Casual Connect even had a panel on naming your game…and EA knows it. That’s why they’ve put together an iPhone game studio named 8lb Gorilla. With the 800lb Gorillas in the tech marketplace battling it out (i.e. Google and Microsoft), I suppose it’s not surprising that someone is going to creating a mini-Gorilla to compete somewhere. EA is a dominator in the game development/publishing scene, so the name fits. The real question is, will the 8lb Gorilla go smashing the Indie developers currently holding their own in the iPhone game marketplace?

The Key to a hit iPhone game…fast response time?: Pocket God, an iPhone game that was released in April of 09, has garnered 1.2 million downloads and as much as $18,000 a day. Produced by Bolt Creative, a two-man team that worked on the game mostly part-time, Pocket God can offer a case study for how an iPhone game could become a hit. As studio founder Dave Castelnuevo said, ““I found that if I responded to what they [players] wanted quickly, they would fall in love with us.”

King.com Staggers into the iPhone Migration: Yeah, the article talks about how King.com has released their new game, Amazon Survival, for the iPhone, joining the iPhone migration. But I was just at Casual Connect, and King was there pushing what they always push…their online casual games scene. Not a single mention of their iPhone game. If they are joining the iPhone migration, they’re staggering their way forward.

And, in the Idle Click category:

I read the iPhone Games Bulletin by Stuart Dredge daily, and he has a section in there that is just food for thought. The other day, he wrote, “My days as an analyst are numbered – Morgan Stanley has someone more than half my age writing research reports. Admittedly, he’s a 15-year-old intern… Matthew Robson has written a report for Morgan Stanley on what teenagers like (iPlayer, Wii, mobile phones) and don’t like (Twitter, newspapers, paying for music). Call me uncharitable, but does the kind of teenager who’d write a research report for Morgan Stanley really know what his peers are up to?”

Er, would you like some cheese to go with that whine there, Stuart? C’mon, are they going to hire a thirty-something to find out what teens like? And by the same thinking, would a thirty-something who wrote research reports for Morgan Stanley really know what *his* peers are up to? Don’t worry, Stuart…no one’s retiring you just yet.

Podcast covering the first day of the Casual Connect 2009 casual games conference. Covers Mac and iPhone news, interesting Casual Connect happenings, and interviews with Sean Elliot of Playrix, and Marc Gumpinger of Scoreloop.

That’s one of the biggest pieces of news to come of out yesterday’s iSee the Future and it’s iPhone panel at Casual Connect casual game’s conference. Panelist’s, including Brian Robbins of Fuel Industries, Kyu Lee of Gamevil, Tom Hubina of Amplified Games, and John Grotland of Oberon Media/I-play, agreed that a large proportion of users of the popular Apple mobile devices had not yet moved over to the 3.0 upgrade, although the actual numbers varied.

For example, one panelist stated that 80% of iPhone users had upgraded, but only 18% of iPod Touch users had. Another panelist said that the conversion rate he saw was about 50/50 for both devices. All believed that it would be some time before any application, game or otherwise, would require the use of the 3.0 upgrade.

Panelists also discussed the downward trend towards $0.99 pricing on the App store. They agreed that the average pricing on the App Store was $2.39, but felt that the pricing was pushed down due to a large number of poor quality applications and games and a trend towards low pricing to push applications up the ratings chart first.

Methods discussed to survive the $0.99 trend included releasing a smaller version of one’s game with limited features first, then if successful, releasing a larger version with a higher price. However, all panelists said that it was too early in the App Store’s life cycle to figure out the economic trends of its pricing structure quite yet.

Panelists discussed monetization, and universally agreed that advertising could not just be “slapped on”, as one panelist put it. If a developer’s game is played in less than one hour, for example, than advertising could not be a monetization tool. They also felt that applications should move away from CPC advertisement and start using CPM advertisement. Lastly, a call for more diversity in advertisement was made. One panelist complained that so many ads seemed to be for other people’s applications.

Finally, panelists created a wish list for Apple to review for the next App Store upgrade. It included ranking apps by revenue rather than sales, peer pricing (creating several pricing tiers), allowing free app to full app unlocks without taking the user out of the game, and a forum for consumers so that user to user support can be provided.

Chatted with a company called Offerpal Media. They are taking a newish take on the microtransaction view. Need to purchase new coins, swords, or other swag for a game? Complete an offer and you’ll get it.

Basically, developers sign up for the service and integrate their game using the SDK, and all you see is a button that says “offers” on the main menu screen. Click on it, and you have a couple of options. You can click on “applications”, which allows you to purchase iPhone apps in exchange for these in-game items. Or, you can complete offers in the “offers” tab. You spend a little money for, say 6 months of Blockbuster service (at 50% the first month off, no less), and in exchange you get your in-game swag.

To be honest, I’m not so certain how well received this is going to be on the consumer side. After all, it seems on the offer side that you’ll end up paying $50, say, for something that you wouldn’t have initially purchased for in-game items that don’t cost anywhere near that much. But it never ceases to amaze me what the American consumer is willing to throw their money at. So I’m having a wait and see attitude regarding this.

On the application side of things, I think this will be received much better. A large number of applications available to choose from (applications that folks would probably be interested in, some of which they would have purchased anyway), at low prices such as $2.99 or $4.99, might be just the right price point.

Just finished with the PopCap Games luncheon, and had the opportunity to play with both Bookworm Adventures 2 (announced only for Windows now, but they swear it will come out for the Mac in a few weeks or so), and Bejeweled Blitz for the iPhone, with facebook login. Bejeweled Blitz was much further along than BWA2 was, as the latter crashed pretty quickly while I was playing it. But both looked really good. And Bejeweled Twist had the added benefit that when I logged in on facebook, I could see who else was playing Bejeweled Twist on facebook and compare scores already.

I asked about Bejeweled Twist for the Mac, and was told that it would be coming out “soon”. Within “6 to 12 weeks”. Of course, that was similar to what I was told last year when the Windows client came out, and we have yet to see it. To be fair, PopCap Games has been very supportive of the Mac (and now the iPhone) for most all of their games. They even said that they had learned an important lesson in the past year, as they realized that over 25% of their sales came from the Mac.

But time will tell whether they strive to release the Mac version simultaneous, or within a week or two, of the Windows client.