[casual_games] Top Download List

[Donald Bahlman]

Good point James, an Industry-wide Top 10 Billboard would be a great reference indeed.  But I think this will take some time to develop.  There are a couple of sites that have really helped me out, they don't report game sells but they do focus on website traffic.  Which for an online industry like ours, is very important.  The sites are www.alexa.com and www.adbrite.com  Between these two, you can see the amount of traffic going to a given site and what kind of advertising some of these are doing.

Maybe one way to speed up the process of a Industry-wide Billboard is for someone to write some kind of modular reporting software that could easily slip into the existing industry frameworks (i.e. download and cart systems without interfering with ongoing transactions).  Offering something that's no threat, no trouble and no cost might get the big guys on board faster.  Especially if the report was an overall online summary which linked no specific data to any certain site/company.  For me, I don't necessarily want to know what Real or Yahoo is doing, just give me the bottom-line across the industry.  If we ran this kind of reporting software into a common database this would over time, give us a far more accurate industry-wide reading while protecting the details of individual companies.  Maybe that's a similar idea to what you're getting at Colin?

I'd also like to see some system where maybe 3 separate reporting sites/companies offer these stats on a non-profit, no fee basis to professionals in the industry.  Why free?  Two reasons.  These sites will grow big very quickly and you can keep track of all the new guys coming in by making this free to them.  After all, low overhead is one of the attractive benefits to casual game devs/pubs.  And sites that volunteer this information could certainly offset their operational expenses by selling advertising.

One parting thought on "...'play' monitoring tools."  I think that would help us not only in the North American markets but would also help us test other new markets like Europe and East Asia; specifically in places like South Korea and China.  From what I have noticed watching these markets, Casual Multiplayer and Handhelds is pretty big.

This is truly an exciting time in our industry and I think all of us have the opportunity and responsibility to look at the mistakes made in the PC and Console markets, and try to make our niche a more developer/publisher friendly environment.  It would certainly help out the little guy.  I know, because for now I am one of those little guys.

Thanks for the SIG, I glad to be a part.

BEST!
Donald Bahlman, CEO/Founder
xBlitz Entertainment

o: 214-556-4589
f:  214-594-8899

www.xblitz.com
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