Casual Connect Day 2 Keynote: Steve Youngwood, MTVn/Nickelodeon

Terse notes I took during the Day 2 keynote. [My thoughts/impressions in braces]

Aiming to be premiere provider of branded entertainment communities, and gaming is key part of that strategy

It's not just kids & boys playing games, we have gamers in every demo; kids, moms, boomers... [note the lingo, this guy definitely steeped in the TV biz]

Our goal is to be the preeminent kids and family brand of the 21st century

Check out this demo reel.

(Lots of footage of celebs, TV properties, etc, *very* little games stuff thrown in there. Seems to be falling flat with audience. Only online property in initial vid clip is Nick.com, only a minute into it, and features all the TV properties, lasted about 5 seconds. No shockwave game footage)

"Demo-targeted brands, engaging the whole family"

[more talk along these lines. Clear the games piece is just that... a piece. Part of a well-rounded marketing campaign. Not "games first"]

"this is what our audience is doing online"

casual games are to digital as video is to TV [wtf?]

biz is about:

• Advertising
• Revenue stream
• Brand building

[so far, what he's said has seemed like brand-building is first, not 3rd)

on their kids sight, 4.5M kids registed in 6m - more than anyone in the space.

acquisitions - addicting games, shockwave, neopets...

• Addicting games --> teen boy targeted. 9M uu's. 100 games intro'd /mo, 4000 games in the library [not sure what their search is like, but maybe it's time to prune that library?]
• Neopets: 4.8 UU's - 172/min month per user average. launched item-based biz with nexon
• 1 billion games played per month across shockwave/neopets/addictingames

"future of a fragmented web - people not going to portals" [I agree with him on this one]

Will distribute content too, on other people's portals. 

over next 2 years:

100M investment in casual gaming sites, titles and platforms (big font, this is the big announce of the keynote I guess]

Will be invested in:

• myNoggin - preschoolers playing educational titles around brands like Dora, ... (Cox, Charter, Insight...) uses affiliate models ands ubscription model (ad free) [their answer to Club Penguin]
• Multiplayer and coop games will be focus on Nick.com
• Nicktropolis - Nick gaming club subscription offering - early 2008.
• For teen girls "TheN + addicting games" - early 2008 - N-Games.com - first casual games site targeting only teen girls. activities like "avatar prom", "Avatar mall". (Demo - tv trailer for "the hookup". 'a game of charm treachery and deceipt'. "get your flirt on")
• Addicting games - 'have just scratched the surface'. Increased emphasis on user-submitted game. intro'ing game making engine to make it easier. Expanded game offerings to intro casual mmos. "AddictingWorlds" Partnership with Habbo, Neopets, are indicative of direction. Will work with creators of all casual Mmo's.
• Shockwave - 35+ women. [WTF? Really?] Focus on innovation [hmph], Jigsaw video demo [not that impressive - youtube-quality flash movie played on jigsaw pieces.] Also will be increasing publishing and distribution of downloadable games across other sites (example - carrie the caregiver [this downloadable casual title did pretty well on the portals, IIRC])
• Neopets: Company now called Neostudios: continue momentum of neopets, build new mmo type experiences - a new virtual world ever other year. "Casual MMO's fasted growing segment in the industry"

Demo video 2. [There are games in this one. montage of existing game footage from the sites above, nothing new that lept out at me]

Thanks. $100M. etc etc.

 

Thoughts:

Overall, indicative of a growing interest in online/interactive from the major media companies. They certainly are serious when you look at the acquisitions & interest. However, some were viewing that $100M number is a kind of "right hand turn" on their part. One interesting take on this is to ask "what percentage of their total 'R&D' (probably the wrong term in this case) does this represent?". How does it compare to the total amount the spend sourcing and developing new IP for shows, etc? My guess is 3-5%. If that. 

If that's the case, then it's not a right-hand-turn, but more of a toe in the water.

Of course, to those in the casual games space, it appears to be a big, serious, gnarly King Kong toe in the water!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing the 100M. That's real money and they appear to have a battle plan. Should be interesting to watch.

Casual Connect 2007: Initial Thoughts

Today was day one of the "Casual Connect" conference. Day 2, officially, I guess, since they held a kind of intro/primer track on Monday.

We also held our Microsoft Casual Games partner day on Monday, an invite-only event for developer partners, and that's one of the reasons I haven't been posting much, as I was working on a bunch of the presentations for that event, including one that I gave. They'll be posted publicly at some point in the near future, and I'll post a link at that time.

The energy at Casual Connect is pretty palpable. Interesting mix of perceptions. Existing player both enjoying the 'vindication' of having been there first, but also seeming a little put off by all these people coming to "our show" (sound familiar, GDC old timers?), and perhaps a little nervous tone to some of their voices about all the big players showing up?

And big players there were. Of course Microsoft is there, but so's Google, and Viacom, and lots of analysts and VCs. Suits! At a casual games conference! Did they not get the memo? :-)

I'm going to have to blog some lengthy posts about impressions of the show and some individual sessions later this week. In the meantime, I'll leave you with two points I think are interesting:

• Among the people at the show, instead of the usual confusion about "what does 'casual' really mean?", there is a lot more agreement, but its falling into several very distinct camps: Casual in the web-or-downloadable-like-you'd-get-from-Popcap sense; Broad-appeal, mostly-retail console titles like Buzz or Big Brain Academy, and the casual-mmo-is-da-bomb-WoW-better-watchout crowd.
• A lot of conversations about all the new casual divisions at big publishers like Ubi, EA, etc. Personally, I htink this is going to be one of the more entertaining spaces to watch. Not because I think the best games will come from there (they might, they might not), but because I think it's going to be *really* interesting to see whether companies used to the process-heavy, gauntlet-running processes used to prudently conceive/greenlight/produce/market/sell $20M games are going to be able to *internally* adapt to the nimble nature of the casual market. I think it's going to be a painful adaptation for many, I beleive.

Another observation: If you hear someone say they beleive the future is in "MySpace + Facebook + MapleStory + YouTube + HabboHotel", you have just heard someone that has no frikkin clue what they are looking for, apart from something that will magically be worth a billion dollars in two years. Just walk away. If they are a VC, feel free to take their money first, by all means :-)