Video game giants are getting serious about casual games.
Redwood City-based Electronic Arts and France's Ubisoft Entertainment, which has North American headquarters in San Francisco, both recently announced plans to strengthen their line-up of casual games -- easy, addictive numbers like puzzles and poker, typically played in short bursts on PCs and cell phones.
The two entertainment powerhouses are striving to gain a major presence in an industry crowded with lots of smaller players, many of them in the Bay Area.
Little wonder. Though simple casual games lack the sex appeal of sophisticated, graphics-heavy console titles, they attract a broader group of players, are relatively cheap to make and their minimal processing needs make them ideal for mobile devices. Some are subscription-based, though most are free, at least on a trial basis.
Advertising is emerging as a key revenue source. The North American market for casual games is expected to grow from an estimated $281 million in sales in 2006 to $1.15 billion in 2011, according to San Diego-based DFC Intelligence. Globally the market already generates more than $1 billion.
EA already had one major online casual game service, Club Pogo, which has amassed a million and a half subscribers (and more than 18 million to its free site). And, as part of a wider restructuring by new CEO John Riccitiello, this month Electronic Arts formed EA Casual Entertainment, a new label to develop and publish casual game titles including Pogo, and hired Kathy Vrabeck, a former Activision Publishing president, to lead it.
"All over the world, consumers are playing games that don't require hours of intense concentration," Vrabeck said in a statement. "The common denominator is casual fun."
Rival Ubisoft in May announced it would promote an existing producer in Paris to head a new internal casual games development group. The team will work on a new "My Coach" product line that includes word games, and will expand Ubisoft's existing Petz franchise for children. Ubisoft will continue to work on casual titles with outside game development studios.
John Welch, co-founder and CEO of San Francisco-based casual game maker PlayFirst, welcomes the big publishers into the industry, whose moves he sees as giving legitimacy to the entire market. "My take is that they want to capture a little bit of the excitement of casual gaming," he said. "But it looks to me like they're just dipping their toes in."
Welch said it took his three-year-old company's sole focus on casual gaming to build its most popular title, "Diner Dash," into a hit with 200 million players (albeit most of them non-paying).
"We have too much expertise," he said. "You can't just compete with us but you could acquire us."
Welch said PopCap Games and Big Fish Games, both in Seattle, are the largest casual studios and most likely acquisition targets. Also in the mix are smaller San Francisco outfits such as Skunk Studios, Three Rings Design and IQ212, which, said Mark Friedler, co-founder and CEO of AOL's GameDaily news site, "are relevant as long as they deliver unique differentiated products." He figures their best mode of survival is through cutting deals with big publishers.
"It's doubtful a smaller company can manage the whole ecosystem with the same efficiency now that the big boys are entering the marketplace."
San Francisco Business Times - June 22, 2007 by Adrienne Sanders
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