A long hoped- for conference Kyiv Casual Сonnect will take place in Kyiv on the 22-24 of October. According to the words of its organizer (Casual Games Association) this event will bring together more than 3000 talented professionals in the casual gaming industry. The aim of this meeting is raising the level of casual game world industry bymeans of developers experience interchange. (http://kyiv.casualconnect.org)
Casual Connect is an annual conference. Luckily for us this year it will take place in our capital. Here young developers will have good opportunities to meet real Whales and Titans of the world game industry. Thus the platinum sponsors are: Big Fish Games, RealGames, Alawar Entertainment and ZapakWorld. Their history and experience are worth of our attention. That’s why making use of World Wide Web omniscience we’ve made a small selection which we’d like to present.
Big Fish Games is a global leader and innovator in the casual games industry. It produces and delivers the world's best games and game experiences. Judging from facts we can see that its daring marketing slogan “A New Game Every Day!” is rather justifiable. Big Fish Games works with more than 500 game developers all over the world and its portal is visited by more than 25 million unique visitors per month. It distributes over 1 million games a day and continues to grow more than 100 percent a year. At present casual games developer Big Fish Games is worth $83.3 million and its average site visitor buys 25 games a year. (http://www.bigfishgames.com)
In one of the interviews a Big Fish Games founder Paul Thelen opened a secret of his company. He told that when he was the only worker in his company a friend called him the Big Fish in the pond named Earth. The Big Fish managed to cope with all the difficulties and 5 years later beginners all over the world consider his success formula. Here are some of Paul Thelen’s useful advices and thoughts:
- Picking out a game to launch on a portal you have to take into account age audience interested in it. Paul Thelen told that when a company was purely a game developer it was a very frustrating process to get games distributed on large portals. The problem was that the consumers were 45 year old gamers, largely women, and the folks deciding what games to launch were mostly men in their twenties.
- If you don’t take into account the age of the audience your work will be good, but you’ll never be better than those who direct their attention to concrete consumers.
- Only users can decide whether a game is good or not. If it resonates with the audience in the first few days, it will bubble up the rankings and sell very well. If the game does not do well, it drifts in the rankings and is eventually removed from the site.
- Some developers think their games will get ‘lost’ with so many games, but if the game is good, it will get the top of the genre and maybe even the top of the entire site and generate significant sales.
RealGames is one more platinum sponsor of Casual Connect. This company declares that its only passion is casual games. As a developer, publisher and distributor it is the global leader in casual games industry. In the past years RealGames family has grown to include RealArcade.com, GameHouse.com, Zylom.com, MrGoodLiving.com, Atrativa.com.br and GameTrust.com. Worldwide RealGames network reaches more than 40 million unique players each month.
Besides developing and publishing hit title games this company delivers the whole package. That means very game is translated into different languages. In particular company’s catalogue includes 500 games which can be loaded in eight languages. (http://realgames.real.com/
Alawar Entertainment is also a platinum sponsor of Casual Connect. This Titan of the casual games industry covers more than 85% of game market in Eastern Europe.
During its 9-year history Alawar Entertainment develops and distributes casual games and works with 50 teams of developers. Every year CD-publishers in 25 countries all over the world produce more than half a million CDs with Alawar Entertainment games. Last year in collaboration with Java-games publisher New Edge it began production and distribution of games for mobile phones. (http://www.alawar.ru/
ZapakWorld is the world of free games. This is a casual games site where you can find 12236 casual games. The company claims to be the largest gaming destination in the world. Its leaders are convinced that 10 thousand games will never be better than a thousand. And what is more definition “the largest game destination in the world” makes the site more popular as a variety of games helps a consumer to find his so longed-for game. (http://www.zapakworld.com//)
by Eugena Slobodyanyuk
