Casual Games SIG/Conference Calls/October 2007
International Game Developers Association
Table of contents |
[edit] Role Call
[edit] Who's Here
Jason Akel, Charles Merrin, Jared Nieuwenhuis, Brian Robbins, Dave Rohrl, Rex Sikora, James C Smith, Wade Tinney, Margaret Wallace
[edit] Who's Not
Cherie Lutz
[edit] Next Call
- Tuesday, November 6th at 2pm ET / 11am PT
[edit] Initiatives Overview
[edit] Quarterly
- Wade
-- Summer issue?
--Wade is pulling materials together, and is planning to have something up by 14 September (Summer Retrospective Issue)
--Total cost of printing (printing, shipping, layout, etc.) = $1,848. Initial estimate was $1500 or so. We can bring the price down by localizing printing, etc.
--everyone should be ready to support the short timeline.
Action Item:
--Wade: Check out options to lower shipping costs.
--Wade: Send copy of expense reimbursement to Jason.
[edit] Data Royalty Reporting Standards Initiative
- NEED NEW OWNER; Cherie second
--Playfirst found some issues with Adjustments, COGS, prepaid royalties. James will send out an updated schema to active partners.
--Real will be delayed in its deployment of the XLM standard due to a larger, company-wide royalty system overhaul.
--James G. is pulling together a list with the current status of partner conversations.
[edit] Webinar/Roundtable Broadcasts
- Jason lead
- Developing curriculum - solicited ideas from mailing list, a few responses
- GoToWebinar selected
--James suggested allowing the downloads / feeds for people to access after the fact. Go To corporate solution might allow this.
[edit] White Paper
- Dave R lead
[edit] SIG communication
- Cherie lead, Brian second
We need to improve our communications with our members and the IGDA in general. This will take many forms, including mail list, PR, at show elements (t-shirts, ribbons), etc. Messaging will need to be refined for consistency and format. Brian to create schedule/topics for mailing list outreach.
--Press release went out and was picked up by a couple of games news channels - Gamasutra, IGDA newsletter.
--Should releases be pushed to the wire? If so, we need a company to sponsor the cost. IGDA hasn't used the service for years.
--Thanks to Cherie and everyone.
[edit] Developer / Publisher Acknowledgement
- Jared lead
Portals are inconsistent about how they list information about the games they sell. In particular, they frequently list partial or no information about the actual developers and publishers. The ideas is to create a standard for how this information is listed.
UPDATE: "So far I been researching and developing a spreadsheet that tracks how and if each portal gives credit to the developer and/or publisher of a game. And if they do give credit, how do they give it? Logo? Company name? Based on this research, I will start to develop an initial standard with the intention of it being reasonable and theoretically easy to implement. At this point, I would want to share and get feedback from some of the major portals to see if this is doable as is, how they might change it and if they would be willing to adopt it."
[edit] Advertising Standards
- Charles
In-game and HTML advertising is becoming more important to casual games. There are currently a number of standards / initiatives underway, including CAST, Google, and real. It is important to try to guide them all towards as much standardization as possible. And in the short run, to facilitate communication to the group about what is happening.
--Adoption by IAB is going slower than expected due to politics. IT is not dead - just moving slower than expected.
--Talked with Google to get them thinking about standards as well.
[edit] DRM Standardization
- Rex lead, James C. Smith second
-- Come up with a standard way for games and DRM to talk to each other. Advantages include:
-- Allow for content limited trials instead of time limited trials. On PopCap.com we’ve found over a series of tests that giving users unlimited play, but cutting them off at a certain level until they buy the game, results in the highest conversion rate. But this can’t happen until the game can ask the DRM in a standard way “should I stop yet?”
-- Allow games to do things like show trailers when they are cut off instead of simply shutting down. Again, in our own trials, showing an attractive in-game “trailer” had a higher conversion rate.
-- Prevent “one hour hopping” where savvy users hop around from site to site getting another free hour from each.
-- Better anti-piracy protection. Wrappers have some inherent problems, but a clean API between the game and the DRM may be more reliable.
Other initiatives that were discussed but not assigned an owner:
[edit] Business Model Education
- No current owner
It is important for the entire industry to understand what models are being used, and what they mean to the developers. For example, what are the implications of clients, subscription models, advertising, etc. IT was agreed that this probably wasn't a separate initiative, but will be woven into many of the other initiatives, such as the webinars, quarterly, and white paper.
[edit] Developer Showcase
- No current owner
This would be an independent destination (probably a website) where all developers can have a profile and information about their games. It will likely be most valuable for smaller, independent developers. The initial goal is to determine what format the showcase will take, then to determine how to implement it.
[edit] Surveys
- No current owner
Survey SIG members to see what they want from the SIG and from the SC. Survey actual end users to gather information to help everyone in the SIG. Unlike Real, MSFT, and other larger companies, the smaller developers don't have the means or the reach to do this for themselves.
Action Items:
--Charles: Pull together a survey monkey survey for list to comment on.
[edit] Other Business
- HTML emails
--Reminder that we have this format to send notices, distribute materials (quarterly), run surveys, etc.
