Casual Gaming: Future of games lies in bricks and jewels

Hundreds of people gathered Tuesday in Seattle for a conference on the potential market for casual video games -- those challenging yet approachable games with elements such as bricks, jewels, cards, brainteasers and puzzles.

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But if the appearance of investment banks and promotional models signals the maturation of a video-game sector, then casual games have already arrived.

Oberon Media, a casual gaming company that announced financing from the likes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley earlier Tuesday, sent several women walking through the crowd in white T-shirts and jeans, with signs for a party where Oberon would offer a chance to win a Mini car.

At the request of conference organizers, Benaroya Hall staff directed them out of the building to the Third Avenue sidewalk, where they held the signs to be seen through the windows.

The scene wouldn't have received a second glance at E3, the broader video-game industry's glitzy annual event in Los Angeles. But it was out of place on the first day of the Casuality conference -- where much of the focus was on the ability of casual games to broaden the market beyond the young men who have historically dominated the gaming populace.

Apart from the inherently accessible nature of casual games, people at the conference said one appeal for women and older audiences is the ability to participate in online communities in conjunction with the games.


		Dan DeLong / P-I
	Darren Melbourne of SoGames in Manchester, U.K., tries out RealNetworks' "Super Collapse! 3" Tuesday at the Casuality gaming conference in Seattle.

"Creating awareness about the fact that there is a community is going to be a big part of this growth," said Jessie Rogers, marketing manager for Macrovision Corp.'s Trymedia Games division, during a panel discussion on marketing casual games.

The Casual Games Association, which is organizing the three-day conference, detailed that expected growth Tuesday morning. The group presented initial results of a study by DFC Intelligence predicting that the worldwide market for online casual games will rise from $713 million in 2005 to $1.5 billion in 2008.

That's still a small portion of the overall video-game industry. By comparison, Wedbush Morgan Securities estimates that the overall market for video-game software was $18 billion in 2005 in the United States, Europe and Japan.

But conference participants repeatedly talked about the potential for the casual games sector to take off in the coming years. In addition to casual games on PCs, game consoles and hand-held game devices, several presenters pointed to the significant market opportunity for casual games on mobile phones.

Apart from being a home to two of the industry's major console makers, Nintendo and Microsoft, the Seattle area is a hotbed for casual gaming, with companies including PopCap Games, Big Fish Games and many others represented at the conference.

Microsoft Casual Games was there, as was Seattle-based RealNetworks, which is heavily involved in casual games through its RealArcade and other ventures.

At the conference, RealNetworks Chief Executive Rob Glaser demonstrated the company's new system for putting streaming advertisements into downloadable casual games. The company announced the launch of the system Tuesday, with initial deals from advertisers Honda and Hasbro.

Wearing a red "Super Collapse! 3" shirt, Glaser showed how the ad system could display a short streaming Honda ad between levels of the game.

"It's like the commercial between innings of a baseball game," he told the audience. Afterward, Glaser declined to be specific about the revenue prospects, but he said the company sees "a lot of opportunity" in casual game advertising.

Even with new advertising models, others said the industry still needs to find the right ways to capitalize financially on the amount of time people spend with casual games.

William "Bing" Gordon, Electronic Arts' chief creative officer, cited internal estimates showing the total number of hours played on EA's Club Pogo casual gaming service exceeding those spent on its blockbuster "Madden NFL" game.

"The problem here is hours and hours and hours, and no money, no money, no money," Gordon told the audience. "Part of your job is to figure out how to take advantage of the huge number of hours that you're getting and monetize it."

Gordon estimated that casual gaming services such as EA's Pogo bring in around 6 cents per hour of use. As the business models mature, he told the group, you "ought to be getting on the order of 50 cents an hour from your best customers."

New York-based Oberon Media, which has a Seattle office, declined to disclose the amount of funding it received from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Oak Investment Partners and others. But Tomer Ben-Kiki, the company's chief executive, said he believes the financing is a positive sign for the broader casual games industry.

"It's definitely a vote of confidence by the top financial institutions," he said. "We've thought for a long time that this industry would reach interesting numbers."

P-I reporter Todd Bishop can be reached at 206-448-8221 or toddbishop@seattlepi.com.

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