On September 22, 2011 the annual NY Games Conference was
held at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park. The actual events were
held in the auditorium and the dinning hall on the second floor. This wasn't a
conference on the latest in video games such as Playstation, Xbox, or nintendo.
This was more geared towards the social community of gaming like facebook
games, and companies like zynga, as well as the online gaming on cell phones.
This year one of the main focuses were on discovery; making these games like
farmville easier to find for people. Social gaming isn't a small knit
community. There are tons or games out there just waiting to be played and
discovered. So of course one issue is how do you get your game or give your game
the attention is may well deserve. Other topics covered were would these games
eventually replace handheld devices like the psp or the nintendo ds. One of my
favorite topics that I'm glad they covered was the cross branding of these
games with tv shows, products, or movies. Having them work for your brand,
keeping people interested in your brand, and promoting the brand. The companies
that made appearance were both those that you would normally hear about like
Zynga, Arkadium, Badgeville, and Gamify. The big names in gaming like Ubisoft,
EA, and Sony were there as well marketing themselves, as well as joining in the
panel discussions.
To start things off I attended the “Fireside Chat” with CEO
of OMGPOP Dan Porter. In this chat he mainly talked about how while social
gaming has the bigger audience, it still isn't that easy to break into. The
problem he says goes back to discovery, being able to have that large audience
see your game and play it. Especially with the long list of games you can play
on facebook or myspace, it is hard to choose. “Facebook gaming has a lot more
audience, but harder to break into gaming wise. Mobile gaming allows for more discoveries”.
In a sense mobile gaming isn't a closed market. Sites like facebook started out
open for gaming, but eventually, in order for facebook to become what it is
today, they had to close the market. Meaning they had be more selective on
which games they allow to be on their site. Mobile gaming allows more people or
companies to put up their game and have an open market chance at being
downloaded. While indie gaming is still a blossoming market, there is still
room for big market games like “The Sims”. Recently EA bought out Playfish,
which allowed EA to venture out more into social gaming. Their biggest move was
bringing “The Sims” online through Facebook. With “The Sims” being as popular
as it is on PC's and consoles, making it readily available online for free only
increased its popularity. The name alone I'm sure was enough for people to
start playing that game, mainly because its a game people know exactly what
they are getting into before they play. Unlike with other games, you don't
really have that sense of confidence in how good the game will be until you
actually try it. While it may be on some social networking sites, its the cell
phone that people really question if it's worth the $1.99 or $2.99 selling
price.
The next panel focused on the state of the games industry.
Covering topics such as: What does it take to make a successful game across
platforms? What trends and developments are the most important to the future
direction or the industry? What emerging gaming platforms will be the more
important in the years to come? And How do you make money with new digital
platforms competing with the time and pocketbooks of consumers. Joining in this
discussion were: Matt Hulett Chief Gamer of Game House, Owais Farooqui SVP of
Digital Publishing for Atari, Julie Shumaker SVP & GM of Media for RockYou,
Sean Spector Co-Founder and SVP of business development and content of GameFly,
Ormar Abdelwahed Executive Producer of Ubisoft Entertainment. This was one of
the more insightful panels that really gave you an idea of where gaming may be
headed in the long run. The biggest point was that a lot of gaming isn't taking
place on the consoles any more. Its more about mobility. People are buying
Ipads and tablet devices to replace the laptop. So besides being able to work
of course, people want to be able to play as well. So giving them exclusive
games for their tablet device or touch screen cell phone is the next logical
step. While xbox, Playstation and Nintendo are fighting it out in the console
wars, it does seem some new combatants are taking the stage. Those combatants
being: Facebook, IOS, and Android. It may not replace the consoles, it does
offer people options, especially those that aren't big gamers to begin with.
While Nintendo has been labeled the casual gamer console because of its family
friendly content, it still brings in the hardcore gamers with games like “The
Legend of Zelda” Metroid Prime, Mario, and Super Smash Brothers. Tablet devices
and Android phone games do cater to just about anyone. The simple mechanics of
those games as well as the simplicity of the games allow anyone regardless of
age or game experience to pick and enjoy for as long as they want. The drawback
of that is now the game is too simple. Not enough or no story, nothing really
to engage the person to make them want to play this on a regular basis. So the
big question of the panel was “Can it be more complex”? Can you bring stories
into these platforms without scaring the casual game? And it can be done. On
Xbox live there is a game called “Castle Crashers”, that has the classic
storyline of kidnapped princess and having to go on a long journey to go and
rescue her. Playing the game is very simple, and it's a 3D side scroller. A
game like that can be easily transitioned into the tablet or android phone.
It's not as serious as a Legend of Zelda, but it still has the fun of playing a
game like that. While a game can be simple, it can still have that complexity
of a hardcore game while not losing its broad audience. “Technology makes it
easier to cross platform”, which is true in a sense. When speaking of tablets,
facebook, and cell phones, it is a lot easier to do that transition as opposed
to the consoles. The better the device, the better the game will run on it
regardless of manufacturer. To push that point further, SVP of Sony SCEA,
Philip Rosenberg came out and announced his company's newest innovation where
you can download a game from the Playstation Network and play it on your PS3,
your psp, a various other devices; Bridging that gap between multiple
platforms. While that idea is amazing, it still leaves you wondering how that
same game will translate in terms of gameplay and control.
My favorite panel of the conference was the “Portable
consoles vs. Mobile Gaming” debate. Myself personally never really saw this as
a real debate, only because I never really used my cell phone for gaming. When
I've been bored I've played a few games but would always worry about battery
power. But when you stop to really think about: everyone, including grandma,
has a smart phone; a lot of people do buy music and games for their cell phones
on almost a regular basis; and and games like farmville are just as popular if
not more so than a game like pokemon. So it's not that farfetched to consider
them in competition with each other. On the pro side of this debate were Gene
Hoffman CEO of Vindicia and Alex St. John CEO of Hi5. Their opponents: Andrew
Schneider Co-founder and President of Live Gomer and Teemu Huuhtanen EVP of
Sulake Corporation (Habbo). The first point of the debate was that the market
for game developers was bigger on mobile than on the consoles. Getting a game
onto the consoles goes through a screening process. Some are more stricter than
others, but it's not every game that makes it out there. On the mobile side of
things you can put your game out there without many restrictions and worry more
about making the game known. Three of the biggest points that were brought up were:
battery life, sales, and filters. Gene Hoffman brought the point that battery
life on a cell phone can vary, especially when using the phone for anything
other than making phone calls. Depending on the size of the application this
can cause your battery life to be a shorter than normal. If you have the
ability to plug your phone in then you're good to go, but if you're on the
go(bus, train, car, airplane), you may not have a plug available to you. While
there are portable chargers available, another point he brought up was being
interrupted by a phone call. Depending on your popularity, work, love life,
etc., a phone call will guarantee an interruption in your game play or even
cause the game to freeze up. His final point which makes sense not only for
gaming but in other applications as well is how well the game works on your
mobile device. Certain mobile phones work better than others; get better
reception, bigger screens, etc. And depending on the brand and phone
plan/service provider you may experience certain issues with your game. Touch
screen phones have issues such as response time, and of course actual response
to the user's actions. Apps like facebook and 4square are 2 examples of apps
that vary from phone to phone. On my blackberry the facebook and 4square app
are kind of sluggish, but on my friends Samsung phone it works as well as if he
was on his pc or laptop. With the handheld systems there is always going to be
stability and reliability in terms of every game you buy for that handheld
works as well for all the other handhelds, battery life is more subjective to
how often you do play it as opposed to size of the game that you are playing.
And of course the only interruption you have to worry about is yourself, or
people wanting your attention. The next big point was how games are filtered on
each market. Alex of Hi-5 brought up how the handheld market has a rating
system, so you know what kind of game your child is playing or can play.
Parents can easily research games for handheld systems a lot easier than for
mobile games. When you think of Nintendo you think fun kids games like Mario
and Legend of Zelda. With mobile gaming the child can download any game, with
or without parents’ permission. By the time the parent(s) find out what kind of
game their child has been playing it's already too late. A lot of stores like
GameStop have their employees check for ID when a game is being purchased, or
inform the parents what the game is about before the parent actually buys
anything. The biggest point in favor of mobile games came from Teemu of Sulake
Corp. “If handhelds don't sell, games don't sell, Whereas mobile/tablet games
sell just their game”. This goes back to everyone and their grandmother having
a mobile device that can play some sort of game. While handhelds are popular,
not every hardcore gamer owns one. Some people just stick to their consoles, or
wait a few years later to get that latest handheld that has become either
obsolete or not as fancy as the latest one that's out there. With every mobile
device the games are there waiting for people to just buy them. The focus isn't
on the hardware, and more freedom to put out the type of game you want to put out
as opposed to what's marketable on a certain handheld device. If a game is
exclusive to the handheld device, it sales depend greatly on how well the
device is selling. And if the game is already on the console, a lot of fans may
be happy with the console version and not pay any mind to the handheld version
regardless of what it does for the story of the game. Depending on well your
mobile device plays certain games the price alone might make the purchase worth
it compared to paying $50 and upper handheld game.
To end my day at the Conference I interviewed VP of Arkadium
Neal Sinno and Adena Demonte, Director of Markting for Badgeville.
Mr. Sinno is
responsible for new business development, client implementation oversight and
ongoing operational growth initiatives over at Arkadium. He established and
managed strategic licensing and development partnerships with the BBC, Sony
Pictures Television, Electronic Arts, Disney, ESPN and Discovery
Communications.
Ms. Adena Demonte is a versatile marketing and product
strategist, with a passion for building meaningful social experiences around
quality content. She was the company’s third employee and has helped the team
grow to 35 employees with over 80 industry-leading customers and $15M in
funding. Attending a conference has been a very informative and amazing
experience. Meeting industry heads in a setting outside of a con made it easier
to make connections and allowed for more talk more about the future of the
industry
