The sad truth is most of our industry just wants to part with some content for cash. I don’t usually like to generalise, and I’m not claiming that we at 3RD sense have it all worked out, but most of our industry isn’t looking beyond flogging the next game.

When the casual game sector reaches maturity, we’ll expect much more from our relationships with players — and we’ll understand that the first step towards building these relationships is to give them much more that games. As full-fledged adults, we’ll build lasting relationships with our players by providing a broad range of services and a rich gaming experience. This is one of the themes I hope to develop in The Little Gamer, and one of the reasons I started the blog.

There’s this perception in our sector that you’ve just got to get the product out the door and that there’s no need to build any long-term relationship with the user. It’s a flaw in an industry that’s on a bit of a high at the moment. But the boom times won’t last forever. In the long run, the developers/publishers/distributors/retailers/portals (delete as you see fit) that build a deeper relationship with the customer will do much, much better.