May’s Roundtable focused on Social & Casual Gaming Business Models.
Just when consumers were getting used to more involved online social game business models, along game “gamification” and a push for more social games. Are most new social games these days casual games? Why are the latter more popular, when the former are more profitable? Given the small percentage of total mobile devices that smartphones represent, is it safe to ignore SMS-based casual games?
This roundtable will be discussing this as well as conversion rates, in-game purchases, virtual revenue, Facebook Credits, and more.
Participating companies and people included:
OMGPOP: Eric Von Coelln, VP
Eric has been in the casual and social games business for six years, heading up marketing at Oberon Media and soccer MMO Power Challenge, and currently optimizing and building a portfolio of Facebook games for OMGPOP. Prior to working in games, Eric spent seven years managing e-commerce, advertising and marketing at DoubleClick and Prodigy Internet. Eric also was a guest contributor to Inside Social Games and popularized the Sticky Factor as a standard social games metric.
Twitter: @evcinnyc
Cellufun: Arthur Goikhman, COO
Arthur is the COO of Cellufun, where he sets strategic direction and oversees business development initiatives. As founding CEO, Arthur raised multiple rounds of funding for Cellufun and grew it from an idea to one of the top mobile websites in the world.
Prior to Cellufun, Arthur founded Spiderphone, a web conferencing service, where he still serves on the Board of Directors.
Arthur spent the early part of his career on Wall St, working for Salomon Brothers and Morgan Stanley. From 1997 through 2004, Arthur ran Morgan Stanley’s online trading platform and was instrumental in the firm’s disaster recovery efforts after 9/11.
Twitter: @cellufun
LargeAnimal: Wade Tinney, CEO & Founding Partner
Wade has been designing and developing games since 1996. He founded Large Animal Games with Josh Welber in January of 2001. He has led the New York City Chapter of the International Game Developers Association since 2006. Since early 2008, Large Animal has focused on publishing games that connect friends on social networks and mobile devices. Their Toga social game platform provides a complete tool set for running social games as a service across multiple platforms. Large Animal’s recent titles include Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, Bananagrams, What to Wear, and OfficeWorld.
Twitter: @largeanimal / @bananagrams
Sorensen/Crane: Jared A. Sorensen, Co-founder
Jared A. Sorensen is a writer and game designer based in New York City. Jared’s previous employers and clients include: Mattel Interactive, Atari, LucasArts, Propaganda, Green Ronin, White Wolf, Tilted Mill Entertainment, Turbine, Chimera Creative, Hidden City Games, Fourth Story Media, Vertigor and Disney. He’s also given presentations at GenCon, Origins, PAX, NerdNite NYC, Dragonmeet UK and Fastaval DK.
Memento Mori Theatricks (MMT), was formed in 1997 to publish free gaming material on the web. Now, MMT is involved in commercial print and web publishing, as well as a design studio specializing in freelance writing for both traditional RPGs and computer/console games. He co-founded Sorensen/Crane, a game design, transmedia and world-building studio, in 2010 with fellow game designer Luke Crane (designer of Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard).
Twitter: @jaredsorensen
Electric Sheep Company: Jonathan Collins, CEO
Jonathan began his career at the Electric Sheep Company in 2006 by successfully launching several major sponsorship integrations for MTV’s emmy award winning Virtual Laguna Beach. Following the success of that launch, he went on to lead ESC’s multi-million dollar production efforts on subsequent MTV releases including the Virtual Hills and Virtual Pimp My Ride which ultimately became part of MTV’s Virtual Worlds platform. In early 2008, Jonathan took on the role of Executive Producer and VP of Production and became responsible for the successful execution of all ESC projects, many of which were developed on ESC’s proprietary WebFlock platform. These projects included social games for major media companies as well as large-scale virtual world projects for the pre-teen market.
In September 2009, Jonathan was named CEO of Electric Sheep Company to oversee the successful launch of StreamJam, an app which allows fans to watch live streaming events with friends in a highly interactive 3D environment. StreamJam has been in Beta development for several months with hundreds of shows and thousands of users having used the product. The app will officially launch in Summer 2011.
Prior to joining the Electric Sheep Company, Jonathan was active in the world of new media as an entrepreneur, producer, writer, artist, and educator. He received his MFA from UCLA’s School of Film, Television, and Digital Media in 1997 after earning a B.A. from Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
Zynga: Demetri Detsaridis, GM Zynga NY
Demetri Detsaridis is the General Manager of Zynga New York, one of the newest studios of the world’s leading social games company. Having spent his last decade making games of all shapes and sizes, Demetri was most recently the General Manager and Executive Producer of innovative New York game developer Area/Code (CSI: Crime City, Drop7). Before that, he co-founded and served as Creative Director of London-based Massively Mobile, was a game designer at mobile giant Gameloft, an early member of Warner Bros.’ superhero MMORPG DC Universe Online team, and a longtime game designer and producer at casual gaming pioneer Pop & Co.
Demetri has received numerous awards for his work as both a designer and producer, and has worked with clients as diverse as the Cartoon Network, Electronic Arts, CBS, UNICEF, and Nickelodeon. Before entering the games industry, Demetri produced educational CD-ROMs and interactive museum exhibits for clients like the National Building Museum, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Jewish Museum of Berlin. He holds a B.F.A. in Film & Television from New York University and is a Ph.D./ABD in American Studies from the George Washington University.
Twitter: @detsaridis
Frescher-Southern: Josh Knowles, Founder
Josh Knowles the founder of Frescher-Southern, Ltd., where he works on a wide range of mobile, social, and game development projects for clients such as MTV, Nokia, LiveNation, Sprint, Columbia University, Consumer Reports, Thrillist, BBDO, and the CIA.
Twitter: @chasing
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