Online Casual Games becomes mature in 2008!
Online Casual Games, a real industry!
If you look back over the years how fast everything has gone for the online games industry, you will get amazed by its fast growth. In 2005 the industry leaders still believed in download games, today it is advertising. Or in the past it was "play allone" at home and today it is “social gaming”. Kids are looking for communities with games, the industry right away adepted and started talking about casual MMO’s and RPG’s. The word MMORPG isn't used a lot these days, only when we talk for example about World of Warcraft (WoW). Online games is a serious industry with lots of revenues and fast growth!
Why did online gaming become so popular? Is it because online audience sometimes just want to have fun and kill time? Or does the audience gets addicted to avatars, high scores and social elements?
The success of companies like Bebo.com and Facebook are very important for the online games industry. More and more people are creating online profiles, share their "things" with others and find other people. The online games industry already was wondering where social networks would meet online games. Well in the word “social gaming” they just hooked up. The future is bright and will give us a new generation of games. "Old" successful titels of online casual games need to innovate to keep up with the needs of their players. When people with their online profiles started to inform eachother where they were playing online (the so-called destination sites), multiplayers directly became more popular and that was one of the most important reasons why online (flash) web-based games got rid of their bad imago of being inferior! The public at large accepted these kind of games and the developers of these games picked up on it. People are keen on games like scrabulous.
So today everyone is looking for the next big thing. Altough it might seem like I am following the media, I still feel that with the introduction of the Iphone, the online games industry can start to focus more on playing games online on your phone, have a look at Iphone Games. I am not talking about downloads, but simple web-based games on the mobile browser. Finaly we can talk about “whenever, where-ever”....!
Recently someone from the Telecom industry told me that .mobi is outdated and over. It was just something that was initiated by the big companies a couple of years ago, but in the end useless. If you use google on your mobile, then I think google would (for now) prefer sites that are mobile proof! So then it just might work with a .mobi domain, but in fact how long would that still fly? Internet is wide and big, so when I am using my mobile-internet and I do want to find something, I expect to get everyhing relevant, no matter on what domain-extention, as long as it is fast.
Back to the games; Lots of companies are giving presentations about online gaming. They talk about their holy grails and how to get success within the online games industry.
So let me share with you what the holy grail to me is;
“Multi- or Singleplay Web-based flash games in localized language for web and mobile.”
People are more and more online. So you can catch them online. You should offer them ways to play the games quickly and make it very easy for them to remember where they did find the game, make it sticky! So don’t forget the gameplay, it still needs to be fun for them. Not always think about making the revenues, if your games get played a lot, then you have nothing to worry about. It is that simple.
Let me tell you why!
When Social Networks did meet Online games the term became social gaming, it also meant that advertising could become quite interesting now. The fact is that we more and more start to know about the online players, so words like branded games, advergames, targetted games and ingame advertising start popping up in several press releases, interviews and articles. Companies like DoubleFusion see the potential and did act right away. Other companies in this space are Kongregate.com, MochiAds.com and the rising company AdsAndGames.com
So today’s online gaming for me is;
- casual mmo’s (including communities)
- casual RPG’s
- multiplayer games (flash, web-based, highscores)
- simple single player games (flash, web-based)
Looking at the revenue streams I would go for;
- advertising
- subscription-based (not too high amounts per month)
- sponsor-ships
So online casual games is growing, some say at least 30% per year. Not only in the USA or Europe, but also in China. A custom rule I always try to use, is 80-20%. 80% of the people play 20% of the games. So if you take that into consideration, you would know why localization is important, gameplay and most of all; stickyness! either through the social aspect or to be somebody "in the game" and get somebody!
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About the author: Reinout is well connected within the global gaming and media industry. Currently he is a partner at Spill Group and focused on establishing the largest online game-traffic company worldwide. At this moment SPILL GROUP has over 70 million unique visitors per month. Also Reinout is an adviser to several boards of gaming developers, entertainment companies and venture capitalists who are interested in the online gaming & entertainment industry. Go here; http://reinouttebrake.blogspot.com/