IGDA Casual Game Sig

[Bmc]

Excellent http://www.igda.org/casual

The new whitepaper is there as well as a new issue of the Quarterly

[tolik]

Awesome, days of reading!

[James C. Smith]

Cool. My contributions survived the final cut in both the Technology article of the Quarterly newsletter and the annual whitepaper. Many people were involved and editing and re-editing the whitepaper but the “Design for up sell” section on page 61 – 63 is mostly what I wrote.

[gamemaker]

Brilliant...this is going to take a happy while to digest :)

[soniCron]

I'm scanning over the whitepaper, and it strikes me as odd that they insist on using arcane methods of distrobution for something inherently digital. While I'm sure there are many folks who would like to print out the 125 pages on their fancy, workgroup focused, paradigm shifting, productivity enhancing, auto-collating, self stapling laser printer, I'm sure there are just as many folks who would rather read it online. Being a "white paper" and understanding the history of using actual paper, a PDF white paper on downloadable gaming is awefully inaccessable to the digital realm. ;)

[Robert Cummings]

Never had a problem with PDF. You know it's going to look like how you intend, unlike websites and so forth with broken links and more. A PDF is a very good file format as it is widely supported, prints and views exactly how is intended and has all files built in.

Interesting reading there from James of Reflexive, and some nice interviews too on the casual market. Very good stuff, and bookmarked.

[Raptisoft]

Crikey... who are these people who insist on using PDF??? It's like using an abacus instead of your computer just because your teachers did, and their teachers did, and their teachers did, and their teachers did.

[svero]

I hate pdf as well. The sooner that format joins the dustbin of computer history the better off we'll all be.

The whitepaper itself is pretty interesting as is the interview in the tech section. There are a few oddities I noticed though. For instance darkbasic gets a mention as does pygame, but not blitzbasic.

[Ricardo C]

"Many people" edited and re-edited it, and they still let "Forward" be used instead of "Foreword". Oy vey.

[James C. Smith]

What the hell were they thinking? Giving away free information buy putting it in a PDF file on a web site. The nerve of those people

Wow. Dozens of people who are very successful in this industry volunteer their time to write hundreds of pages of information, including lots of hard data, and give at all away for free. And half the comments are about which free distribution method they choose and the misspelling of words. It sounds like some of you should volunteer to help write or edit the next whitepaper. They are always looking for more volunteers with good information to share.

[James C. Smith]

I want to clarify one thing. I don’t mean to imply that you can’t criticize something just because it is free and/or a lot of people worked very hard on it. It could still be flat out wrong or incomplete and pointing out the mistakes and omissions could be very useful. I just found these particular criticisms to be very superficial and irrelevant to the content of the information. I thought it would be more interesting to question some of the assertions made in the paper. We could post what we found most surprising in the documents and discuss it here. There is a lot of really interesting content here and most if it does not have one correct answer. It would be interesting to explore other opinions about the content rather than the packaging and editing.

[berserker]

I want to clarify one thing. I don’t mean to imply that you can’t criticize something just because it is free and/or a lot of people worked very hard on it. It could still be flat out wrong or incomplete and pointing out the mistakes and omissions could be very useful. I just found these particular criticisms to be very superficial and irrelevant to the content of the information. I thought it would be more interesting to question some of the assertions made in the paper. We could post what we found most surprising in the documents and discuss it here. There is a lot of really interesting content here and most if it does not have one correct answer. It would be interesting to explore other opinions about the content rather than the packaging and editing.

Totally agree - I've looked through the paper and it's great, especially considering there are really not too much trustful information about casual games out there. Add to this all those impressive list of contributors plus the fact that it's free and you will wind those whitepaper to be a golden piece.

Excelent job, congrats to all those contributors!

[arcadetown]

"While the demographics of Web and Downloadable games can vary greatly from genre to genre and even from game to game, the largest audience is women aged 35 to 45."

So you're telling me that Heli Attack 3 has been #1 on Miniclip.com (probably the #1 online gaming site in the world) for 6 weeks because adult women are playing it? Did anyone consult Miniclip, ArcadeTown, Newgrounds, AddictingGames, etc for these #s? No they consulted the usual crowd, Real, Yahoo games, Pogo, etc. I'm so tired of hearing this statement so I'm saying this now... complete, utter, flat out hogwash!!

[soniCron]

So you're telling me that Heli Attack 3 has been #1 on Miniclip.com (probably the #1 online gaming site in the world) for 6 weeks because adult women are playing it? Did anyone consult Miniclip, ArcadeTown, Newgrounds, AddictingGames, etc for these #s? No they consulted the usual crowd, Real, Yahoo games, Pogo, etc. I'm so tired of hearing this statement so I'm saying this now... complete, utter, flat out hogwash!! First, I haven't got a damn clue what the hell I'm talking about! ;) That said, how many of these #1 games at Miniclip, Newgrounds, etc. are for sale? Make money? 13 year old boys may play the most online flash games (I don't know), but how much money is coming from them?

[luggage]

I would hazard a guess that miniclip makes plenty of money.

Part of the problem is that the situation is self serving. Real think their audience are the soccer moms, so they push the soccer mom games, which in turn attracts more soccer moms.

There's a wide audience of people out there.

[arcadetown]

They're not stating who is generating the sales or revenue, they're flat out falsely stating who is playing games. You can choose to either listen to the real guys hitting the pavement everyday, looking at what else is out there, and talking to other webmasters with real traffic... or you can choose to listen to the pundits that keep one eye blind to the real world.

(edit) btw - where the the heck was ArcadeTown or other large traffic game sites in that list of section 5 key players? We've got more traffic than 1/2 the guys listed there. Ah heck whatever.

Man my blood really starts to boil the more I think about this rubbish... must turn brain off. Ahh I'm now in pundit mode.

[Bmc]

it's the casual games sig, it's a fact that the target audience for casual games is middle-aged women. Miniclip, Newgrounds etc... while may have some casual games are not in the casual market.

anyways i don't see any reason to get upset. all it has accomplished is to make you look unprofessional. I don't know you personally but you've always come off as being above this type of attitude, but i guess not... is it a british thing or? :P

[dubane]

they're flat out falsely stating who is playing games. You can choose to either listen to the real guys hitting the pavement everyday, looking at what else is out there, and talking to other webmasters with real traffic... or you can choose to listen to the pundits that keep one eye blind to the real world.

Man my blood really starts to boil the more I think about this rubbish... must turn brain off. Ahh I'm now in pundit mode.

What really makes my blood boil is people that don't volunteer to help out and contribute to these types of things, but waste no time in complaining about it when it doesn't represent their point of views.

Everything the IGDA does is volunteer driven, that includes this paper and the three previous iterations of the paper which were released by the Online Games SIG. That means that people like James C Smith who are "real guys hitting the pavement every day" took time out of their day to contribute to this. If you don't think that sites like Newgrounds, or your own ArcadeTown are well represented then why don't you do something about it? Get involved in the Casual Games SIG. Join our mailing list, start participating in the developer community, and most importantly volunteer to help out next time.

Nobody is going to say that every aspect of the industry is covered perfectly in this paper. We're always limited by the amount of resources and efforts our volunteers are able to dedicate, and we know that there will always be areas we could have better coverage, and we hope to address those issues in future iterations. This new content is the reason last year's version was 93 pages, and this year's is 135 pages. I don't have a problem with anyone pointing out areas that we missed, that's how we can try to address them better next time around.

However, I take great offense to anyone who tries to imply that these are simply "pundits" who are "blind to the real world." I think if you look at who has actually written this paper, you'll see that it was written by people who are very much "in the trenches." They may not represent your particular space within this niche, but they are very much involved.


(edit) btw - where the the heck was ArcadeTown or other large traffic game sites in that list of section 5 key players? We've got more traffic than 1/2 the guys listed there. Ah heck whatever.

I'm curious which section you are referring to that you think ArcadeTown would fit in? The categories are "Major Online Retailers", "Aggregators Providing Retail Game Channels to 3rd Party Web Sitse", and "Publishers." Perhaps we should introduce a new category for you?

[James C. Smith]

I do wish more people would get involved in the SIG and contribute to the papers. But that can’t be the end all be all answer to every criticism of the document. Not everyone has time to help write the paper. And the paper would be unmanageable if everyone was writing. We should at least acknowledge that Brian Fisher’s comments here are a form of getting involved and raising new issues for the SIG to consider. I asked people to stop focusing on superficial issues and comment on the real content of the paper. Fisher did exactly that and brought up a very relevant point. The paper does ignore a big segment of the games market. There are tones of people playing games in mini-clip and ArcadeTown and they don’t fit the stereo typical definition of the target demographic of casual games. Maybe that means they are something other than “casual games”, or maybe it means there is more to the casual games market then we are documenting. But either way, it is a discussion worth having.

But I must agree with Robbins that I am annoyed if people who think this stuff was written by "pundits" who are "blind to the real world". It’s just a bunch of guys who make and sell casual games and volunteer some time to write about it. It is real guys in the trenches.

[dubane]

I absolutely agree with you James. It isn't possible to have 100 people work on this or any document, but it is possible to have a lot more people participate, especially from areas that are underrepresented. In fact, I agree with the comments. There's definitely a portion of the market which does not get as much coverage as it could, and I'm hoping that we can fix it next time.

The most important thing in general, which I did not emphasize in my first message, is to find out what are the deficiencies so they can be addressed. For that I'm glad Brian brought it up.

To reiterate, I don't mind the criticism of the paper at all. I just take huge offense with any criticism of the people who volunteered their time to write it, especially from someone who didn't contribute at all.

[arcadetown]

Sorry if I offended, that's out of my typical demeanor. You ever hear something a few to many times and finally feel the need to stand up and say something?

In section F-5 if sites such as CoffeeBreakArcade are mentioned, I would have thought we also would have been.

I'd be happy to contribute if you guys would like. I'm sure I'd be another great asset to the knowledge base as I spend a huge amount of time pounding the pavement and know a lot about what's going on out there. If interested, please send me a private message via the forums and we'll talk.

[Dan Prigg]

I think everyone who contributed to the paper did an awesome job. It was more work than I initially bargained for...

As for the demographics, the reason we cater to the soccer moms was that for the last 6 years or so, thats what has grown our audience. Our surveys, emails, ecom and sales tell us that. While our percents are over 60% female, some other sites I think have even higher rates closer to 70%.

I agree there is a male audience out there, its simply just not as large...yet. I still distribute the shooters and arcade games to help and try balance it out. Trust me, I dont want to have to keep sending out Mahjongg and Puzzle games forever.

[dubane]

Brian if you, or anyone else for that matter, want to get involved, we'd love to have your help.

Right now the best thing to do is sign up for the Casual Games mailing list here:
http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/casual_games

When we get ready to start updating this paper, or starting any other new initiatives we'll be posting to that mailing list with more information on what we're going to be doing, and how specifically people can help out. We're also hoping that over time it will become a great place for developers to communicate with each other in the industry.

[arcadetown]

While our percents are over 60% female, some other sites I think have even higher rates closer to 70%.
Correct. My few ideas, like a previous poster stated, were that RA and similar sites made sales to women thus those items bubbled up to the top of a limited exposure pile further increasing the women draw.

We're seeing 45% female here and it's considerably higher than most similar style online gaming sites I know. Even with that women are 60% of sales. Sure there's various reasons adult women buy, but a big part is adult men have slim pickings. On select titles we're seeing great sales with about 80% male ratio, Age of Castles for example. Bet if we had more such titles we'd see an overall much higher male sales % here.

Unfortunately the reality is the current big casual games sites cater to women driving more authors to devote to women games futher alienating the male casual gamer. I see signs he's out there and ready to buy. Think the industry can do more to bring him out of the cold. For example, limited exposure space devoted to top sellers is pretty much guaranteed to be dominated by women games given current audience draws and available titles.

[Dan Prigg]

We are just feeding the largest monster. The big sites never said,"hey lets create a new demographic of soccer Moms and make lots of money". When we first started here at Real we did a great deals with Valve and team fortress along with Lithtech. Cause we were going to cater to the online audience.

Much to our suprise the audience that was growing the most and still is, was the female demographic. Needless to say most of our initial games flopped hard and were off the mark. But by giving the audience what it mostly wants is how we have been able to grow.

I am all for expanding other genres and such, but at the end of the day, its that mostly female audience that is paying everyones bills right now. :D

[ManuelMarino]

Hey, I would like to contribute... any ideas?

[James C. Smith]

If you read the White paper I believe there is some information in there about contacting people to volunteer. Or you could join the SIG's mailing list and post a message there.