The annual show held by the Casual Game Association had high attendance this year (2,000 people total), but it failed to generate major buzz. No big consumer news came from the event, and a big portion of the casual gaming world – Flash games – were nowhere to be found.

Some might argue that’s because social gaming is so hot – there was no point in showing up unless you had something to say about the matter. Whether or not that’s the case, it suddenly seems clear why casual games don’t get the respect they deserve – it’s all too fragmented to present a united front.

Despite the lack of mind-blowing moments at Casual Connect this year, there were a few common threads running throughout the three days of talks, all of which will likely impact your casual game playing experience for the rest of the year.

Everyone’s obsessed with going social

About 80% of the conference was focused on social games, with discussions about how to keep your social game alive or how to turn an existing game franchise into something that’s Facebook ready. PopCap made the jump with iterations of its popular PC games – first, with Bejeweled Blitz then Zuma Blitz (available in a few weeks). Big Fish Games made the jump with My Tribe and Treasure Quest; Playrix is doing the same with Fishdom. If you’re favorite casual games haven’t made the jump to Facebook yet, it will most likely happen sooner than later.

Everyone wants to figure out how to entice you to buy items in ‘freemium’ games

Freemium games are great for consumers – you can play for free and then – if you feel like it – you can spend anywhere from $1 to $10,000 buying additional items for your game. People who spend, spend big, but the majority of players refuse to part with their dollars, which is leaving everyone on the inside wondering what kind of new virtual doo-dads they can create to entice you to part with your hard earned cash.

Social games are seeking life beyond Facebook

Right now, Facebook is the hot place for social gaming, but publishers want to spread the love around on other (or any) platforms, whether it’s another social network like MySpace or Hi5 or a big gaming portal like Yahoo or the upcoming Google Games. Scrappy start-ups such as HeyZap were also at the show, offering publishers a way to port their games somewhere other than Facebook.

Lots of talk for ‘innovation’ in casual games, but not many real examples

“We can do better.” That’s how ohai founder Susan Wu started out her talk at Casual Connect this year, challenging social game makers to go beyond creating pet sims and farming clones. That was a common thread that was touched on throughout the week, both for social and casual games. Outside of some larger theories (like Playfish US General Manager Dan Fiden’s touchy feely talk on creating emotions with games), there weren’t too many solid examples of innovation in games outside of the ‘I Love Bees‘ meta-game that was used to promote Halo 2 several years ago. There was also a game built around an augmented reality mobile app that involves tagging real-world places and then viewing them using your cell phone camera. It seems like most of the real innovation was on new ways to make money, and not the actual games themselves.

For a video game veteran like myself, Casual Connect was a great way to get a feel for what’s happening in this fascinating, but largely unappreciated, segment of the gaming industry. In a year, we’ll see if ‘social’ is still the big trend or if everyone will move onto the next big thing.

Oh yeah — don’t let the name fool you — even thought it’s called Casual Connect, we didn’t spot anyone hanging around in a bathrobe or loungewear (though I did spy PopCap co-founder John Vechey in a sweet red tracksuit).

This article was originally published by Libe Goad on Games.com. Thanks for the scoop (and great picture)!

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So, just how much was Playdom worth? Apparently $563.2 million because that is exactly what Disney paid for them, along with an additional $200 million coming if Playdom meets performance goals. Disney’s CEO and President Robert Iger commented on the acquisition:

“We see strong growth potential in bringing together Playdom’s talented team and capabilities with our great creative properties, people and world-renowned brands like Disney, ABC, ESPN and Marvel. This acquisition furthers our strategy of allocating capital to high-growth businesses that can benefit from our many characters, stories and brands, delivering them in a creatively compelling way to a new generation of fans on the platforms they prefer.”

Presumably, this move will also encompass all of Playdom’s recent acquisitions as well. Commenting on the move as well, is Playdom’s CEO John Pleasants:

“We are at the start of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the way people of all ages play games with their friends across devices, platforms and geographical boundaries. Disney is an incredibly forward-thinking company that shares our vision and is the ideal partner to further our mission to bring great entertainment to people around the world.”

Wow, this is rather large news for the social game world, with a monstrous company like Disney now investing in the trend.

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Family Feud Integrates WildTangent BrandBoost

WildTangent has announced that social game publisher iWin has chosen to integrate the WildTangent BrandBoost platform into the Facebook game Family Feud. The integration will see the game updated to allow users to participate in short activities, like watching videos or clicking on ads in order to unlock complimentary episodes of the game (for those who don’t play the game, a user is limited to a set number of free episodes per day).

This update, says Peter Negulescu (president of iWin), will allow the publisher to keep players engaged in the game for longer periods of time, via these ad-centric activities that will give players who would otherwise never purchase episodes with real funds a chance to play the game more than they originally could.

To try Family Feud for yourself, head over to the game’s page on Facebook.

hi5 Launches New Developer Portal

Social entertainment site hi5 has announced the launch of a new developer portal that will allow developers to more easily (and quickly) add their content to the hi5 platform, thus reaching the site’s large user base with as little hassle as possible.

For one, the developer portal will see developers now having access to hi5′s gift economy, which allows third-party games to provide gifts and in-game items to players, which can then be shown on a profile page for all to see. This is but one of the viral channels that hi5 says will allow developers to get their content discovered on a large scale.

“With the release of our new developer portal and support for Facebook-compatible APIs, it is now nearly frictionless for developers to publish their games in our network.” said Alex St. John, President and CTO, hi5, via a company press release. “As of today, anybody who has made the investment to create a social media game is simply throwing money away if they don’t publish it on hi5 as quickly as possible. It’s virtually effortless.”

St. John has put his proverbial money where his mouth is, especially when it comes to his insistence concerning Facebook’s flaws, as he took on a personified version of Facebook in a sumo wrestling match at this year’s Casual Connect, and has been quoted by TechFlash as saying that his network can provide what Facebook can’t.

Clearly they [Facebook] discovered a new kind of game platform, that’s hugely popular, and they’re going to squander it. That’s hard for me to see, and I’m excited to have the opportunity to go, look, let me show you guys how to do gaming in this environment correctly. It’s great that you paved the way and discovered it, but it’s clear that you’re not really going to focus on being very good at being a gaming platform, and I know how to do that.

For more information about the Developer Portal, head over to the company’s website.

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WildTangent Announces WildTangent Games

WildTangent has announced the future release of WildTangent Games, a new online games service that will feature social games, along with premium flash games, as well as its current lineup of titles. The application will allow users the opportunity to “engage with other types of popular entertainment,” like TV, music, and the features of social networks like Facebook, all without leaving the app.

The app is setup around a system of tabs, that allow users to easily browse to the games they want to play, while also allowing for quick access to tabs containing news about movies, music, and social networking.

The company will be bringing their digital currency and advertising partners into the mix, so that players can receive “gifts” from participating brands, purchase digital items in-game with WildCoins, among other options.

“Our new games service will be an entirely new arena for both game players and the game developers who create great experiences for our consumers,” said Sean Vanderdasson, senior vice president at WildTangent, via a company press release.  “We’ll continue to offer games tailored for all members of the household as well as our unique free/rent/own model. Now, however, developers of all types, including social developers and those whose games include digital items, can benefit from inclusion within our service.”

WildTangent Games is currently in “preview” mode, but we’ll be sure to bring you more news about the service as it becomes available.

REALNetworks Selects Live Gamer for GameHouse Microtransactions

REALNetworks has announced a partnership with Live Gamer that will see Live Gamer powering microtransactions within GameHouse, a division of REALNetworks. This partnership will allow Live Gamer to power the virtual economy that functions across multiple platforms through GameHouse Fusion’s thousands of socially connected games.

To put it bluntly, people playing those games will soon be able to purchase in-game items and upgrades via microtransactions, while the base games themselves will continue to remain free.

“The free-to-play, virtual goods-based business model has proven to significantly increase revenue in social games, but due to GameHouse Fusion’s scope and complexity, it was critical that we integrate a trusted platform that could scale and meet all of our needs,” said Matt Hulett, chief revenue officer of GameHouse, via a company press release. “We chose the Live Gamer platform because of its advanced toolset and track record in the industry.”

For more information on GameHouse Fusion, remember to check out the Facebook app of the same name, which we told you about last May.

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Kinect Technology ‘Improving Every Day’

The developer of the upcoming Kinect game, Child of Eden, has stepped up to the plate and is discussing Kinect’s technology. In an interview, Tetsuya Mizuguchi said that “Every day the technology and software improves, so we’re constantly tuning it.” He also was quick to point out that the improvements are noticable during the development process.

Otherwise speaking about Kinect, Mizuguchi said “I really love working with new technology and seeing what sort of experience we can create around it. The Natal (now Kinect) technology happened to be the first one we got our hands on, so we wanted to see how it could work with Child of Eden.” Child of Eden is expected to launch some time next year.

New CEO of Square Enix USA

Square Enix has announced a new CEO of US operations today with Mike Fischer taking the role. Fischer will oversee all operations pertaining to Square Enix, Eidos and Taito in North and South America. Speaking on the move, Yoichi Wada said:

“We are pleased to have the benefit of Mike’s global leadership experience in interactive entertainment and look forward to the significant contribution he will bring to the growth of our North American business.”

Fischer has extensive experience in the video game industry, working at Namco, Sega and Microsoft over the years.

Nintendo Wins DS Piracy Case

Nintendo has some celebrating to do today as it has won a long-awaited lawsuit concerning the sale of mod devices for the Wii and DS. Devices such as the R4 DS card would allow users to pirate Nintendo DS games and play them without paying.

Nintendo sent out a statement saying:

“Nintendo protects its intellectual property rights globally and takes action to prevent the distribution of pirated software and devices that allow illegally downloaded software to be played. Nintendo takes this action not only for the company’s sake, but in the interests of its partners who spend time and money legitimately developing software for Nintendo video game consoles and systems, and customers who expect the highest standards and integrity from products bearing the Nintendo name.”

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Oberon Media Announces Blaze

Oberon Media has announced the formation of Blaze, an e-commerce platform that streamlines the distribution of social and or downloadable games via a multi-screen solution. Blaze will remove the necessity for players to have to choose between different gaming websites, as developers will be able to “deliver” their games to users across a worldwide network of partner websites, including MSN UK, Orange France and more.

This means that developers will have a new way to access the massive audience of casual game players via sites that these gamers are already familiar with and accustomed to – side-by-side with games they already know and love.

The Blaze SDK is said to offer hassle-free integration both for online gaming on the PC and for mobile gaming. Game developers will only need to publish a game once, and within days will have access to over 50 million social and casual players on a monthly basis. Oberon has integrated social features into Blaze including sharing games and game recommendations, free trial time that can be sent as gifts, the ability to “become a fan” of a game, earn achievements, challenge friends or just see what those friends are playing.

Initial partners include Playdom, Evermore Media, Playrix, MetroGames, Bakcstate, Slingo, i-Jet Media, and more.

“With the launch of Blaze, Oberon’s game-changing platform can provide huge benefits to game developers, our partners, and consumers,” said Oberon Chief Strategy Officer, Ofer Leidner, via a company press release. “Developers enjoy easy integration to a network of tens of millions of new players. Our partners gain access to an exciting array of games that use social integration to generate traffic and increase revenue. And consumers are able to access all their favorite social and casual games in one place. It’s a win, win, win solution for everyone.”

For more information about Blaze, head over to the platform’s official website.

Silicon Sisters Interactive Launches in Canada

According to the Entertainment Software Association, female gamers account for 40% of the overall gaming audience, but developers that cater to this specific audience are few and far between. This is where industry veterans Brenda Bailey Gershkovitch and Kirsten Forbes come in, with the creation of Silicon Sisters Interactive, a new Canadian video game company that will create games for a female audience.

The two have a combined 18 years of experience in the industry, with Bailey Gershkovitch being a chair on the Vancouver chapter of Women in Games International (along with being the former COO of Deep Fried Entertainment), and Forbes being an advocate for girl faming preferences, on top of her previous work as an Executive Producer at Radical Entertainment.

Silicon Sisters consists of a predominantly female team, and is currently working on two projects for the PC and mobile platforms. However, Bailey Gershkovitch offers some reassurance that these games won’t be taken lightly:

We’re not interested in ‘pinkifying’ games, which is how girl games are typically designed. It’s no coincidence that the games I and many other female gamers are most drawn to have had women involved in their development. Girls and women game differently than boys and men. Silicon Sisters has studied these differences so we can make games that truly appeal to and resonate with the female audience.

If you’d like to learn more about Silicon Sisters Interactive, head over to the company’s website, and stick with us as we bring you more news from the Casual Connect convention in Seattle.

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GSN & Arkadium Announce Monetization Plan for Mahjongg Dimensions

GSN (Game Show Network) and Arkadium have announced a partnership that will see a newmonetization option being developed for Arkadium’s Mahjongg Dimensions game on Facebook.

While not so much changing the current format of the game, this partnership will see the addition of a new skill-based version of the game being added to the existing Facebook application. This will allow users to take part in cash-gaming (and withdraw real winnings), as users are able to connect to their friends via the social networking site, and then compete with them for cash and prizes.

Mark Cullinane, SVP, Business Development and Digital Distribution of GSN Digital, has this to say about the announcement (via a company press release):

Many companies have had great success driving traffic to their Facebook games, but difficulty monetizing that traffic is still very much a moving target. For this reason, GSN is bringing its highly successful monetization platform to our partners on Facebook.  With Arkadium’s Mahjongg Dimensions application, we plan to deliver a fun, high quality casual game, where users can up the stakes of competitions by challenging their friends for cash prizes.

We’ll be sure to bring you more news about this new partnership, and the developments it brings to Mahjongg Dimensions as it becomes available.

Offerpal Media Launches SocialKast

Offerpal Media has announced the launch of SocialKast, a new “user acquisition and re-engagement solution” for social game developers. To explain it further, SocialKast will allow developers the opportunity to easily connect with large audiences of gamers across a wide variety of social networks and media platforms (that is, more than just MySpace of Facebook, as two examples).

SocialKast allows developers to save resources by creating a game only once, which can then be interacted with on multiple platforms using REST messaging APIs and javascript. Applications or games created for SocialKast allow for user-to-user and application-to-user invites (so that friends can ask their peers to join), gifts, notifications and more, that can be sent to a user’s email address or website inboxes on Offerpal’s partner sites.

This looks to help developers in the viral awareness of their games. Instead of forcing users to sign up for a new social networking or gaming site, they can instead stay where the are familiar (where applicable) and play these new games in a comfortable setting.

Offerpal’s George Garrick says this about the launch, via a company press release:

The launch of SocialKast represents one of the many exciting new rollouts we have planned throughout the rest of the year to support our expansion into new areas. By focusing our efforts on Yahoo and mobile platforms and other large containers and vertical markets, we’re in a position for a strong fourth quarter and continued high-growth throughout 2011.

Big Fish Games Announces Partnership with Woman’s Day

Big Fish Games has announced a partnership with Woman’s Day magazine, the fourth largest magazine in the United States, that will see the casual games company offering digital entertainment to the magazine’s readers via WomansDay.com.

The partnership will see the Big Fish Games’ catalog of more than 2,500 games being exposed to a new audience, with special offers and rewards being provided for Woman’s Day readers. As an example, the September issue of Woman’s Day magazine will include a special offer for readers, while the Big Fish Games website proper will offer rewards like free games to those who visit the site via a link found in the magazine or on WomansDay.com.

As we learn further details about what these rewards will be, we’ll be sure to pass it on to you. In the meantime, be sure to check back with us throughout the week for more news from Casual Connect 2010.

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New York Gaming Meetup founder, Brad Hargreaves, moderated a panel discussion between Ben Feder, CEO, Take Two Interactive, Stephen Totilo, deputy editor at Kotaku.com, and Eric Zimmerman, CEO and Co-founder of Gamelab. Together this panel brought a variety of perspectives from the business, journalism, and creative points of view.

During a lively hour of discourse the audience of nearly 200 industry professionals and curious alike sat and listened to the panel hypothesize about what videogames will be like in thirty years.

Stephen Totilo pointed out that our lexicon for describing movies has evolved over the years, from “moving pictures” to “cinema” to “films” and now “movies”, and that we should expect a similar evolution of the terminology used to describe interactive entertainment. What we currently refer to as videogames may not be known by the same descriptor in thirty years. Stephen, who also proclaimed he “hates old games,” wondered if the games we cherish today will still be revered in thirty years the way that certain classic games like Pac-Man persist nearly thirty years after their advent.

Ben Feder interestingly noted how games have evolved symbiotically over time with input devices and that we should continue to see this relationship develop. New input devices for game consoles breed new types of games, and new technology continues to allow for more advanced and sensitive input devices which will evolve in conjunction with the games that complement them.

Eric Zimmerman pondered how truly meaningful and lasting games, such as chess or poker, have persisted for so long because of their ability to transcend a delimited play experience and create entire cultures of play and devotion around them. He suggested that the games of the future may not follow the current technology curve of continuing to strive towards cinematic realism, but instead trend backwards towards the game types that never grow old. Eric also predicted that the next century will be a “ludic century” as aspects of play and games enter into our daily lives in increasingly subtle ways.

One thing the panelists seemed to agree on was that our predictions for the future of gaming are best informed by examining the history of the medium thus far.

To view the entire panel discussion courtesy of Livestream, click here.

Next week the NY Gaming Meetup will return to its usual format of selected demos from local tech companies on July 28th. To RSVP, visit us here.

TriplePoint and NYCGameindustry.com are sponsors of the New York Gaming Meetup. This article was originally published by Sam Dalsimer on the TriplePoint blog.

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New Xbox 360 Kinect Bundle Announced

On top of announcing the official price for Xbox Kinect, Microsoft has also announced a new Xbox 360 Bundle for the new motion controller. For just $300, you can grab an Xbox 360 with a 4GB hard drive, Kinect camera and Kinect Adventures available November 4th.  Outside of the Kinect bundle, the console will be sold without all the extras for just $200. Aaron Greenberg of Microsoft spoke about the barebones bundle: “It will go on sale August 3rd in North America and later in the month of August around the world.”

Greenberg spoke on the bundles: “We think this is really a tremendous value. We believe the launch of this product is going to be driving a whole new series of new consumers into the Xbox 360 family.”

Unfortunately however, Kinect Adventures will be the only title available in the bundle, as Greenberg points out: “We feel like that’s really the perfect title to include. It’s got the great jump-in, jump-out multiplayer gameplay as well.” This all sounds like a great time to jump in if you don’t have an Xbox 360 already.

Plants vs Zombies Headed For Xbox Live Arcade In September

Remember that vague rumor last week about Plants vs Zombies 2? That was not about a sequel at all, as PopCap has announced that Plants vs Zombies will indeed be hitting the virtual shelves on Xbox Live Arcade this September. Over this past weekend, the full achievement list leaked implying that the title would likely be released ‘soon’. Yesterday however, PopCap released the full details with the release window of early September, the price at 1200 Microsoft Points ($15) and the two new multiplayer modes. The multiplayer modes will be both versus and co-op.

Along with these new modes, the new version will feature leaderboards and friend score tracking to add a bit more social spice to the mix. Along with being released digitally, you can also pick up a physical copy in a new PopCap bundle along with Zuma and Peggle for $19.99 later this fall.

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Arguably the most popular digital download channel, Apple’s App Store offers an extremely low barrier to entry – just $99 for a dev-kit and a revamped review process that sees new apps approved or denied in as little as three days. While a few iPhone gaming giants have emerged, there’s still plenty of room for a basement programmer to strike it rich (or at least make the “What’s Hot” list). In contrast, console gaming depends on the distribution models established decades ago by the book publishing industry. In order to get a disk-based game into players’ living rooms, developers must partner with a publisher who sets up the distribution (including dubious deeds like retailer exclusives). Self-publishing a game with a box and a manual is borderline impossible.

But even when it comes to the zeroes and ones that comprise downloadable games, Murray perceives major developers as more of a burden than an asset to young development studios.  According to his research, casual card, puzzle and word games make up 31% of the offerings on console download services but less than 5% percent of the sales. This flies in the face of the notion that casual players fuel the download market.  In fact, it’s the long-time, hardcore gamers that are driving downloadable game sales, as evidenced by the top three selling XBLA games of 2009 (multiplayer-only FPS Battlefield 1943, oldschool-inspired beat-‘em-up Castle Crashers, and controller-crushingly difficult dirt bike platformer Trials HD). While the EA-published Battlefield may owe part of its success to the series’ long history, the other two titles were created (and published) by tiny development teams.

Murray argues that big publishers offer very little to developers in the downloadable games market, and this stems from both lack of experience and lack of effort or interest.  As he puts it, the person in charge of the digital download services at most publishers “is not necessarily the biggest deal for the overall structure of the publisher.” For the time being, Joe Danger is exclusive to PSN – Sony makes their development tools readily accessible, unlike Microsoft and Nintendo. As a passive rebuttal to the PSN Store, Microsoft created the Xbox Live Indie Games channel (née Xbox Live Community Games), and while it’s relatively easy to get a title published there, the games are incredibly difficult to locate, let alone market and promote to fans.

So what’s a developer to do? For PlayStation games like Murray’s Joe Danger, the money saved through self-publishing could be spent on a high-caliber PR agency (ahem) to spread the word and boost downloads. For a game destined for XBLA or WiiWare, write your local congressperson! And be patient. As consumers become more and more comfortable keeping their entertainment in the cloud, the move toward online stores will pressure companies like Microsoft and Nintendo to revise their strategy.

There’s one other major stumbling block – NPD sales data for downloadable games is between difficult and impossible to obtain.  As a result, publishers can’t use existing titles as a reference point to gauge the risk and potential profit of developing a new game.  If the console giants would relinquish this information and break down other barriers to entry, publishers both great and small could bring more creatively adventurous titles to market. With this capitalistic system, gamers would enjoy all types of new options, from big-screen versions of the $.99 bite-size games that dominate the App Store to $30 small entrées that don’t fit the current pricing/distribution mold. With vibrant, fun-focused games like Joe Danger, the reign of the murky brown über -macho FPS may be coming to a close. It’s simply up to us, as the nerdy masses, to e-vote with our digital wallets.

This article was originally published on the TriplePoint blog.

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