Fizzy.com opens doors to developers

Fizzy is now about 9 months old. There have been several upgrades to the site itself in that time, and plenty of new content, but this latest update is by far the most significant. Fizzy has now launched its developer portal. If you are a Casual Game developer (in Flash), you can now sign up to become a Fizzy Developer and start using the developer portal right away. When you start using it to distribute your content, you get a 50% share of all revenue your game(s) generate. Visit www.fizzy.com/developers

The portal has everything you need:

• Comprehensive Documentation
• Personalised SDKs
• Add Free games (web games) and Download game (for sale)
• Testing enviroment
• Online reporting (keep track of plays, downloads, sales, etc)
• Online statements
• Public Developer profiles on Fizzy
• and more…

The developer portal has been built from the ground up to maximise revenue for Casual Game developers, with built in game marketing all part of the deal. Take a look at the reach of Fizzy already (still only 9 months old, remember).

If you are a Flash Games developer, then you should certainly have a look at this as a potential source of significant additional revenue

We’ll pay you to place our games on your site…

The new Fizzy Affiliate programme is up and running now and it’s a little different from most. Instead of banners and buttons to place on your site, we’ll give you games. That’s right, over 30 cool games you can put on your site. We’ll even host them, so all you need to do is cut and paste some code. Now, of course the games have links back to Fizzy.com, but that’s how you make the money. For any visitors who subsequently buy any games from Fizzy, you get a generous 25% of the sale.

Become a Fizzy affiliate today and we’ll give you a $25 sign up bonus.

More informations and the full low down at www.fizzy.com/affiliates/

To Free or not to Free

There seems to be an unending amount of comment about casual and online games and whether they should be free to play. On one side the users or the casual game player, who would like all of the games produced to be free and available for all and on the other, the businesses who try to make enough money so that they can flourish and develop more and more games.

So who is right? Well in my opinion everyone and no-one. I think for the industry to really grow there has to be a sensible mix of the free and pay-to-use casual game.

Casual games sites can not grow by surviving on advertising revenue alone. But these games sites need to offer content that is free to play. Even the biggest casual games portals offer free trials of their games for sale. After all it is sound business practise to encourage users to play the game before they part with their hard earned cash.

For new and innovative games to be created the developers need to know that there is the ability for them to earn a living from doing what they love.

We have experienced the backlash from users in the free vs pay debate. Our sequel to Swords and Sandals was offered free as a demo, but the full game was only available to paid subscribers or as a download. Yet we offer over 180 free games on our website of which about 50 of them we developed and built in-house. To call a business greedy and selfish for trying to earn a living is short sighted and ill-educated.

With the revenue generated from games sales companies are able to develop bigger and better games, employ more games developers and generally help the industry grow.

In my opinion, free content is great and it should be encouraged but to disparage those who are looking to provide more is just wrong.

Casual games = Increased productivity

It’s always a good thing when surveys are conducted about the casual games industry, especially when they highlight the positives of fun and games.

Casual game company Worldwinner recently conducted a survey amongst 500 of its customers specifically asking about perceived benefits of playing casual games. What they found was that around 76 percent said that it improved productivity while 72 percent revealed that they rely on game breaks to lessen job-related stress.

The most prevalent games to play seem to be puzzle and card games and these have long been the most popular of all casual game categories. It seems amazing that as casual games become more sophisticated, games like solitaire, three in a row puzzlers, spelling games and bubble shooters remain at the top of most popular games lists. Even larger games companies are recognising the benefit of games that stimulate the mind. Two of Nintendo’s biggest games for its DS system are Brain Age, and Big Brain Academy.

The majority of respondents (66%) in the survey said they played casual games for around 30 minutes during the working day. The survey shows that more and more people are seeking out casual games for more than just entertainment.

I still think it is amusing large companies are quite happy to lose productivity by allowing employees to go for a smoke or a coffee, yet frown upon the use of a computer to play a game and take a quick time out. The US recently calculated it loses 92 billion dollars worth of productivity every year from smoking.

I don’t expect this survey will change the preconceptions large employers have about computer games, but at least a few of them will take notice, and that’s a good thing.

A different a-gender

Whether you call it a fact, a cliché or a myth, there’s no doubting that almost anyone who has anything to say about casual games has something to say about the perceptions that women play casual games and men play hardcore games.

A big thankyou to Guilded Lilies (GL) for, at last, advancing this discussion beyond simplistic name-calling.

GL argues that women who play games are being placed into two different categories — the ‘girl gamer’ and the ‘casual gamer’. This isn’t the best way to make women who play games feel loved, GL says, because it does not approach them as individuals.

But what really caught my eye was the comment from Tekanji. She said that as a woman gamer, she’d prefer to be just a ‘person who plays video games’. Tekanji basically asks — why should we be classified as a ‘girl gamer’ or ‘boy gamer’? Why are we not just “gamers”?

It’s a good question. However, with my traditional marketing background, I know these classifications have probably come about because the easiest way to start segmenting markets is according to gender. And no business person can or should ignore the statistics showing that while women/girls account for about 44 percent of online gamers, they are far more likely to be playing casual games than hardcore games.

So, that’s probably why the gender categorisation has come about - its easy and the stats are exciting. But that doesn’t mean its the best way to start to segment potential markets. None of us thinks of ourselves as being part of a gender group or a constructed category when we go to find a game to play. None of us thinks of ourselves in terms of a stereotype. We’re Anne who likes Quake. Or Sam who is hooked on Solitaire. Or Wilhelm who’d rather play a virtual 18 holes of golf.

So what is the best way to categorise or segment? Because no matter what you think about it, segmentation remains an effective tool in any marketing or product development activity, including game development. But the most effective segmentation requires us to have a deep understanding of who plays, why they play and why they like it. We need to go beyond simple demographics of gender and age into the varied and subtle reasons why groups of individuals play games.

What follows then, is that as game developers, we need to be designing our games for groups of people with common interests. Rather than thinking of them as ‘boy games’ or ‘girl games’, we should think of them as games that appeal to people who like to be intellectually stretched. Or games for people who like a two minute break. Or for people who can’t get enough of the Smurfs. People who get bored on public transport. People who like to kill time (as opposed to the dentist) in the dentist’s waiting room.

If we do this successfully, the individual will never realise that they’ve ever been categorised in the first place. They just love the game and we know we’re giving players what they want.

Once we have that nailed, we can explore drilling down deeper still and looking at games adaptation based on user needs/wants within the game play experience. That’s probably a discussion for another day though…

The Little Gamer

Beyond the game

If you read some of my previous posts, you could be thinking: “Sounds great, but get real! We sell stuff — that’s what we do. 20 bucks and away you go. It doesn’t get more sophisticated than that.”

I’d encourage any doubters to take a look at the ’serious’ gaming world — the hardcore games. With their Steam engine, Valve — the guys behind Half Life — have created a pretty decent preview of where we could head in the casual games industry. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely worth a look.

Real Networks has tried to do something similar for the casual game sector with RealArcade, which does take a few steps in the right direction. It puts a tool on your desktop which helps you keep track of your games — full versions, demos, and new games available for download. It’s quite a nice idea but it basically stops there. But apart from organising your games, RealArcade is still basically about pushing new content on users all the time. This focus on selling to the expense of providing a richer gaming experience is its downfall. In my experience, many users get fed up and uninstall RealArcade.

We need to push this approach much, much further…

The Little Gamer�

Cash for content

The casual game sector is the darling of the media, the geek-o-sphere and the investment community. Every week, another articles appears in Forbes or the New York Times (free registration required) saying our little world is going through a massive growth spurt. And it’s true. Whether we look at diverse multinationals like Microsoft and Electronic Arts or casual game (and advergame) specialists like ourselves, suddenly we’re finding that last year’s school uniform doesn’t fit anymore.

But that doesn’t mean we’re ready to grow up.

The Little Gamer