GameDevMike

The first session I attended on Day One was presented by James Gwertzman, Business Development Director for PopCap. The title of the session was “Understanding Casual Games in the West.” I’m not really big on the casual games market, as I’m looking to target a particular “advanced casual” niche. I attended the session out of curiosity. I’ve heard a lot of anecdotal stuff from the guys over at the Indiegamer forums, but I’ve never really taken a hard look at the casual market. It was worth the time.

The presentation began with a look at some of PopCap’s games, particularly Bejewelled 2. There have been over 500,000 copies of the game sold on multiple platforms. Millions of players from around the world have played the free version online and/or downloaded the demo. He then segued into the different distribution channels available and which ones PopCap makes use of, as well as the definition of “casual market”. 70% of PopCap’s players are women, and most of them are over 30. The casual market tends to be older and to have older hardware. This is no surprise to anyone following the industry in the West, but it was news to most of the Koreans in the audience. The casual market in Korea isn’t well defined, but is certainly more hardcore and, likely, younger than in the West.

From there, the talk moved on to the different business models for casual game distribution. He said the most common model was one PopCap has made extensive use of: a free online version accompanied by a crippled, downloadable demo, both of which push the full version. I’m not sure I agree that this version is the most common. Perhaps that’s true for the big indie shops, but most of the indie casual games I’ve seen have a downloadable demo but no playable version the website.

James also talked about ad-driven games, which was PopCap’s primary model until the ad-based market collapsed in 2000. Their latest incarnation of ad-driven games is one that uses three types of video ads in-game: pre-roll, interstitial, and post-roll. Pre-roll ads are displayed before the player starts the game, interstitial ads are shown between levels or at a set time interval, and post-roll ads are displayed as the game exits.

The third business model presented was the subscription model. I wish I had written down the numbers he gave for each model, but of the three the subscription model has the highest average revenue per user. There are different variations on the subscription model. One is called “all you can eat” — players pay a monthly fee for a certain number of plays per day. For example, $20 per month might allow 6 plays per day, with several games available to choose from (i.e. the player isn’t subscribing to one game). Another subscription model is the “volume discount”, where the player agree to buy several games at huge discounts (such as 12 games at $7 per game).

James also talked about the micro-transaction model (pay-per-item, virtual currency, etc…). While that model has been very successful in Korea, he says it has not yet caught on in the US. Still, everyone is talking about it. It is going to be the future of the market, but no one knows how it will shape itself in the West. In Korea, the pay-per-item form is dominant, but it could take different directions in the West. At the end of the session, I asked him if PopCap had plans to adopt this model. He said that they were exploring it for releases in Asia, but he couldn’t comment on what they were doing back in the US (he’s primarily in charge of developing business in Asia).

James then presented 9 things developers shouldn’t do when going for the casual market. Most of it was common sense, but a few things really stood out. I didn’t write them all down, but here they are as I remember them (not in the order he gave them):

• Never require the keyboard or the right mouse button to play — casual games should use the left mouse button only. Anything else confuses people.
• Don’t give the player low point awards. One game they prototyped initially received poor feedback. After they raised the points awarded in the game, players loved it.
• Avoid using a lot of text — casual gamers don’t like to read.
• Don’t ignore advice from friends and family members who test it (what he called the “Mom Test”). Assuming that said testers are actually your target market, their feedback can be invaluable.
• Don’t underestimate your target market. This seems sort of tricky to me. As an example, he said a developer might look at the 70%-are-women figure and decide to make a light, fluffy, pink, style of game, decorated with flowers and teddy bears. Odds are, that sort of game isn’t going to fly. They may be women, but that doesn’t mean they don’t like exotic art themes in the game. Giving them pink flowers and teddy bears will turn them off. They aren’t children. So it’s not enough to know what your target market is, you need to understand them.
• Don’t use long or hard-to-pronounce titles for your game. Also avoid overused words in your titles, such as Dungeon, Space, and so on. Just look around some of the portals to see which words are overused.
• Don’t make the game too hard. Casual players like to be challenged, but they don’t want to spend much time learning how to play, nor do they want to die and restart frequently.
• Don’t make the game too cerebral. The goal of the casual gamer is to relax, so they don’t want to do much thinking when they play. Again, they are looking for a challenge, but not something that will over challenge them (think of checkers vs. chess).
• Don’t use difficulty levels. You should try to come at game play from a one-size-fits all perspective. (I think that’s what he was getting at, I was sort of zoned out at briefly when he hit that particular bullet point).

From there he pointed out three things you should do, but I didn’t write them down and don’t remember them. They were mostly variations on what not to do, anyway.

It was an interesting session. I now have a better idea of what the casual market is and how to approach it, should I decide to. I don’t see myself doing so, though. I think, for small indies like me, there is more opportunity in carving a niche outside of the casual market, somewhere in the middle between casual and hardcore.

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