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.

Hey! You got GoPets in my Messenger!

Pretty cool product launch we did today that I thought was worth pointing out here.

If you are running Windows Live Messenger, and you try adding lilypanda@gopetslive.com to your friends list, and then start a conversation with Lily and say "play", you will (after some plug-in install fun the first time around) get an activity window that looks something like this:

GoPets, is a 3D persistent virtual world (some would say 'casual mmo meets tamagochi') with an in-game item sales biz model. Windows Live Messenger is a communications app with an installed base of over a quarter billion people. I'd say that's got some potential, no? :-)

Congrats to the GoPets team and the folks on the Messenger team that made this all happen.

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 :-)

Polygon Family: Episode 2

Because YouTube is the bestest thing EVAR!

Long lost from the Siggraph Electronic Theater a few years back.

Game Trials, Rentals, Re-sales: Good or Bad?

The debate never ends. Some argue that all of these allow gamers to get 'free goods' without buying and thus negatively impact sales (the 'Why give away the cow?' crew). The proponents argue that these things ease people into purchases, attract more gamers to the fold, and let gamers spend more dollars because they feel their dollar go further (the "Spread the love" crew).

The argument comes up in discussion of rental or subscription to retail games as well as in discussion of free web-based casual games and other casual games distribution mechanisms.

I've blogged about this debate before, and how other industries might give us pointers.

On that note, two related pieces of research popped onto the radar today:

For the Nays: This piece of research on radio's effect on music sales, concluding that radio play does NOT boost sales of recorded music, and in fact may do the opposite. (As a side note, I am personally VERY skeptical of this peice of research. It seems to jump very quickly to support an argument for music licensors charging license fees to radio stations for airplay. I do wonder whether it has some bias behind it.)

And in the other corner: This post from Freakonomics on Libraries. While it doesn't argue that libraries are good for book sales, it does point out that books still sell despite them. It also asks out the provocative question "If libraries didn't exist, could you start one today?", concluding that the publishing industry would likely attempt to quash such an effort or at least shackle it with a license fee structure. I think most would agree that libraries are good for society and good for culture, and that they haven't yet killed the publishing industry. (Oh, and be sure to read the comment thread. There are some links to a number of cool things including some examples of people that ARE in fact starting libraries today, on the web)

Anyhow, there you have it. Arguments to back up whichever side of the debate you are on. Please ignore the other one.

Line Rider Runner Ad

via Adventure in Digital Marketing comes this nifty advertising banner/overlay, which is an Adidas ad play on Line Rider. Unfortunately it falls a little flat due to the lack of physics, which is what made Line Rider the sensational toy that it is. If the runner had jumped, rolled, etc, this could have been as good. Still a nifty try Adidas!

Activision taking the low road with Guitar Hero III

Arg! It's not enough that Sony's peeing in the pool, but Activision has to add to the melange?

This from Joystiq (via Raph):

They fully updated the graphics, including doing motion capture for the avatars, and the NPCs in the background, like the go-go girls in the stage that’s set in a strip club. Neversoft has a full-sized motion capture studio at their facility in California, so why not make good use of it? Especially if you have to mocap some strippers. Tough work, this rock stuff. Based on what we saw, the dancers will be giving Soul Calibur a run for the money. Jiggle factor five, Mr. Sulu.

Thanks, Activision! At least I know have my decision made easier for me. Rock Band it is!

Social Networking for Dummies

This video *brilliantly* explains social networking in laymans terms, in an entertaining fashion, in under two minutes.



[update: The authors of that video at CommonCraft have a number of others - brilliant]

Duelling Guitar (games)

I just blogged some more Rock Band footage, this time out of the E3 MS press conference.

Among the various bits of news leading up to and coming from E3, are a bunch of factoids released about the 2 duelling guitar games: The Activision-acquired Guitar Hero sequel Guitar Hero 3 and the MTV/EA published Rock Band from the creators of GH, Harmonix.

I'm starting to worry a little about the escalating arms race of spend going into both these titles to pick up various music licenses, band/musician signups, etc.

Rock band has an advisory board.
Rock Band gets Metallica, plus has entire albums as DLC.
Slash to be the Boss in GHIII, plus do an original track for the game

etc, etc.

It's great for consumers, but I hope that (a) they remember that it's about the GAME, and (b) they both make money so we see more of the same.

To be clear, I'm sure they'll both see an assload of units, I'm just wondering whether the budget growth is outpacing the likely sales.

Facebook factoid

So I hooked up with some former Matrox co-workers last night in Toronto for dinner, and amongst other topics, the subject of Facebook came up. Some of that conversation became relevant to a thread over on Raph's blog, so I commented there and am reposting here.

I signed up for Facebook to check it out after several friends far more in-the-know about these things said that it was going to be dominant based on it’s prowess as an extensible platform (Marc Andreesen has a great blog post about this here).

Anyhow, I was surprised to see (a) how many people I knew were already on it, and (b) how they came out of the woodwork to find me, sans my searching for them. After perhaps 10 days of usage, it’s already my 3rd most useful SN service after linkedin and flickr. (I guess I have to add that Xbox Live is a SN service in many ways, and would come in #1 as most used, and perhaps #2 in most useful).

One trivial Facebook factoid that might skew the data: I’m a montrealer and have many friends in Toronto. Toronto has the largest population of facebook users of any city in the world, with over 700k users!

My own hypothesis on this is that it’s a combination of (a) higher BBand penetration in Canada than in US, (b) Facebook being relatively unknown in Europe/Asia (asserted by one of the dinner attendees, a Brit), and (c) Toronto being fairly affluent compared to the rest of Canada and certainly a bigger city than any other in Canada.

Note to Sony: Please quit peeing in the pool

Metaphorically speaking that is. They are really F***ing things up for the rest of us.

Thanks to N'gai Crole (via Alice) for the pointer to this ad for PS2 that Sony recently took out in India (rant to follow):

Here we have such a wonderful opportunity, with a growing, tech savvy, increasingly affluent, group of consumers in India, where gaming has been relatively small in the past, but is growing by leaps and bounds. Do we need to screw it up by importing our biased, misogynist, ass-backward marketing practices with us? We have enough trouble with our baggage of existing content, we don't need the marketing folks to push us further over the edge.

Thank you Sony! Thank goodness Indian women won't make the mistake of thinking they are welcome to purchase and play games. Good thing we'll make it clear from the get-go that games are for introverted pimply-faced boys. Wouldn't want anyone thinking otherwise.

Sheesh. As Alice asked, "Honestly. What kind of cavemen do they employ in Sony's marketing dept?"

E3 predictions

It's been a while since I've talked about the E3 Supernova and the resultant "Dwarf Star E3".

Since E3's kicking off this week while I rock the great white north, I guess now's the time to get predictions in. I think it's going to flop. Someone will claim victory by some standard of measure, but I think it's going to flop, and next years will either not exist, or be even smaller.

Perhaps rather than 'dwarf star', 'old yeller E3' would be a better name?

Sticks and stones...

..."and falling off the swings" perhaps should have been added to that kids rhyme. :-(

Healthy gaming

Dropping by the local mall here in Mississauga, I noticed the following sign

So I went in to check it out, and saw that it was a fitness club for kids all geared around interactive machines & games. PS2's hooked up to stationary bikes (stop pedalling and they switch off), DDR-style dance pad games, 3 motion sensing kung fu game, etc.

Here's a cell phone pick of the stations inside:

Very cool!

Ouch

IMAGE_046, originally uploaded by Kim Pallister.

Jenny falling asleep with an icepack on her shoulder after falling off the swings.

This was before we realized it was a broken clavicle! Poor thing!

The fun continues...

So first day of "semi-working semi-vacation", my laptop goes belly up and I spend the day trying to get MS canada to get me a replacement.

On day two, my 3-yr old daughter Jennifer took a flying leap off the swing set trying to save a carebear from certain death and busted her clavicle in the process. Poor little thing.

So half of day one spent in the MS Canada IT department, half of day two spent in the emergency room.

Fun.

Does not compute...

...at least my laptop didn't after it went belly up hours after I landed in Toronto.

Arghh!

Was able to get someone at the MS office here replace it, but I lost a day and change of productivity in doing so.... >:-(

Video Clip of Harmonix's Rockband gameplay

Posted over on my other blog.

As the guys at Kotaku put it, it's like staring into the face of God.

The iPhone tipping point

OK, clearly my previous post was wrong and burning tablets have been popping out of bushes, as the hype behind the JesusPhone (aka the iPhone) seems to be justified. I have quite a number of friends that picked one up this weekend and the flurry of mail I've received is heavily laden with things like "sexy", "its like holding the future", "rules changing", "requiring pants-changing", etc.

I haven't looked too closely at the device (already seen a couple floating around the MS cafe this morning, before 8am even!) nor at the service & sign up. However, for all the stuff I read yesterday, one thing stood out:

Signup happens through Apple.

That is the single biggest thing about this entire launch. It fundamentally changes the rules of the game between device vendors and carriers - nay - between the tech industry (new guard) and the telco industry (old guard). Similarly to how iTunes, over time, changed the rules between the big music labels and the online services, only overnight, and more dramatically.

It took a pretty sexy device and a religious user base to get the telcos to sell their soul, but AT&T has done so. And after making a deal with the devil, I'm not sure there's any going back for them.

Obligatory (sparse) WiiWare commentary

If you heard something un-applish within this past week's din of prelaunch iPhone religious euphoria (seriously folks, it's not like burning tablets are scheduled to fly out of shrubs this week or something), that noise might have been Nintendo's beloved son, Reggie Fils Aime, announcing WiiWare, Nintendo's XBLA-like program for 3rd party downloadable games on the Wii.


Plenty of commentary so far (Dave and Ian both have good posts on the subject). Like both of them, I have a lot of questions and would go a step further to say that I think they either havent' thought things through entirely, or are being disingenuous in their promises.

I frankly do not beleive they can approach it in a way that titles are not vetted by Nintendo. They have stated that titles will need to be rated, and AO ratings would not fly, but I don't think that's enough.

Echoing and adding to the list of unanswered questions that David and Ian raised:

• What of content that might get an M or T rating, but that some groups would find offensive (e.g. Nazis), or for that matter, that some corporate groups would find offensive (would The McDonald Game fly?)
• If they aren't vetting concepts, then how are they prioritizing dev kits? From what I understand, there's a pent up demand for them, so how is this allocated if they have no idea what a dev is working on (or is this the real gating factor)
• If they aren't vetting concepts, but have the right to refuse games based on the above factors or other reasons, then might developers sink a couple hundred thousand into a game only to be turned away when showing up to Wiiware wanting to hang out their shingle?

I guess details will become clearer as we near the first release of titles, but I am skeptical to say the least.