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REPORT: Casual Connect Hamburg Part 1

This year saw a new venue and a new country so whats the verdict?

Although I don't love it as much as Amsterdam, Hamburg is a great city and the new venue although lacking in character was definitely better for business. Some of the usual suspects were absent including Mumbo Jumbo, EA, Majesco & ValueSoft. However they were swiftly replaced by many new comers and rising stars.

These included Super Rewards, KaiserGames & MMOlife, and a host of support companies who focus on payment and back end systems including TwoFish represented by the infamous Sean Ryan.

There was a big focus on community gaming, Mobile and monetization in general. And for very good reason....download is being hit hard very hard....$19.99 has slipped to $6.99 and even $5.99 on Real Arcade, which hints that they are not clear on strategy or direction is a $1 cheaper a Real strategy?. Real have recently ditched the console division and in the past they have purchased a range of companies including Trymedia and GameTrust, Real are a big player but dont seem to have a clear vision. Big Fish will continue to grab audience from Real and others, Ply First will probably release yet another Dash mashup...but for me have failed to capitalize on their position and may have peaked although they have actively worked on their community and this could be the area they focus on for growth.

BigPoint, Gameforge, Wild Tangent and Spil are all positioned well for further growth and there is room for in Eastern Europe and Asia also especially as the payment systems have become more sophisticated. Many of the eastern European developers attended the event, these included Alwar, Playrix and Astrum Online.


The clear message from many developers seemed to be you can not focus on the "PC Download market" as a single business model, those days are gone and you are lucky if your last in the top 10 for a couple of weeks the market is flooded with content and you need to develop a strategy. At the moment Browser has become king and community gaming is the next wave for casual, I think that these communities will end up becoming a great distribution channel for the PC Download market possibly with a pay to earn the game model linked to community points.

Thanks to all the team at Casual Connect for a great event keep up the good work.

Part 2 coming soon.

EVENTS: The Who.Where.When

Casual Connect Europe Hamburg Feb 10 - 12 Feb

Engage Expo (used to be virtual worlds conference) NYC March 10 - 11

The Game Developers Conference San Fransisco March 23-27

The Taipei Games Show Taiwan 12 - 16 Feb

EVENTS: Sdforum interview with Bernie Stolar

In case you don't know Bernie he is one of the industries veterans having been CEO at Mattel, President at SEGA and EVP at Sony Playstation for the launches of PS1 & PS2 and of course that other small company Atari, who did not play much of a roll in games....

For years I have felt the presence of Bernie in my living room so I have to admit getting to meet him was a pleasure. He had tonnes of stories and in particular I loved the one about launching the PS2. He told me that they did not have game to drive sales, in the past they had a sonic and in Nintendo case they had Mario but PS2 had nothing.....until he found Crash Bandicoot. In short that game drove unit sales.

So here is a synopsis of the what people said at the event.


Less big publishers, similar to what happened in the music and film industry
Companies that run with lower costs and are quicker to market will be stronger
Episodic content will be the new way to distribute console games
The end of retail boxed games for $60 (unless of course you do it well like GTA)
Casual gaming will continue to grow and companies with original I.P will become stronger
MMO's will shift to online
Funding is becoming harder to get, so you better make it last as there may not be a second round
Make sure you make a good game "there is a lot of crap out there" Is it fun??
Microtransactions will become a standard in the US, but so far many companies have just shoehorned the model in and its not quite right yet.
Advertising in games will grow and be delivered in context for greatest impact
I-phone games catalog is easy to access and a good distribution channel
The likes of Kongregate will help find the next great talent
You really need to know your market and understand your consumers

Montreal Games Summit

I just got back from the Montreal games summit and in amongst the big studios and the usual crowd I saw some great new talent.....so watch this space.

Anyway I'm picking up on a Key note speech by David Braben called planning for the future.

The reason is I have discussed this topic with many people and I agree with David On the following points and have a few of my own.

1. We are NOT looking at the last generation on gaming machines
2. The whole of the future for the gaming industry is ONLINE (until bandwidth and speed is not an issue we will have retail)
3. A need to rebuild a relationship with retailers.
4. Look to change the pre-owned market or the long tail of games make dwindle, the same way piracy and sharing is killing music
5. Developers need to collaborate and be creative with production techniques.
6. Where possible developers should consider releasing games in episodes....may be that way the games that don't work can be dropped at an earlier stage saving money and the ones that do work well that's easy release the next episode and the fans will come. Imagine playing a game and getting to a certain level only to realize that episode 2 is required to carry on. However the trade off is the game cost a lot less to buy in the first place. Mix this idea with downloadable content and may be this is the future of development for some games.

Food for thought. But I think there is enough space for everyone I'm in online casual games but I for one don't think that's the only market of the future....how boring remember variety is the spice of life.

Event : SD forum 5th December

Gaming: The New Frontier-Business of New Media III

The event takes place on the 5th December at Microsoft mountain view. There are some great speakers and topics including a focus on casual games so if you are in California or on business at the time try to get yourself to the event.

http://www.sdforum.org/