iGame Radio

Rumors have surfaced that Casual Connect is on the move to San Francisco. Is Seattle too small?

GeekWire just posted an article stating that Seattle’s Casual Connect may be located in a different city next year. The biggest casual gaming convention began in the birthplace of casual games, Seattle, WA. But unnamed sources have stated to GeekWire that this lovefest may be coming to an end.

GameHouse president Matt Hulett said that he was recently notified through his company’s event planners that Casual Connect was leaving town. “It feels like when the Sonics left Seattle,” said Hulett. Living in the Seattle area, I know that hit’s home pretty hard.

The conference has been held each year at the Seattle Benaroya Hall. Though the Casual Connect website still lists next year’s US conference as July 30 – August 1, it doesn’t list the location.

GeekWire specifies that no representative from Casual Connect has responded to give reasons or even confirm the move, so we can only speculate on the reasons. Perhaps Benaroya Hall has become too small? The other location in Seattle appropriate for a growing convention of this kind would be the Washington State Convention Center, where the Penny Arcade Expo is held every year. Though this would certainly work, it might not be available during the timetable required.

I have contacted representatives from Casual Connect and will update this article if I receive any new information. Until then, we’ll just have to wait and see when the conference updates its site to know where we’ll be headed to see next year’s conference.

• Host Omaha Sternberg and co-host Corey Tamas talk about the week’s news in Mac and iOS gaming. First up, Corey talks about his experience updating to Lion, and what impact it had on his gaming.
• Omaha and Corey talk about the Freeverse announcement and their belief that Freeverse is saying goodbye to the Mac gaming community.
• Omaha relates her experience at the Casual Connect game conference last week. Summary, get a bigger room!
• Microsoft is going to open 75 more retail stores to compete with Apple stores. Perhaps they should look a bit different too? Or maybe their going for the China effect?
• Australia finally created an R18+ game rating for adults…complete with a babysitter. Corey replies, “Boobs!”
• Omaha and Corey talk about games that they’ve played in the past week, and Omaha reveals the poll results from last week.

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• John Gatti for featuring music from El Ballo; pick up the El Ballo soundtrack
• Zach Young for featuring music from The Great Tree.

• A Casual Connect 2011 Game Chat Series. Proper Games was one of many game companies that entered the $50,000 GameTreeTV Developer Competition with Yo Deshi, a cerebral martial arts-themed board game. So it was with shock and delight that John Sinclair of Proper Games came up to the podium at Casual Connect 2011 as the $50,000 winner. Omaha Sternberg sat down with Sinclair afterward to talk about his game, his company, and where he’ll go from here.

• A Casual Connect 2011 Game Chat Series. In the past year, Matt Hulett, president of GameHouse division, has taken this division of Real Networks from a purely casual downloadable property to one that offers social and mobile gaming as well. As many do, Hulett saw social and mobile gaming as the future for casual games. Omaha Sternberg chatted with him regarding how this shift turned out, and what the future of GameHouse has in store.

• A Casual Connect 2011 Game Chat Series. Transgaming is well known within the Mac gaming community as a porter of traditional AAA titles to the Mac from Windows and console using their porting technology. But did you know that they have a casual game division as well? Jason Azevedo talks to Omaha Sternberg about what Transgaming is doing in the casual games’ space and what games they are releasing.

• A Casual Connect 2011 Game Chat Series. Playrix Entertainment entered the video game market about 4 years ago with Mac and Windows games from Eastern Europe with a family friendly and magical touch. Now they want to flex their game development muscles and try something new. Dasha Kobzeva, head of marketing and PR, sits down with Omaha Sternberg and talks about what these new ideas are.

• A Casual Connect 2011 Game Chat Series. Glu Mobile was one of the first big mobile gaming companies in North America to restructure from a premium mobile gaming structure to a freemium one. Omaha Sternberg talks with Mike Breslin, Vice President of Marketing at Glu Mobile, about why this happened and what impact it had on their company and games.

Not everyone at Casual Connect has decided to party. Z2Live announced the decision to take their party money and use it for something else…water.

Z2Live sent around a “party invitation” announcing that rather than throw a big event, they had taken the money to effect real-world change. They had bought a water well through charity: water under their Play2Change initiative.

Charity: water is a non-profit organization that brings clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. in their first four years, they completed 3,962 water projects which brought clean water to nearly 1.8 million people. Z2Live stated that this particular water well would bring clean water to 400 people.

With the Play2Change Initiative, Z2Live says they use the power of games to make real and significant change in the world. Like bringing clean water to people who need it.

Casual Connect has announced that NaturalMotion CEO and co-founder Torsten Reil will be keynoting the event. The theme of his keynote will be “Delivering High End Games to Mainstream Audiences”.

In 2001, Reil brought his research in biomechanics and kinetics to the movie industry revolutionizing realistic and immersive character interaction on the big screen. Seen in such movies as the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Troy, and Poseidon, these realistic computer animations of human and animal avatars have developed through the use of neural networks and artificial evolution applied to self-animating characters that use organic models with bones, muscles and a nervous system.

Using this same technology, NaturalMotion has created more immersive and realistic character interactions to games as well, including Grand Theft Auto IV, Red Dead Redemption and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. As casual game engines become more and more powerful, the question becomes whether this technology can also be applied, and to what level? Look for some interesting answers at this Casual Connect keynote.

Editor’s Note: This editorial was written by Omaha Sternberg, Editor-in-Chief here at iGame Radio. She attends Casual Connect every year, since its inception, and is a gamer of all kinds of games, including traditional “core games”.

UPDATE: Jessica Tams, Managing Director for Casual Connect, responded to this article, stating that the separation was about “denoting demographics when creating & marketing content.” She said, “Statistically, girls play some types of games more frequently and boys play some games more frequently. If a game designer does not keep this in mind, their product will suffer.”

In my reply I stated that though I understood those issues, the problem I had was that this term was one of only two that actually specified a focus on gaming and games specifically (as opposed to how games are created, published, distributed, or marketed)…the other term being iPhone/Mobile. So separating this phrase out in this way really can only come across in a very limited fashion…that Games for Gamers are games for boys, and girls are left out. And that offends me.

About a week ago, I received an email from one of my favorite gaming conventions, Casual Connect, reminding me to register. I’ve been attending Casual Connect every year since it started in 2006 and was called Casuality, a name few could pronounce correctly. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed not just attending the events, interviewing developers and publishers, and going to the parties, but also watching this great convention of casual games grow over time into something that really understands the game industry as a whole, and the casual game connection within it.

So I was pretty surprised during the registration process to see amongst the choices for “Primary Business” was: Games for Gamers (Boy Games).

Games for Gamers are only games for boys? That didn’t seem right. I knew I had to be interpreting that wrong. The other choices were Development, Destination (retail & portals), Publishing, Tools & Services, Social & Community, and iPhone/Mobile. All pretty generic, with no indication that you had to be a specific gender to participate in that segment.

I contacted Casual Connect about this, asking why “Boy Games” was listed next to “Games for Gamers”, and this is the response I received from Tennille Forsberg, Content Manager of Casual Connect:

“Games for Gamers is the term we’ve always used for casual games that incorporate game mechanics found in core games–games boys play. ;) So, it’s just a clarifier [sic].”

Core games are games boys play. Not girls. This is a paradigm that I and many in the industry have been trying to dispel for a long time, and yet here it has once again raised it’s ugly head…in the casual gaming industry. There are so many paradigms that this statement generates it’s hard to keep track.

Core Games – games boys play: This paradigm states outright that core games, the traditional, triple AAA titles, are a men’s only club. No women allowed. Or if women do come in, expect to be singled out, stared at, even ridiculed. These games are not for you, and you shouldn’t expect anyone here to want to play with you, talk to you about the games, or sell them to you. And we expect that you aren’t interested in playing them. Whether you are or not is irrelevant.

Casual games that incorporate game mechanics found in games boys play: This men’s-only club is now extending to casual games. Once again, these casual games are for boys only…no girls allowed.

Games for Gamers is the term we’ve always used for games boys play: Apparently Casual Connect, and by extension the Casual Gaming industry, has always considered that any games for gamers are only for boys. If you’re a gamer, you’re a boy. If you’re a girl, you’re not a gamer.

So, let’s revisit this in it’s entirety. Games for Gamers are games for boys. Girls are not gamers. They don’t play these games. The casual games that incorporate mechanics from these games, only for gamers, also will be for boys. Because girls aren’t casual gamers either.

And the folks at Casual Connect are happy to cater to and continue this paradigm.