iGame Radio

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.

Yesterday was a hectic, interview-filled, panel-attending day. This year’s conference is definitely the year of the social gaming scene. Which begs the question of whether games weren’t social before. Perhaps a lot haven’t been, considering that single-player games in the casual scene have been quite dominant. More on this thought in a moment.

I’ve got two great interviews to post, which I intended to post last night, but found myself unable to. And not because of partying either. Let’s just say that I found out Seattle’s new Light Rail seems only meant for those who already drive. And since I can’t drive…well….

I really enjoy attending conferences like this. It allows me to socialize (which is hard to do when you work by yourself from a home office), and it allows me to see old friends that I don’t see very often. I get the chance to catch up on news, learn new stuff that I can’t find out any other way, and verbally abuse folks who drop me from their press lists (yeah, I’m talking to you, PlayFirst ;).

I’m heading out to the exclusive PopCap Games luncheon, where I will get some more cool info about upcoming PopCap Games, and will post more about that later. Hopefully their zombies won’t eat me before I do. I will also post about some other very cool news that I’ve been hearing about here at the conference regarding more Mac and iPhone games.

So look for both podcast posts and news posts later today. And I might be tweeting some interesting iGame Radio stuff too, so keep track of the tweets!

Fresh from my vacation last week (well, where did you think I had disappeared to?), and I have jumped right back into the middle of things. I am at day 1 of the Casual Connect casual games conference here in Seattle. I’ve got a busy three days ahead of me, and plan to post a podcast a night with interviews from folks in the casual games industry as well as commentary about what I’ve seen and heard.

I’m currently waiting for the opening keynote speech to start, and thought that I’d look through my “bag ‘o swag” to see what this year’s take is.

First up: A cool Gelaskins iPhone skin cover with the Addicting Games logo on it. It actually looks pretty cool, with tiny thumbnails of characters from casual games all over. I’ll see if I can get a link to the image and see how many characters we all can figure out. I also got a Gelaskins drink coaster. Weee.

Next: Energy boosting sunflower seeds from PopCap Games popular Plants vs. Zombies. Not that I need them this moment…my Pea Shooter died (well, we thought it would survive our vacation…apparently the zombies got into the house). Kids will have fun planting it and capturing the sun drops that fall. ;)

Playrix dropped in a pen. But not any ordinary pen. If you happened to get bored with keynote speeches, you can start moving the tiny little marble through the little maze in the pen. Looks pretty cool, actually.

A free game card from Paysafecard and free coins from Mochi. So if I need to play games while I’m here (like I don’t have enough to review right now) I’ve got more. Heh.

Oh, and another cool bag from Big Fish Games, with a little outside pocket.

Nice haul overall, but sorta expected more based on last year. ‘Course, last year we didn’t have this year’s economy. :(

I’ll be attending Casual Connect 2009, the premier casual games conference, from July 21 – July 23 this week. I’ll be floating around gathering interviews, attending panels, getting drunk going to parties, and generally having a great time with my casual games buddies.

If you will be attending and want to hook up, let me know in the comments section, or send me an email. My schedule is pretty filled up already, so let me know now.

ETA: The guys from NinjaKiwis mentioned that they wanted to come to Casual Connect and accept their Zeebys award, but they decided that the price for getting to the conference was just too high. Considering that many casual games studios are small one to five people setups where cost is a big factor, and that they live in New Zealand…well, ’nuff said. ;)

I attended The 2nd Annual Zeebys Awards last night. This is an awards ceremony produced by Gamezebo and the Casual Games Association that applauds those in the casual games industry that work hard to produce the casual games titles that many of us love while donating money to the Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation. My impression, however, is that fewer people than one would think in the industry actually support the Zeebys. Read more…

I am sitting in a hallway…actually, in a corner off of the hallway…in Benaroya Hall in Seattle, Washington. The Casual Connect Casual Game Conference is happening right now. I’m covering it for both iGame Radio and the DigiPen PodClass.

Read more…