No Formula for Replicating Successful Games, Conference is Told

SEATTLE -- The games business is highly idiosyncratic and success with one game is no guarantee of another blockbuster, executives told the Casual Connect conference late Wednesday. The leaders behind big franchises, including Princess Isabella and Virtual Villagers, disagreed on the path to success and how companies should steward their resources. Executives also differed on whether social games were stealing their audience or helping them fine-tune their intellectual property.

Large Animal switched to social games from downloads in 2008 because “we were frustrated by the lack of dialogue” with players, and partnering game portals held their statistics close, said CEO Wade Tinney. Facebook is a great place to test new games and determine whether the concept is “resonating,” in turn leading to better games, he said. Last Day of Work founder Arthur Humphrey said his company does the reverse, using downloads as a testbed and leveraging strong IP to social and iPhone games. But feedback from testers is taken with a grain of salt because they don’t “always express accurately what they want,” he said.

Gogii Games gets 90 percent of its business online, a sharp increase from a few years ago, said CEO George Donovan: “The retail business has gone completely to shit.” Princess Isabella flopped in stores but became a hit through downloads, and Escape from the Museum’s retail sales actually jumped following its download availability, he said: Gogii expects 30 percent growth this year. The company develops roughly a dozen games a year, eschewing investment in franchises after a string of flops. “We just cannot seem to pull a sequel out of our ass,” with sales falling to tens of thousands following hundred-thousand sellers, Donovan said. It’s taking a chance with Princess Isabella 2, with plans for heavy promotion through YouTube and other social channels, he said.

Humphrey said Donovan’s “rosy outlook” belied the downward pricing pressure on downloads: “Some casual players are being lost to Facebook forever.” But social games are the biggest boost to “try before you buy” for Gogii, Donovan said. Each company has a different business approach, and that’s okay, said Sandlot Games CEO Daniel Bernstein: Last Day of Work is doing “strategic brand building, but you're not going to see money for a while.” Sandlot has to do revisions for its blockbuster Cake Mania every six months just to stay competitive, he said.

Executives weren’t so concerned with game portals interfering with their customer relationships. Gogii only started selling its own games two months ago, with Donovan picking prices “out of the air,” he said. “To this day I'm still surprised that people were willing to pay extra to get it” before the portals did.

It’s a “crock of shit” to say that a great game will sell itself, Bernstein said. Companies must create “compulsion” for the user and carefully pick platforms, he said, describing Cake Mania’s PlayStation launch as “terrible.” Donovan said he looked at games like an accountant, reviewing spreadsheets and analyzing larger entertainment market trends: In targeting a demographic, “you have to be a little more specific” than simply going after 35-year-old women. Gogii takes a simple concept, such as a fairy tale, and makes some tweaks to develop a game like Princess Isabella. In contrast, Last Day of Work’s games are “dangerously, uncompromisingly for me,” with no attempts to divine the target market, Humphrey said.

Cake Mania has done well because Sandlot plotted a whole story arc for lead character Jill Evans, including her aging and death, but also her current pregnancy, Bernstein said. Games need such “personality” to draw loyal players, said Vincent Carrella, director of licensing for MTV Networks’ Shockwave.com, which recently debuted a virtual goods and currency system. It’s a little different for social games, where players largely use the game to display their own personalities, Tinney said. Gameplay still “has to be fun, it has to be polished,” for games to do well, regardless of the storyline, said Sean Elliot, vice president of business development for Playrix Entertainment.

Donovan’s advice to developers is “spend as little as possible” on their games, and be content with making “average” games that bring in regular small sums: “We are not going to blow our heads off putting giant piles of money into Facebook.” Humphrey advised starting with small budgets and going bigger as companies develop confidence and target niches: Last Day of Work has spent $300,000 on a single game and always broken even. Those big-budget games can create “synergies” that draw licensing interest and stay visible in the overpopulated iPhone app store, he said. Profits should go into projects that are “a bit more risky,” Elliot said. Developers have to “learn to relinquish some control,” finding “aggressive” partners in distribution, Tinney said.

Casual Connect Notebook

Game makers looking to snag female audiences must convince them games are a way to “relax and unwind,” Matt Lashey, vice president of strategic insights for the Lifetime unit at A&E TV Networks, told the conference. Women tend to be “techno-pragmatics,” in contrast to men, who “stay up all night reading the manual” to learn new game tricks or pick their fantasy-league players. The PS3’s marketing tagline, “It Only Does Everything,” should have been flipped around to show women what they can do with it, Lashey said. For example, a crossword-puzzle game could be an alternative to the Sunday crossword in The New York Times. The Lifetime network is a “me-time activity” for viewers, but its research has found that fewer than two of five female gamers consider their playing me-time, Lashey said. So the unit’s marketing efforts are focused on showing women how games can benefit them, such as spending time with daughters playing “dress-up” games or providing an “escape” from daily tasks, he said. Though 65 percent of women who play games choose the casual variety, and more than half play online through a computer, “you really can’t think of them as one group,” Lashey said. Lifetime did first-of-its-kind research on women’s gaming profiles, coming up with five segments. “Competitors” are “the most guy-like,” counting for a quarter of women gamers and 34 percent of gameplay, Lashey said. Most are under 34 and minorities, very social in gaming, and especially fond of the Xbox 360, PlayStation Network and mobile games. “Immersives” are 16 percent of women gamers and 27 percent of gameplay, with most 18-24, he said. The most stressed segment, they use games as an “escape hatch” and mostly play PC or online games -- Wii marketing has failed with them, Lashey said. “Minders” are 24 percent and 19 percent, “moderately invested” in games and the “most established” of the segments in income and education. They average 39 years old and prefer simple-to-learn games. “Bonders,” at 19 percent and 10 percent with an average age of 36, have “really bought into the Wii culture” of playing games for social reasons, not for the games themselves, Lashey said: The mostly-mom group wants to “spend time with the ones they love” and get exercise. “Dabblers” are the least invested in games at 16 percent and 10 percent, upscale and largely single, and use games as a “mindless activity to pass the time,” he said. Word-of-mouth marketing works best with female gamers, Lashey said, advising game makers not to flood them with ads for games.