[casual_games] Different Payment Models

[Juan Gril]

There are a lot of people who said most of the stuff I wanted to say,
so I'll just add a couple of more things:

- Here is what could happen if there would not be try and buy and all
casual games would cost at least 25 cents to be played:
. Customers will not know what game to play, because it's not an issue
of how much, it's just an issue of getting the credit card out of the
wallet.
. Those who are succesful in the casual game space already will start
using most of their money for marketing campaigns. Here are some
examples:

* Sandlot Games will get product placement in the next "Pirates of the
Caribbean" movie.
* Big Fish Games will get product placement in the next "Free Willy" movie.
* Popcap pays millions to a PR firm to get John Vechey on Oprah.

. 80% of the revenue generated is distributed among the first 30
games. What's the difference from today? Today there is a chance that
one of us could have one of those 30 games without having millions to
spend on marketing.

(btw, if Sandlot, Big Fish, or Popcap use my idea the least you can do
is get my name in the credits of the movie, or make me meet Oprah)

- Advertising is making money already. 50% of the 350M projected by
DFC is believed to come from advertising. It's not what if, it's
already here, it has always been here. But there are three things to
consider:

1) it takes years to become a trusted publication from the eyes of an
advertiser,

2) there are only a few "casual games publications" (portals) which
neither of them have a standard ad size or campaign format in common.
Campaigns for just one site are very expensive and time consuming to
make, and advertisers will not bother because it's not about just the
eyeballs, it's also about the account manager at the ad agency who is
underpaid and swamped with work and will look for the biggest bang for
the buck to get rid of the client asap (please look at what lessons
have the internet portals learned in the past).

3) Many ads in the DFC calculation are ads "around" the games (text
links in the same page, banners on top of the page, etc.), and it can
be argued those ad views are not directly generated by the game. In
the words of Adeo Ressi: "My game was so bad, the banner ad got more
hours of game play".

Standarization of advertising in games across all portals will not
only simplify how advertisers can get ads in games, it will also help
determine once and for all what ad click or view is generated by the
developer. I want a 20 sec spot, IAB standard-x by standard-y pixels,
appearing before every free gaming session. Simple for the advertiser,
and obvious to the portal and the developer about thanks to who the
player saw that ad.

Cheers,

Juan