Casual Connect: Fuel’s Robbins On Casual Business Models
For those that haven’t heard of Brian or Fuel they are both heavyweights (or so, Brian is actually rather slim in his build) in the casual game space right now and in the article above Brian offers some great insight into casual game business models. It’s worth a read as he speaks from experience (I think he’s been involved with something like 40+ game releases).
Thanks Tom 
Good stuff, Tom. I also enjoyed an earlier interview with .
]Greg Costikyan from Manifesto Games
One interesting issue he addresses is exclusivity, bound to be a thorny one for indie portals, especially as big guns (i.e. MTV and Nickelodeon annoucement today) start to open their deep pockets and build their own. An indie portal can’t pay enough for exclusivity, and the more popular a title, the more sales are cannibalized, so why spend marketing dollars? Hmmm…
The subscription and/or ad revenue from portal sites is obviously an opportunity for indie game developers to get paid, as well as the console dl channels like wiiware, but I’ve been trying to think of a way to exploit the AdSense network, like the blogosphere has done. Perhaps a floating header or sidebar or frame displaying google links that’s inside the game, not on the surrounding web page. I know a lot of work has been done at OTEE (with limited success so far) trying to get decent html rendering inside the player, but even the render to texture trick should suffice for this purpose. This might be less intrusive than billboards or product placements in the game itself. The goal is to tie the revenue mechanism to the content, rather than the context in which it’s presented.
Sure, it’s true enough that it’s difficult even today for Indie portals to pay for exclusivity and that would only grow more difficult as larger players (with deeper pockets ) enter into the mix. But who’s marketing dollars are you referring to? The general idea isn’t that exclusivity is necessarily your big draw (ex: kongregate.com, shockwave.com and miniclip.com seem to have a lot of overlapping content), it’s the selection of content you attract and site specific benefits. Again referring to kongregate.com, they offer weekly challenges, have points, friends, favorite games, etc., all designed to offer a unique “community building” experience that (in theory) keeps folks coming back. So if you can’t get exclusivity, work around it, what can you do? Unique site features and content variety… (among other possibilities of course)
While I’m not here to say that’s a bad idea as a whole (maybe it would prove lucrative), I can say that as a game player myself it would probably annoy me quite a bit. For a context reference, I like playing games on kongregate.com, but the chat window next to all games annoys me (at least I can mute the idle and annoying chatter that floods that window), but many use it and seem to enjoy it so there you go.
Well, I don’t agree that it would be less intrusive than billboards or product placements (if you’re still referring to a persistent header or sidebar with ads). For example, if you’re telling me you’ll have a persistent header banner that won’t go away then that seems far more intrusive than a billboard going by in a racing game (that adds a hint of “reality” as I see billboards all day, is small and gone by quickly and is easily ignored). To an advertiser your idea would likely be far more appealing but it’s a delicate balance between offering uncluttered game play and meeting adevertiser’s needs so they spend their marketing budget on ads in your game.
I hope I’m not coming off as too negative against your idea, I’m just going the devil’s advocate route as I see some potential issues. No matter what, I think it’s a good idea to look around at how ad revenue is used elsewhere (AdSense or otherwise) and see how those can be adapted for casual game usage to offer better revenue for content authors. Keep the juices flowing!