[casual_games] Casual games user groups (player side)
Lennard Feddersen
lennard at RustyAxe.com
Wed Sep 28 14:04:25 EDT 2005
I tried to get my last title, 50 Castles, into Massives' advertising
system and didn't get anywhere. Maybe they will be more friendly to
casual games in the future - I thought I saw a press release earlier
this year that they are now working with somebody in this space.
Anyhow. Some friends and I started a seperate venture this Spring (with
a few grant $ from the friendly CDN govt.) which places advertising into
games. We are expecting to launch the service at the end of October
when the next Rusty Axe title goes out. If you are interested in seeing
the system at work you can go to my site and download the 50 Castles PC
demo which has been ad. enabled so the system can be seen in use. There
is a slight performance issue (:->)) if the user is offline that should
be addressed next week, otherwise there are no known issues.
Drop me a line if you are interested. Drop me a line if you want to
promote your site!
Thanks for the hand onto the soapbox,
Lennard Feddersen
CEO, Rusty Axe Games, Inc.
www.RustyAxe.com
Lennard at RustyAxe.com
P. 250-635-7623 F. 1-309-422-2466
3521 Dogwood, Terrace, BC, Canada, V8G-4Y7
BRENT SILBY wrote:
> This is one of the main problems for casual games producers. Its the
> age of the audience. A game (or site) can be extremely popular, but if
> its targetting under 20 year olds, then the only real revenue it can
> generate is through advertising. That's one of my problems. My games
> generate a huge traffic flow, but since they are really geared up to
> the casual, young game audience there is no scope to offer download
> versions for sale (they are really too small for that anyway). Also,
> having subscription system for more content is not a real possibility
> because the audience are too young (and there are thousands of
> completely free game sites).
>
> Now, I've learned that you need a staggering traffic flow to make any
> real money from advertising. I've actually taken the ads off my site,
> because the income was not that great and I figure the site looks
> nicer with no ads. My focus now is to license content to other sites.
> That works quite well for me. But I don't know how these other sites
> can afford to pay the bills, since internet advertising rates are not
> that great. There has to be a way to generate reasonable income from
> games that target younger/casual players. But I haven't figured it out
> yet. I'm open to suggestions :)
>
> BTW: I agree that the MOG is an awesome idea for a site. Not only does
> it offer an ever changing range of games, it has the community aspect
> and also a competitive aspect--with a count of how many games each
> user has mogged. It will be interesting to see how many games they end
> up with.
>
> Cheers,
> Brent.
>
> /DEF-LOGIC
> VIDEOGAMES
> www.def-logic.com <http://www.def-logic.com>/
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Wade Tinney <mailto:wade at largeanimal.com>
> *To:* colin at 3rdsense.com <mailto:colin at 3rdsense.com> ; 'IGDA
> Casual Games SIG Mailing List' <mailto:casual_games at igda.org>
> *Sent:* Thursday, September 29, 2005 3:12 AM
> *Subject:* RE: [casual_games] Casual games user groups (player side)
>
>
> MOG is a great idea and very well executed. Congratulations on
> getting it off the ground. I've got the little "Mog it!" button on
> my tool bar and have been using it.
>
> I'm curious about the demographics of MOG users. I realize you are
> not explicitly gathering this information, but I'm wondering if
> you have any sense of it, nonetheless. My intuition leads me
> to guess that the people featured on the WildGames page I
> referenced (
> http://www.wildgames.com/ECS/htdocs/contests.aspx?dp=wildgames&bw=high
> <http://www.wildgames.com/ECS/htdocs/contests.aspx?dp=wildgames&bw=high>)
> are probably *not* likely MOG users, and that your users are
> probably significantly younger; more like a Miniclip audience.
> Correct me if I'm wrong (either Colin, or anyone else reading
> this), but I don't think this younger audience is purchasing
> downloadable casual games. They may be playing them, but I don't
> get the sense that they are paying for them (at least not in
> significant numbers). That audience seems like a perfect one to
> monetize via advertising, but not to sell the "classic"
> downloadable, single-player game to.
>
> Taking this assumption further, it seems that while a site like
> MOG is a tremendous resource for gauging the success of one's
> web-based (read: ad rev generating) game offerings, and to see
> what is working in that market, it may not be such relevant data
> for try-and-buy downloadable games, because its just not the same
> audience. In other words, I can't assume that the games that are
> popular with MOGgers (online, download, or otherwise) are going to
> be popular with those people who are actually buying games. Also,
> if my site doesn't have a way of monetizing traffic outside of
> game sales (i.e. no advertising), then it doesn't help me to
> attract lots of traffic to my site (via MOG, Newgrounds, or
> whatever), since I'm only going to spend more money serving up
> games to people who will likely not buy them.
>
> To tell the truth, I hope that I'm wrong about all this; I just
> wanted to throw it out there and see what people think. Hopefully
> someone has some data/insight which will disprove this theory.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Wade
>
>
> Wade Tinney
> partner, game designer
> Large Animal Games
> http://www.largeanimal.com <http://www.largeanimal.com/>
> wade at largeanimal.com
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> *From:* casual_games-bounces at igda.org
> [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] *On Behalf Of *Colin Cardwell
> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 27, 2005 9:54 PM
> *To:* 'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'
> *Subject:* RE: [casual_games] Casual games user groups (player side)
>
> As some of you know, we've launched MOG
> (www.millionsofgames.com <http://www.millionsofgames.com>) in
> the last couple of weeks. The very purpose of the site is to
> provide a community for casual game fans. Although at the
> moment Moggers (our members) can store their favourite games
> and rate them, they will soon be able to add comments/reviews
> of games. We also track game plays and who has Mogged a game.
> The data is time based so once we have sufficient volume of
> usage, we'll be releasing daily, weekly, monthly charts
> overall and in each game category, hoping to give everyone who
> is interested in casual games a very valuable source of useful
> data.
>
> The growth of the site I think is interesting. It has been
> picked up by quite a lot of news sites, the home page of
> Slashdot helped a lot. What's key for us though is that almost
> 900 games have been added in only 3 weeks by our Moggers and
> if that rate continues, we'll pretty soon have the largest
> list of online and casual games around, which is our goal. Add
> to that reviews and the other data we're collecting and you
> can begin to see the potential of the site.
>
> I'm not just trying to tell you how wonderful our site is by
> the way, I'm just trying to explain some of its potential, it
> certainly still has a long way to go. We very much want this
> to be a community site so we would be very interested in
> views/ideas/feedback/requests from this group in particular.
> If this site builds to the level we anticipate, it will be a
> great place to promote any new games you have (and old ones
> for that matter), get ideas for games, see who likes what,
> find out what doesn't work, etc etc.
>
> I hope this was useful..
>
>
> Colin
>
> Colin Cardwell - Director - 3RD sense Australia Pty Ltd
> *T.* +61 (0) 2 *9959 1008 M.* +61 (0) 401 888 322 *
> E.* colin at 3rdsense.com <mailto:colin at 3rdsense.com> W.
> www.3rdsense.com <http://www.3rdsense.com/>
>
> www.playaholics.com <http://www.playaholics.com/> - play games
> and win stuff
> www.chickstop.com <http://www.chickstop.com/> - for girls who
> like to play
> www.millionsofgames.com <http://www.millionsofgames.com/> -
> source, save and share your favourite online games
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* casual_games-bounces at igda.org
> [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] *On Behalf Of *Wade Tinney
> *Sent:* Wednesday, 28 September 2005 12:30 AM
> *To:* 'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'
> *Subject:* RE: [casual_games] Casual games user groups (player
> side)
>
> Just to clarify, James. You are asking about groups/sites
> where casual games are discussed and/or reviewed by players,
> right (and NOT links to sites that simply distribute said games)?
>
> It's a very good question. I've had a tough time finding such
> sites in the past. I'd love to hear what you uncover.
>
> There is a lot of player-to-player interaction on Pogo, of
> course, but it happens in real-time during play.
>
> Also, if you've never checked out the contest winners pages on
> WildGames, those are pretty interesting/entertaining as well.
> At the bottom of this page, you'll find a whole set of "view
> winners" links:
> http://www.wildgames.com/ECS/htdocs/contests.aspx?dp=wildgames&bw=high
> <http://www.wildgames.com/ECS/htdocs/contests.aspx?dp=wildgames&bw=high>
>
> I realize it's not exactly what you're talking about, but if
> you're looking to better understand the casual audience, I
> think its pretty useful.
>
> -Wade
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> *From:* casual_games-bounces at igda.org
> [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] *On Behalf Of *Jack
> Pearson
> *Sent:* Monday, September 26, 2005 4:16 PM
> *To:* Andy Makely; IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
> *Subject:* RE: [casual_games] Casual games user groups
> (player side)
>
> www.tournamentgames.com <http://www.tournamentgames.com>
> online pay to play tournaments. All DirectX casual games
> online since since 1997.
> 236 million games played to date. 350,000 played each week
>
> Jack Pearson, CEO
> Tournament Games Inc,
> www.TGPool.com
> www.TournamentGames.com <http://www.TournamentGames.com>
> jack at tournamentgames.com <mailto:jack at tournamentgames.com>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> *From:* casual_games-bounces at igda.org
> [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]*On Behalf Of
> *Andy Makely
> *Sent:* Monday, September 26, 2005 1:39 PM
> *To:* IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
> *Subject:* Re: [casual_games] Casual games user groups
> (player side)
>
> www.jayisgames.com <http://www.jayisgames.com> is a
> great games blog that covers primarily web games, but
> also touches on downloadables sometimes.
>
> --
> andy
>
> On 9/26/05, *James Baker - WDDG/Inferno*
> <james at wddg.com <mailto:james at wddg.com>> wrote:
>
>
> I'm trying to put together a database of
> user-groups and/or websites on
> the user/player side that are dedicated to casual
> games. Anything from
> forums dedicated to word games to yahoo groups to
> newsgroups to websites
> would help me out.
>
> Thanks!
>
> James Baker
> Principal
> WDDG/Inferno/Funtank
> 212-219-9222
> james at wddg.com <mailto:james at wddg.com>
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>
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