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Casual Games Now Have Serious Budgets

Posted by Zonk on from the hardcore-money dept.

eldavojohn writes "CNN is running a story on the increasingly-lucrative market for casual gaming. The article mentions that the latest PopCap game 'Bookworm Adventures' cost $700,000 to create. At $30 a pop for the title, PopCap is almost certain to make a profit." From the article: "Casual gamers play to relax -- the same reason people play solitaire, dominoes or mahjong. The games can be played for 5 minutes -- while the baby is sleeping or between office meetings -- or for hours at a stretch in a Zen-like trance. Big Fish Games Inc. released its most expensive title -- 'Travelogue 360: Paris' -- earlier this month. The Seattle-based company spent $300,000, hired seasoned illustrators and photographers, and bought the rights to images of historic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower. Players scour Paris for souvenirs as they are interviewed for an article in a travel magazine."

32 comments

  1. Too low for development... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Funny

    For one game company I worked at, $700,000 wouldn't cover the CEO's salary and his NYC penthouse apartment for a year.

    1. Re:Too low for development... by LoverOfJoy · · Score: 1

      I'm guessing that one game company created more than one game that year.

    2. Re:Too low for development... by diersing · · Score: 1
      I wouldn't suspect $700k would cover a NYC penthouse alone for six months, but what is your point?

      Companies operate at different scales, one company may look at a 'casual' game and see a piss-ant not worth the effort, another could see it as a gold mine. For a company to produce a game from concept to market for less then a million, there is a very good chance they will find a profit at the end (no matter how crappy or small a target market). For another company, say a larger one, who can't call a meeting without dropping a couple hundred grand in hotels, flights, etc - a game like this is a pothole not worth the effort.

    3. Re:Too low for development... by russ1337 · · Score: 1

      Did you work for Stefan?

    4. Re:Too low for development... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Did you work for Stefan?
      The former Swedish tennis player?!
    5. Re:Too low for development... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

      Steps to become a profitable Game company.

      Step 1 - beat the hell out of the CEO and other executives and kick them out the door WITHOUT a golden parachute. Executives are nothing but dead weight on a company anyways.

      Step 2 - make a fun game that is scalable and fast to play. If you can make it playable and fun on cellphones, you will get rich overnight.

      Step 3 reinvest - but DO NOT hire any typical executives. Make their job based on comission or performance if the company profits, so do they. IF the company tanks, SO DO THEY!.

      Modern executives are assholes that are simply doing nothing valuable for the company and spending the money like water for their lavish lifestyle. No Executive should have a salary ABOVE 50K, everything else they make needs to be attached to profits, if they work hard and make the company very profitable, they benefit and get lots of money.

      but that's honest work, and we all know that Executives dont like the honest work.

    6. Re:Too low for development... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
      The former Swedish tennis player?!

      He's not Swedish any longer?

    7. Re:Too low for development... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Off the top of my head, I think NWN2 was the only game they came out with for this year.

    8. Re:Too low for development... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A big problem with what your proposing is that technically thats what options are suppose to do, except since the executives are in charge of how they get doled out, along with being able to mess with the stock prices with announcements and stuff its created an atmosphere where the stock prices of a company in no way reflect the health of the company or how well the executives are doing their jobs since their job moved from makeing sure the company is healthy to makeing sure the stock price is healthy which in turn creates really stupid run on sentences like this.

  2. Casual gamers play to relax. by Brad1138 · · Score: 1

    That's not me, unfortunately I can't play games w/o being competitive.

    --
    If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
    1. Re:Casual gamers play to relax. by diersing · · Score: 1

      Who says competition isn't relaxing? Winning is relaxing, competing and losing no so much.

  3. Wrong price! by LoudMusic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    At $30 a pop for the title, PopCap is almost certain to make a profit.

    $30? I wouldn't pay that for a package of 5 of their games. And furthermore, $30 isn't the correct price.

    Buy Bookworm Deluxe today! Get unlimited play when you register and unlock your Deluxe game! Only $19.95.

    Or a bunch of games at $5.29 / game.

    Get 17 games for only $89.95. Save over 70% with the PopCap Platinum Pack

    I'd like to where I got the information from but I used the one in the main post.

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    1. Re:Wrong price! by anotherone · · Score: 1

      RTFA- the $30 is for a new game. Isn't out yet.

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    2. Re:Wrong price! by MindStalker · · Score: 1

      No, not really, most of their games are 19.95, even relatively less popular games like bigmoney for instance, at 19.95. I personally couldn't imagine playing that much for such simple games, and I'm a casual gamer myself. But I'm perfectly happy playing their free online versions. So I guess if you have deep pockets and $20 is nothing this is a perfect deal. And apparently many are buying and their target demographic are seniors who have plenty of money and time.

    3. Re:Wrong price! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I think you nailed the point of the article. There are two markets:

      One for the regular gamer, who demands any or all of the following:

      - a storyline
      - 30 or 40 hours of solo gameplay
      - online capablity (so the game doesn't "lose" value when s/he finishes the solo gameplay)

      These people will pay $30 to $50 per game with the above attributes and feel that they got their money's worth, and that their intelligence wasn't insulted by pushing something like Pac-Man for $50.

      The second market is for casual gamers, who demand any or all of the following:

      - Doesn't take long to master
      - Doesn't get old or boring quickly
      - Can be played in short bursts (no complicated storylines here)
      - Has unlimited replay value.

      These people will pay $20 or $30 per game with the above attributes and also feel that they got their money's worth. They don't feel ripped off because they are getting exactly what they wanted.

      I fall into the latter category. I picked up a DS Lite about a month ago with three games, and played nothing but Tetris for the first three weeks (maybe a an hour was spent on the two other games). $150 to play a single game might look retarded from the average gamer's point of view, but I couldn't be happier with my purchase. By the look of this news item, I'm not the only one willing to spend a high amount on a single game.

      [For the record, I've started playing the two other games and now I'm addicted to Advance Wars: Dual Strike.]

    4. Re:Wrong price! by kalirion · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I loved the Zuma Deluxe (another PopCap title) trial, and when months later I noticed it for $9.99 at Best Buy, I bought it without a second thought. I'm not sure how many hours I spent playing and enjoying the game, but it was more than enough to justify that particular price. I don't think I would've bought it for $20, but in hindsight it still would have been a good deal. $30 would've been too expensive though.

      I still come back to it once in a while to try to finish the last level, but I don't think I'll ever be able to do so.

    5. Re:Wrong price! by tlhIngan · · Score: 1
      I loved the Zuma Deluxe (another PopCap title) trial, and when months later I noticed it for $9.99 at Best Buy, I bought it without a second thought. I'm not sure how many hours I spent playing and enjoying the game, but it was more than enough to justify that particular price. I don't think I would've bought it for $20, but in hindsight it still would have been a good deal. $30 would've been too expensive though.


      I played it on my XBox360 (didn't buy it), then when I got an iPod video as a gift, I went nuts and bought it on the iPod. It's already given me many hours of play, not bad for the $5 it cost on the iTunes store. I just wish there was some way to control the wheel sensitivity on the iPod - a tad too sensitive.
    6. Re:Wrong price! by blueZhift · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Definitely too high. A $30 game is not going to move much with the casual crowd. Part of the reason for the success of the casual segment are the low, impulse buy range, prices of which $19.99 is usually the upper limit. Once you get out of that range, it's no longer a casual purchase. So I'd question the strategy of going to bigger budgets if it means the retail price of the games goes to more than $20.

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    7. Re:Wrong price! by loopback_127001 · · Score: 1

      It is now!
      http://www.popcap.com/launchpage.php?theGame=bwa

  4. Burger King by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    What about Burger King's new games? $4 for something that actually doesn't look too bad; probably Xbox-age graphics, but still playable no doubt.

    1. Re:Burger King by aliendisaster · · Score: 1

      Yes. Playable and very fun watching a stalker King while drunk.

      --
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    2. Re:Burger King by Duds · · Score: 1

      Created by UK company Blitz (founded by the people who wrote the iconic "Dizzy" games). I would suspect we're talking quite low budgets but even if the cost was the $700,000 each we're talking about PopCap spending, a total of $2.1m for this kind of advertising would be good even if they gave them away. At $4 they're making a small profit after materials too.

      That said, PocketBike especially is probably more involved than a "Casual game" in terms of both making and playing.

    3. Re:Burger King by twistedsymphony · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm quite fond of the Burger King games... the value meal I had to buy to get them was the first time I set foot in a Burger King in a LONG time but it was worth it for the cheap entertainment those games have provided. Sneak King is entertaining on concept alone, but Pocketbike Racer is entertaining for it's multiplayer capabilities (both online and off).

      I'm curious how much those games actually cost to make, and if the development costs were just seen as an advertising budget to get people to buy more burgers or if they're actually turning a profit on these games and the advertising/burgers is just a happy side effect.

      --
      Collector's Edition
    4. Re:Burger King by JFMulder · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I can't point to a source but I remember reading that the games were written off as marketing, not a product they expect to make a profit on, but I think they will nonetheless. I have the 3 games at home, I bought all of them with my lunch (hadn't been to BK for a couple of months) the day they came out but I haven't unwrapped them yet, I'm still stuck on Gears Of War on the 360 and Final Fantasy 3 and Elite Beat Agents on the DS.

      But I hear that they are great value. Can't wait to unlock those achievements. :)

    5. Re:Burger King by ObiWanStevobi · · Score: 1

      Figured they were a total flop. I have fun playing bumper hockey, but have never found a game on Live.

    6. Re:Burger King by badboy_tw2002 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm guessing the cost of the game was to offset the publisher manufacturing fee and the entire budget was probably written off, so they weren't expecting to make a dime. (Generally MS, Sony & Nintendo charge upwards of %25 of a title in fees). I doubt though that it mattered much considering the advertising budget for playing all those commercials dwarfed the cost of the actual game. And seeing as the post above got someone to walk into a Burger King who hadn't been there in years I'd say they did the job.

  5. Isn't mobile gaming dead? by a!b!c! · · Score: 1

    Who can find j2me programmers? let alone finance them.

  6. Big Fish Games at Lowtide by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It is funny that Big Fish Games can spend over $300,000 on a game but in another turn laying off a people to "streamline" the company (aka people who couldn't play the politics, so we got rid of them).

    You can read it here at Seattle Post Intelligencer site: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/venture/archive s/107586.asp

    The comments in this blog are fasinating.

  7. Casual != Mobile by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Read the subject line.

  8. Too bad the company deserves a boycott by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, too bad I've taken a stance to boycott Popcap entirely.

    Reason: many of their games are blatant copies of existing games.

    Take for example, Zuma vs PuzzLoop, or Hammer Heads vs Tontie, and etc.

  9. Casual games = more fun than you might think by James_G · · Score: 1

    (Disclaimer: I work for Big Fish Games)

    I've always considered myself a fairly traditional gamer.. FPS, RTS.. that sort of thing. A year ago, I wouldn't have looked twice at the casual games market.. It's only because I started working at BFG that I did. Perhaps it's a factor of getting older, but a lot of the casual games really scratch an itch for me. They're easy to get into, for one. I don't have the time/patience any more to learn all the intricate details of modern RTS games, for example. I can sit down and play for half an hour.. an hour.. and if something comes up in the real world, I can walk away from it at a moment's notice.

    I couldn't be more surprised myself, but I find myself more inclined to play some Sudoku, or Mystery Case Files, or Travelogue 360 than CS, DC, AoE, etc.. these days..

    You can find the games I would personally recommend on my game space (Disclaimer: Any games bought through this link will result in 25% of the amount going to charity - if you sign up for your own account, it can go to you instead).

    Also, I've seen a few comments on pricing.. Most games are $19.99, but most casual games sites (BFG included) have package deals.. buy x games, get them for $9.99, etc.. Best value, for sure. To be honest, I find it better value than paying $60 for BF2, for example..

    It's a huge industry, and you're going to hear a lot more about it over the next few years.

  10. Casual? by KlausBreuer · · Score: 1

    Looks like these games have become, well, uncasual.

    I do not know how much Introversion spent on its very nice casual games 'Defcon' or 'Uplink', but I'm pretty sure it wasn't $700,000.
    Personally, I wrote the PC version of the 1984 Mac-Hit 'ChipWits', and it didn't cost me a cent (just some time).

    What's wrong with the companies claiming to write casual software? Grown too much? Too much bureaucracy? Too expensive managers? Too many people?

    Ciao,
    Klaus

    PS: PC ChipWits: http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/ (no, it doesn't cost a cent, yes I'm advertising it here for feedback ,)

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