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5 Thoughts on Casual Connect Hamburg 2009

Just got back from Casual Connect Europe, which is the annual 3-day European casual games gathering in February, historically in Amsterdam, and this year in Hamburg, Germany.  My general thought is that there were no huge trends dominating the show, as there have been in the past.

However, my 5 key takeaways were:

1.  Amazon - is causing large initial controversy by launching a downloadable game program (here) through its purchase of casual game pioneer Reflexive Entertainment.  The issue is that front line casual titles were traditionally priced at $20, even though there were numerous ways to buy them for as low as $10 through club memberships, and other periodic discounts.  What Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has done is price titles out of the gate at $10, with even lower prices for older games.  Their argument is that it will drive a much higher level of sales, especially through the power of Amazon's system.  Some of the publishers are vigorously resisting this approach since it has the potential to drive all pricing below $10, with club prices now being even lower, so some of them are pulling their games from the system.  However, participating publishers like iWin, Hipsoft and Last Day of Work seem to be dominating the sales charts, so there is a good supply of content at this point.  No one has received Amazon sales reports yet, so it's too early to tell, but my guess is that Amazon will eventually win over almost all of the game publishers since it will become such a large distributor of games, but it points to lower prices in the medium term.

2.  Virtual Goods - obviously near and dear to my heart (see Loki Partners), the larger portals and publishers are all finally looking to expand their community efforts to become more than just commerce engines.  Then in order to monetize it, they wish to sell virtual goods to that audience, either in the game itself, or around the game, as Pogo has successfully done for some time now.  As SuperRewards and TrialPay pointed out in their panel, this approach can drive a lot of additional revenue, especially as last year's Holy Grail, in-game advertising, is dropping off quickly in the slow economy.  We will finally see numerous players launch big virtual goods programs this year, and as developers integrate those API's, we'll see in-game virtual items become more common, which is a big win for back-end virtual goods providers like TwoFish, where I'm a board member.

3.  IPhone - everyone is pouring on to the Apple iPhone (NASDAQ:AAPL) platform, hoping its yet again another platform to sell the same classic content such as Bejeweled or Diner Dash.   The early signs are good, with games taking just a few months to port to the device, and some publishers seeing good sales.  However, with 15,000 applications already on the platform, marketing is becoming a big issue, which has never been a strength of casual game publishers. who have mostly relied on game portals.  In addition, pricing compression is taking place, with initial attempts to hold pricing at $7.99 or $9.99 quickly dropping to $4.99, and then moving lower to $2.99 or even worse, making it impossible to generate substantial revenue.

4.  Growing Eastern European Publishers - the first wave of games from the Eastern European and Russian game publishers were generally of lower quality and were often just straight clones of popular Western games.  In the last 12 months, Playrix, Alawar, Realore and other similar players have made huge strides in game quality and creativity, and the pipeline for 2009 looks really strong, making them important players in the casual game ecosystem, especially as they build up their portals and begin to distribute more games for other developers and publishers.

5.  Need for Consolidation - what's becoming increasingly clear is that the casual game industry is finally hitting the level where the larger companies such as Big Fish Games, Wild Tangent, and Real Games (NASDAQ:RNWK) are separating themselves from the smaller players, which wasn't as true 2 years ago.  There are numerous smaller publishers in the $5-25M revenue range that simply aren't big enough or sophisticated enough to increase revenue in a rapidly evolving system.  When it was just creating and publishing downloadable games, a lot of companies could be legitimate players.  Now that it's increasingly about publishing on multiple platforms, adding multi-player, community and virtual goods functionality, attracting well known brands to certain games, and most importantly, getting big enough to not get squeezed by larger distributors, it's time for the smaller players to decide if they want to be lifestyle companies, or they wish to be part of a bigger play.  We know the casual games business is big enough to support multiple public companies, but they must have $100M+ in revenue, plus a lot of growth in order to do that, and that will require consolidation, and at far lower valuation multiples than seen in the past.  

Big Congrats to Jessica Tams from Casual Connect for again pulling off another great show.  As for Hamburg vs Amsterdam, I can see the practical reasons why the show moved to Germany, but I still feel we left a little bit of soul behind in Holland.

Meez Launches Dance Floor Destroyer

I'm excited to announce the launch of our 2nd "Meez Inside" game, a DJ-themed game called Dance Floor Destroyer, available here on Facebook, and elsewhere in March.   Built using our Meez Gaming Platform API (see GDC 2008 announcement here), this innovative rhythm game enables a user to automatically bring their Meez avatar into the game itself as a club DJ, bringing a level of personalization to web gaming that was previously only available in next generation console gaming such as the Nintendo Wii (OTC: NTDOY).  We look forward to working with third party game publishers to roll out an array of Meez Inside games this year.  In addition, we'll be working with bands and DJ's to introduce their music to our users through DFD since we expect it to be very popular.

Macrovision Sellling TryMedia Games Group to RealNetworks

Continuing its dismal track record in M&A and new business initiatives (remember DRM'ed music CDs?), Macrovision (NASDAQ: MVSN) today announced that they're selling their TryMedia casual games group so that they can focus on their pending purchase of Gemstar - shareholders must not be quite as pleased since the stock has dropped almost 50% since the Gemstar deal was announced.

Macrovision purchased Trymedia, a rapidly growing casual game distribution and DRM company, in July, 2005 for $34M - here is the CEO's press release quote - "This acquisition, along with the formation of our new business unit, underscores Macrovision's strategic focus to efficiently enable our customers to distribute their games both on and offline," stated Fred Amoroso, president and CEO of Macrovision. "Consumers today want to be able to get their game content when they want it, where they want it and that requires a distribution system that enables that flexibility securely, while also protecting the content from massive unauthorized usage."

After watching the casual game business massively increase in the past 2 years, Macrovision has now chosen to exit that business, for a price which I understand is slightly larger than what is in my son's piggy bank at home.   TryMedia has lost ground in both business categories under Macrovision's stewardship, so it will be interesting to see who the acquirer is, and how much they really pay, but I believe that there is a good business and team there if run properly under new owners.

UPDATE - Real Networks (NASDAQ: RNWK) has been revealed as the purchaser, having agreed to pay $4M for the TryMedia assets.   From what I understand, Real came in at the last minute, right before Macrovision was going to shut it down.  It's an astute, if incremental, purchase by Real.   They get instant access to a larger set of distribution relationships for RealGames, and they pay only a small amount for it since they will presumably shut the technology down and transfer it to the RealArcade platform.   I even ran into a hedge fund manager this week who insisted that RNWK might even consider spinning out RealGames since it would be worth far more as an independent entity than it is stuck inside Real, but I don't take that concept too seriously, even if it's a logical step.

EA Launches Sims Carnival

Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced the closed beta of The Sims Carnival, their entry into the web-based gaming world, similar to what we have been doing for 6 months with the Meez Games Channel

We will see exactly what the details are when I get a chance to review it, but it looks like they will be offering some ability for users to modify some of the games, in addition to playing them and uploading new ones.  The key question is how they will be sharing revenue with developers (rev split or fixed fee), how restrictive they will be about ads/links, and whether they will closely curate the catalog, as we do at Meez, or let anyone upload any content and "let God sort'em out".

It's another good example of how web-based gaming is becoming the hot sector (along with social gaming and casual MMOs) and how this will open up distribution opportunities for downloadable developers who offer compelling web versions, as I have previously blogged about here.  Every significant consumer media site will have to offer a full web games channel, and we believe a lot of them will work with Meez.

GDC Day 1 News - Meez Goes Gold with 3rd Party Game API

The annual Game Developers Conference began today on a Federal holiday, for reasons no one can understand, but it's a big event, with a lot going on.   First, of course, was our press release this morning that Meez has gone gold with our Meez Games Channel (here), including the integration of 50 3rd party web games already launched with our API.

In less than an hour per game, our Meez Games API gives developers the ability to easily:

• Integrate a Meez avatar into the web game itself, similar to how you can create an avatar on the Nintendo Wii and use with Wii Sports and other games.  The first example is our internal game Bar Room Blitz available here at Facebook.

• Integrate a Meez emoticon avatar into the shell surrounding the game.  This avatar will react to the user's gameplay, appearing happy when things go well, and getting angry when the user fails.  This is a great way to bring identity to games which don't have humans in the game itself
• Integrate the high scores, challenges, badges and other viral features of key social media sites
• Generate Meez currency "coinz" for game play, which can be used to purchase additional virtual items, driving more gameplay
  
• Get access to the fast-growing Meez Games Channel, now available at Meez, Friendster Games, Perfspot Games and our Meez Roomz Facebook application, with more social media sites and partnerships appearing monthly
• Generate ad revenue through our ad sales relationships with top agencies around the world.

We will always focus on featuring higher quality flash games in the Meez Games Channel, but with 50 games already in production and another 50 in process, we have a robust, market leading catalog of 3rd party games.  And we feel that the avatar integration piece is a unique part of our system which is driving a lot of happy usage, as well as revenue for third party game publishers, so now it's time to ramp it up.

For more information on the Meez Games Channel API, contact Meez at: games@corp.meez.com.

Casual MMO's vs Core MMO's - Why Casual MMO's will be Bigger

Along with my clear belief in the impending growth of web-based games, the other really interesting emerging gaming category is the Casual Massively Multiplayer Online Game (generally shortened to Casual MMO).  A Casual MMO sits along the gaming spectrum between the hard core/high end MMO's like World of Warcraft, and the simpler, usually single player casual games such as Bejeweled.  As with many recent entertainment and technology innovations (like avatars from Meez), this category was created primarily in Korea, is now showing up in the West, and it's one of the most exciting areas in gaming

So what exactly is a casual MMO?  Similar to a core MMO, a casual MMO hosts thousands of players in a persistent world where they interact with each other as they go about solving problems/quests, increasing the status of their characters, etc.  However, in the casual version, there is generally no subscription fee and the expectation is that a user will spend far less than the 25 hours a week a core MMO player spends on the game.

To get a better idea of how casual MMO's differ from other games, one can normally build a casual MMO for anywhere between $1M and $3M, which is higher than the $500K a high-end downloadable or mobile game costs to make, but far lower than the $20M+ a high end MMO or next generation console game will cost.  A casual MMO can be either entirely web-based (Flash or Java) or it can have a downloadable client, but you will generally see lower end/less realistic production values than high end games, and also, lower system requirements, so the game will run on a wider range of machines.

A casual MMO often has a less dedicated/more mainstream set of users than a core MMO, so almost all casual MMO's are on the "Free to Play" model where the core game experience is free, but there is either a subscription upgrade (Runescape) or more commonly these days, a virtual item system where more dedicated users can purchase digital items to change either the look of their character or modify the functionality of the character ("power-ups").   What is interesting is that 3 Rings, the publisher of Puzzle Pirates, found that the virtual item model was more profitable than the subscription model since it brought in far more users than a paid "wall", and a certain percentage of them bought an astonishing amount of items - in a subscription world (I used to run music service Rhapsody, so I'm familiar with the model), everyone pays the same fee, no matter how much they play, so a lot of the model is based on continuing to charge users who don't use the service, which is not a good long term model - a Free to Play model more accurately matches the level of usage with the level of payment.

In addition, almost all casual MMO's are either web-based, or have a free, downloadable software client unlike core MMO's which are much bigger software clients purchased at retail for $40+.  As the web continues to grow (and speed up) as the primary vehicle to access entertainment, the attraction of downloadable or web MMO's is going to only grow vs purchasing in retail, so it lowers the barriers to entry for these games.  Given the lower production values and use of Flash/Java, it's far easier to create casual MMO's with smaller teams and less money (same theme as I preach here about the growth of web-based game vs downloadable ones), especially as service providers like TwoFish show up to help accelerate the infrastructure side of the process.

Key Casual MMOs and Service Providers

• Runescape - massively popular and profitable UK-based, Java, fantasy world popular with teen boys - has a subscription upgrade option, but lots of community functionality without upgrading
• Maple Story - first big break-out hit in the US - quirky, side-scrolling Korean game where almost all items are based on looks, not functionality - selling a ton of pre-paid cards at retail
• Puzzle Pirates - often seen as one of the first US casual MMO's - started as subscription, and then moved to a more successful free to play model - note:  I am a small shareholder
• Adventure Quest - never gets enough respect as an insanely profitable US MMO pioneer based on Florida, but it's a simpler flash-based adventure game popular with younger users.
• TwoFish Elements - a new casual MMO infrastructure provider from casual game veteran Lee Crawford - it helps aspiring casual MMO providers manage their virtual item, community and billing systems so they can focus on building the game itself - also launching a casual car-based MMO called EdgeRacers.  I sit on the Board of Directors
• Acclaim - the venerable console brand was bought out of bankruptcy by Howard Marks, a former Activision executive, who has used it to launch a series of interesting MMO's, primarily by localizing or cloning Asian ones.
• Multiple Korean Import Companies - Outspark, K2, etc. - there are a series of west coast, venture-backed companies importing and localizing Korean MMO's - good early results, but too early to see how sustainable they are

So given the astonishing financials that WoW showed in their recent Activision (NASDAQ: ATVI) merger-related SEC filing, why would anyone focus on a smaller, emerging category like casual MMO's vs making a core one?  The answer is that I believe that casual MMO's will appeal to a much broader demographic, will cost less to make, will have a more sustainable revenue model in Free to Play, and that the US market will support a much wider range of them since each user commits to far fewer weekly hours than a core MMO.  None of the major casual portals yet offer a casual MMO which is both a blessing and a curse - there is no easy way to promote a casual MMO through established casual channels, but it forces the publishers to look beyond the normal portals to drive traffic.

If you're World of Warcraft, life is great as a core MMO.  If you're one of the numerous failures like Gods & Heroes (tanked without launching after raising tens of millions), Vanguard (launched and was quickly sold for parts to its publisher Sony), the Matrix (Sega sold it to Warner which then shuttered it), (Asherons Call 2, and AD&D, both from Turbine) then being on the losing end of a $20M adventure is pretty painful, so I might suggest trying a casual MMO model vs everyone chasing the WoW dream.  This category will be a $1B+ category in the US within 2 years, and there are not any clear leaders yet, so it's going to be fun and profitable area, just like we've seen the massive growth in Web-Kinz-like virtual worlds.

The Inevitable Rise of Web Gaming

The earliest casual games were actually Java web games in the late 90's, but they faded due to lack of business model and lack of broadband, while Real Networks (NASDAQ: RNWK) and Shockwave (NASDAQ: Via-B) introduced the downloadable game $20 try-before-you buy model which then drove the casual market to its current billion dollar + status.  So what changed, and why do I continue to harp on web gaming as the future (not "present") of casual gaming, even though Gamezebo CEO Joel Brodie points out here that the revenue model is not there yet for web games?

The answer can be found in the seminal business book Innovators Dilemma: Why Great Companies Fail by Clayton Christensen.  The note card summary is that large, established companies focus on incremental improvements to their products because that's what their customers are asking for - e.g. casual game consumers want better graphics, better sound, deeper gameplay, etc. to justify purchasing a game for $20 in the midst of a content glut.   However, Christensen points out that what often happens is that a newer, related technology comes along which eventually "disrupts" the status quo, even if it satisfies only a small group of consumers in the beginning since it then evolves far faster, creates new business models along the way, and eventually takes over the bulk of the sector while the established players focus on their core products, even as they stop growing.  In this case, it's clearly web gaming vs downloadable games.

As recent as 2-3 years ago, web games were considered fit only for children or young men who would mindlessly play a wide array of cheaply made games created by a 1-2 people on a weekend.  Java had faded from the scene in 2D gaming, and the rise of Flash had started to enable small teams to make somewhat fun, short games.  There was no real business model around the games outside of some lame ads, most of the creators did it for free or for the publicity, and there were a few pioneering web gaming portals, such as New Grounds, Mini-clip and Addicting Games.  Many downloadable games didn't even have web versions, and it was not really considered a true gaming category, at least now when compared to mobile, console, handheld, PC, etc.

So what happened in the last 2-3 years?  Flash continued to improve its feature set, and the number of Flash programmers increased dramatically around the world.   As broadband adoption similarly increased on a global basis, it helped downloadable game sales, but more importantly, it made it much easier to get easily into web games, which were simultaneously increasing their production values.  The original web game portals grew massively, with Addicting Games now easily worth more than the entire $200M purchase price for AtomShockwave, and Miniclip ranks among the top 200 most popular websites in the world.   And the Internet ad market surged globally, with the acknowledgment that gaming was now an equal media partner to music, movies and TV.  Plus investors started to take notice of the amazing success Electronic Arts has had with Pogo, a primarily online games destination for 35+ yr-old women.

The next steps are obvious, and have been repeated in every new phase of the video game market.   Flash games are going to get better and better as the programmers and their tools evolve, starting to deliver handheld-like quality experiences in 2008 - see Fancy Pants Adventure or Ocean Explorer.  Now that the advertising/pre-roll market is so strong for web games since they perform so well, the game developers are understandably asking to be paid, whether its a flat fee for them to make some minor game changes for a distribution partner, or whether it's for a share of the advertising revenue they are generating.  And the player demographics are expanding broadly as the quality and type of games expand.

And new gaming sites and services are popping up to serve this fast-growing sector.

• Mochi Ads - has quickly emerged as the leading default flash game ad network, showing up in almost every flash game I see.  Although few developers will see a lot of money from Mochi in the short run, its one more revenue source than they had 2 years ago.
• FlashGameLicense.com - crudely built, but fast growing site which matches flash game developers and sites which want to feature their games - probably adds 10 games a day and is starting to facilitate a fair number of transactions
• Kongregate - introduced a community feature set on top of the basic flash games, including chat, badges, reviews, and a transparent ad revenue share for developers - keenly male and loyal audience
• Meez Games - couldn't go without recognizing our contributions in providing a curated set of high quality web games for a broad audience, with 3rd party developer features including Meez avatar insertion, ability to earn virtual currency, and integration into popular social media sites like Facebook, Perfspot and Friendster.
• Zynga - emerged recently as a popular social-media based set of multiplayer classic games such as Poker and Blackjack - now opening up to 3rd party developers

There are many more key players that I'm sure I've forgotten to mention, but the predictable pattern is clear - web gaming will grow quickly, take market share, and drive a huge amount of value in the marketplace.  The current leaders in downloadable games would do well to recognize the emerging power of this sector, and at least take advantage of it to help market their downloadable games, as I have posted about here and here.

Casual Connect AMS 2008 - Part 2 - The Opportunity

I spent a fair amount of time in my previous Casual Connect Amsterdam 2008 post discussing the PAIN emerging in "traditional"/downloadable casual games.  Unfortunately, the post was picked up in other influential media outlets like Silicon Alley Insider and Gamezebo, so I now have to put some actual thought into the 2nd part of the post about the OPPORTUNITY in casual games, but fortunately, it's quite easy :)

The summary from the last PAIN post is that the downloadable game growth is slowing, portals are understandably squeezing developers, and costs are going up.  So what should a developer do?  Given what I saw at AMS, at least 50% of developers are going to peacefully follow their friends off the lemming cliff while complaining about how "this really sucks".  The rest are going to step up and adapt their creative talent to a new, and possibly more profitable world since there are huge opportunities here.  So what should developers and the overall casual biz do?

1. Make flash versions of your games - notice that I didn't say make "web" versions of your games since a lot of developers think that Active X = Web - It Doesn't.  Active X versions are web-wrapped C++ versions of games that require a web install and aren't available to Firefox users - it works and is in some cases better than flash, but absolutely kills the take-up rate and distribution opportunities.  As I said on my Casual Connect panel, flash games are like music videos (I ran Rhapsody a long time ago) in that they used to be solely a cost sink for bands/artists to help promote CD's, but now they are starting to generate actual advertising revenue, especially from pre-roll.   Few people are going to get rich with their web game, but it is now a cash-generating asset vs a pain-in-the-ass thing to do, so DO THEM since flash games are the core to new revenue options
2. Make Good flash versions of your games - this may seem like a repeat of the post above, but it's actually different.  Most casual developers make lame flash versions of their games since they or their portal partners are worried about cannibalizing their downloadable game business - although a portal friend of mine told me last week that all of their data shows that web game play has ZERO effect on those who will purchase the game.  However, my first point is that developers can now generate at least some revenue off their web games (btw: you definitely be paid at least something by your distributor for your web game), so it makes sense to create a compelling experience - e.g. The Last Day of Work gang, my favorite small developer, has "state" built into their flash games so that users can come back to the game after being away vs having always to start over - starting over each time is fine with puzzle games like Bubble Shooter, but not with deeper, more linear games like Plant Tycoon.  I'm not saying developers should offer the full functionality of a downloadable game, just that they should offer a reasonable enough subset to make it interesting and profitable.  Take a look at what Enkord does with Clash n Slash or JAM XM, where the flash game is pretty fun, but the upsell to downloadable is definitely present each round since it offers a richer experience.  So DONT MAKE LAME FLASH GAMES
3. Find New Distribution Partners - it's admittedly self-serving since Meez Games offers a compelling additional channel (including on social media channels like Friendster and Facebook), but in the days of consolidating distribution power, once developers have built compelling flash versions of their games, they MUST find new ways to introduce their cool downloadable games to new users.  Meekly submitting their games to RealGames, Oberon, BigFish, Yahoo, AOL etc. is a required part of the casual business, but to NOT actively pursue emerging marketing channels like Kongregate, Addicting Games and Armor Games, makes little sense since it's a way to diversify risk in a very fluid business sector - the web is fragmenting, and developers must start acting like the more nimble flash developers to get their games out to the entire world.
4. Develop Your Own Site - possibly my most frustrating set of discussions were with downloadable developers/publishers who indicated they had not developed their own sites beyond "brochure-ware" since they didn't want to piss off distributors.  I hate to break it to them, but no distributor cares about your site unless you are massively discounting vs your distributors.   So why develop your own site if it's never going to be huge?  Because everything in life is about leverage and search engine optimization - in this case, you're hopefully going to get a bunch of people to try or buy your game (especially in the flash world), so they should all know where to buy the game, which is at YOUR web site, not at a distributor's site as the firs choice - in a lot of cases, the traffic, revenue and email addresses will make a huge dent in your game development cost vs watching portals take it all.  I'm not saying don't distribute to big portals - I'm just saying that most of the time (Oberon accepted something like fewer than 20% of games sent to them in 2007) you're on your own with a game, so make sure that every game player is clear on how to get to your downloadable game on your site, and that users can easily download & purchase it.  If you get a big hit, then  you can even build a simple site around the game, with all of the community and add-on features that your rabid fans would like to see.

I could go on and on, but we'll leave the specifics for another post where we go into more detail about the emerging exciting world of flash-only games like Ocean Explorer or More Bloons.  The key here is that great downloadable developers can no longer let their only agenda be set by portals - there are numerous opportunities opening up in the web/flash world to bring your game out to a much wider audience, to take back some control of your destiny, and to generate more revenue.  More to come....

Casual Connect AMS 2008 Thoughts - Upcoming Pain & Opportunity - Part 1

  I just returned from Casual Connect Amsterdam 2008, part of the periodic casual game conference show series put on by the Casual Games Association.  Although it is a long trip from San Francisco, this was a really interesting show since 2008 will be a time of change in casual games, and we're finally seeing the drivers, which are creating both Pain & Opportunity for developers.  This post is about the PAIN and I'll follow up about the Opportunity.  It may seem to be pro-developer, anti-distributor post, but it's really just about what naturally happens in early stage media sectors as they mature.  Small players get squeezed, and must adapt or go away, as I blogged about here in one of my first posts almost 3 years ago.

On the surface, casual games are on fire.  There are numerous articles in main stream publications focused on the sector, the success of the Nintendo DS and Wii are primarily due to casual games, and advertising interest is growing, and most of the top 10 in mobile games are seen to be casual, not hard-core, games.   It's now becoming common knowledge that everyone plays games, not just young men, and gaming is truly becoming an equal partner to the traditional media sectors of movies, music and television.

So why the PAIN comment?  Its somewhat related to the good news above - now that we're looking at a $2B+ growing global business, we're seeing the issues below, which prompted a great veteran developer to say this week "the gravy train is over".

1. Rising development costs - as generally happens in growing media sectors, the costs of each successive game keep going up as developers try to increase the level in graphics, gameplay, sound and overall game depth, plus reflect their own increasing costs.  The distributors hasten this process by using "fit and finish" to help determine if they're going to carry a game or not, as does increased competition, but ego also plays a role.  It's routine now for developers to tell me their game costs $250K+, and an increasing number are costing more than $500K - that compares to $50K-$100K as recent as 1-2 years ago, and that all comes out of the profit line.  A comparable example is in movie sequels, where the rule of thumb is that the sequel costs twice as much and usually does less in revenue.
2. Slowing growth in downloadable games - after speaking with almost every developer and distributors, it's clear that downloadable "try before you buy" revenue growth is slowing significantly as conversion rates of download-to-pay drop, and as the increasing supply of somewhat undifferentiated games lets most users enjoy a ton of gameplay if they spend just one hour on each game.  I do not believe for one moment that downloadable games are going away any faster than banner ads are (whose death keeps being prematurely foretold), but it seems clear that free ad-supported games, flash games, subscription games, and micro-transaction games are allow growing faster, albeit from a smaller base.
3. Increased distribution power -  although there has been very little actual consolidation among the top casual game distributors (Real, Big Fish, AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Wild Tangent), the increasing supply of games, often undifferentiated, means that they can squeeze developers on lower margins, lower prices, and other less favorable terms.  In addition, at least the first 2 big portals increasingly publish their own games, making less room in the promotional process for 3rd party games.  At the end of the day, there is no break out game that is a MUST HAVE for any portal and since they are all big businesses, they can squeeze harder, just as always happens at this part of the market life cycle.  The other BIG issue with distribution power is that it limits innovation in the sector since they can't/won't support any cool community or transaction element beyond traditional single player downloadable games since they want to maintain their common user experience, as well as a walled garden - this makes it hard until they all roll out compelling community/ad/transactional solutions, which will, of course, all be different from each other.  Some of this will improve as we see new distribution solutions appear, like we now offer at Meez Games, but I'll discuss it in more detail next post.
4. Decreasing game prices - related to the over supply of content, lower conversion rates and increasing power of distributors, it's no secret that the effective price of a game has dropped to around $12 from the suggested $20 retail price, and that's due to discounting, inclusion in subscription packages, and other ways to effectively discount the prices of the game to the consumer.   All that comes out of the developer side unless you see a similar or greater increase in units sold (price elasticity), but no one seems to think that is actually happening - what we're seeing is top games spending less time in the top 10, selling fewer units, and generating less revenue, but that may still suit the distributor since they sell the eyeballs, push more people into subscription packages, etc.
5. Flood of cheap suppliers - if the last 2 years were about the entry of Eastern European and Russian developers, this conference was about the rise of Indian dev shops, many promising lower and prices, not just to develop 3rd party IP, but also to distribute their own games, which adds to the glut.  Plus there is a tendency of these new entrants to "clone" popular games, which helps to undercut the category, as we have seen in time-management games or what we'll see this year in hidden object games.

The end result is a set of extreme challenges for the developers in casual games, as well as some moderate challenges for the distributors since the new growth opportunities all require a higher level of investment than their current models do, but we'll talk about that it in the next post since its the fun part of 2008.

Tringo Web Game - Just Keeps Going

As part of our original business plan at Donnerwood, we licensed the non-Second Life rights to the wonderful new casual game Tringo, created by Nathan Keir in the virtual world as the first virtual game ever licensed for real world use.  As Donnerwood morphed as a company to focus on the deployment of avatar service MEEZ, we decided to re-license the IP rights to Tringo where it made sense.  To do so, we used a cheap off-shore coder to bang out a very simple web version of Tringo (available here) so that possible developer and publisher partners could understand the basics of the game before entering Second Life to see the full multi-player implementation.

We have since rolled out a GBA version from Crave, and signed a broad agreement with Yoo Media to publish an ITV and skill-based version of the game - but what is surprising is how the beta web version explodes upward with periodic, but regular activity.  In addition, there is a lot of feedback on how we can improve the web version, although it was never intended to be anything but a showpiece for more polished offline versions. 

First it was the press associated with the GBA release, then it was Bit Torrent's founder Bram Cohen's generous mention of us in his blog (thanks Bram - he has the highest score we have ever seen, at an astonishing 320!), and last week it was a review on cool casual game site JayisGames.com, which was then picked up and enhanced by multiple Japanese sites, leading to more than 30,000 players last week!

Although it's a good feeder for Meez.com (can get a special Tringo t-shirt in Meez), we would rather do developer/publisher deals for the remaining rights - wireless, casual PC, XBox Live Arcade, PSP/DS, as well as the other inquiries we get, such as board games and joystick games, so drop us a line at sean@donnerwood.com if interested.