The Social Tidal Wave: The New Definition of Casual Gaming

Dave WILLIAMS SVP & GM of Nickelodeon Kids and Family Games Group Nickelodeon Kids

I must admit that I cheated a little prior to my interview with Dave Williams, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Nickelodeon's Kids and Family Games Group. We brought our six year old daughter to Seattle to try to fit in a little sightseeing, so I naturally asked her about her on-line experience with Nickelodeon. Currently, she is in the mysterious thrall of SpongeBob Squarepants and loves everything associated with the well known cartoon. Her favorite games right now are the throwing style games and Potato Tic Tac Toe was awarded a definite six-year-old seal of approval. “I like it when you throw the potato at Patrick,” SpongeBob's best friend who is a starfish. “He wobbles and falls down. That's funny.” There was also another throwing game that involved a pickle that she liked and a driving game that had to have Patrick driving because, “he's the only one who knows how to drive in that cartoon.”

I guess that's the strength of the Nickelodeon game site, they already have a rich story world already in place with the content being driven by their television shows.

As a parent, I like the Nickelodeon site because it is safe for my daughter to go to. There's no way for her to click on an ad and be directed off the site. I also know that they are continually updating and introducing new games that are definitely kid friendly.

Dave Williams presented the keynote on the second day of the conference and I learned that the Nickelodeon Kids and Family Games Group is much more than just Nickelodeon. The group recently has been reorganized and Dave Williams is now the head of not only the Nickelodeon games division, Shockwave, and Addicting Games.

During Mr. William's key note speech, he pointed out that three years ago downloading games just started and the advertising model was just getting started. Furthermore, the industry was really struggling with the definition of Casual Games.

Now, however, the industry is so large and promising that Nickelodeon is investing over 100 million dollars in the casual games industry. Currently, Nickelodeon is focusing a lot on games because they feel there is more opportunity in the game industry than what has previously been seen in the past.

The major trends that Nickelodeon sees is the redefinition of the casual gamer, the surge of social gaming, the surge of social community, and most importantly the redefining way to see games as media instead of just products.

The redefinition of the casual gamer requires the game development community to examine their audience. The casual game industry need to look beyond the traditional 35 year old female. They're asking the standard questions: Who is playing casual games? What are they playing and why?

Through market research, Nickelodeon found that half of Internet users play games everyday, which means that there are untapped markets in the casual game industry.

They also looked at the different reasons people play games and the attitudes for why they play games on the Internet. The breakdown of demographics and gaming can be summed up in six different categories.

• Time Fillers 17% - Good way to kill time, relaxing.
• 75 minutes 3x a week playing games.
• Variety.
• 61% female
• Rechargers 14%– Gaming is a reward. Challenge refreshing
• 92 min a day every other day.
• 63% female 14%
• Virtual Me 13% - escape – very social – create profiles, story lines, familiar characters, save scores and progress.
• Even gender.
• Teens, tweens & kids.
• Gaming Enthusiasts 19% - go directly to games when they turn on computers.
• 88 minutes every other day.
• Familiar characters.
• Social competitive.
• Even gender
• Guilty Pleasurists – 17% - blow off steam
• 75 min 2x a week.
• Free games & variety.
• 66% female.
• College & young adults.
• Average Joes 19% - Gaming makes them feel cool and popular.
• 80 min every other day.
• Even Gender.
• Kids, tweens, teens

The next major trend Nickelodeon is watching and gearing up for is in social games as this sector is accelerating. Consuming media and participating in social games is something that more people are doing on the Internet. This year, Shockwave came out with a game that requires collaborative play with the deployment of Jigsaw Party. This game allows up to four players take turns to work on a jigsaw puzzle while chatting with each other.

Massive investment will propel the social games category forward as casual games become more about “us” than “me” for key demographic segments. But there is a definite caution that comes with this investment. Casual social gamers don't want another social network and don't want to change social to a game portal. During my interview with Dave Williams, he elaborated on this difference. An example of a social network game is one that will allow a young man to flirt with women. This player won't want their social network to be replaced by a game portal. On the other side of the spectrum the best example is the previously mentioned Jigsaw Party. The social games will be more about connecting rather than playing and want the social interaction to enhance game play. This segment is mostly made up of teens.

Addicting Games has a create-and-share game called Pencil Racer XL where kids spend hours creating tracks for a pencil racer monkey who rides the tracks on a motorcycle. It allows the kids creative fun and community. The create-and-share genre has been so successful that several more create and play games will be deployed in the fall.

Shockwave is also adding more community features and have found that more people have used the site with the addition of animated talking avatars, or Voki Avatars. Voki's will do text to speech and many people are having fun playing with the new features.

The third trend Nickelodeon is focusing on is the definite shift of games to a media model versus a product model. The old model of game development includes writing a game, sell it, and move on to next project. The new model is to follow television - A game can be seen as an episode and game characters can grow with the game.

As an experiment, they developed Carrie the Caregiver with the goal of writing an emotional level into the game that it would make a game player cry. Specifically, in Episode One, Carrie takes care of babies in a daycare setting and watches them grow. The brand has worked well for Shockwave that Carrie the Caregiver just released Episode Three where she's a camp councilor.

As a side note, a couple of weeks before we went to this conference, I was working on my computer in my home office when I had my six year old run up and ask to be logged onto Shockwave.com. I later found out the whole reason why she wanted to go onto Shockwave is to specifically play Episode Three of the Carrie series as she had seen the game advertised on Nickelodeon while she was watching SpongeBob.

There are deep online components with episodic games and Nickelodeon is even looking into the possibility of generating Webisodes for various titles. Another advantage to episodic games is that sponsors have connected with the developed characters. Recently, Wal Mart has a tie-in advertising campaign with Carrie into a back to school promotion. Branding games this way also helps combating the whole cloning of games issue, from a marketing standpoint.

In conclusion, Nickelodeon believes in the Casual Game Industry and feels that the three trends will drive the Casual Games industry for the next couple of years. They also feel that On-line developers need more credit so they are going to produce an on-line games award show in 2009. “Addicting Games Awards” will run on Television. Nickelodeon, starting this year in the third quarter, will be giving out quarterly cash bonus awards for developers who bring games to the Nickelodeon family of on-line games.

During my interview with Dave Williams, I asked him what his advice would be for a young upcoming programmer wanting to get into the Casual Games Industry. His advice is to learn Flash. As soon as a young programmer has mastered that, to submit a game to the Addicting Games site. Currently, one of the more popular shooter games, Clear Vision, is actually authored by a 16 year old Swedish student.

Page 8