Yesterday I posted an ActiveRain Crossword Puzzle.
Today I'm hosting The ActiveRain Word Search.
Why am I doing this?
Because casual games are sticky. And whether you know it right now or not, you want sticky. You want people to come back to your site over and over, even when they aren't looking for a home and you'd like them to stay for long time, if possible. Casual games provide a way to do that.
"Casual games are tapping into a Middle American audience like few services on the Web do," says Erick Hachenburg, senior vice president of global publishing for Electronic Arts. And, if projections hold up, in 2008, online casual gaming will be a $2 Billion industry.
Who is the casual online games player? The answer is everyone. While market research shows the majority of the audience today is women 30-45 years old, it can be easily seen that the audience crosses all demographics for playing online games and buying downloadable game. The spectrum is from children to young males to seniors playing online bridge. Casual game players find that these types of games provide entertainment, diversion, socialization and competition.
And all of this happens largely through advertising (less than 2 percent of players actually pay to subscribe). Again, these subscribers are mostly women 35-54! People are searching all over for free games to play. And talk about sticky: Pogo.com's players spend about 24.8 million hours on the site each month, says Nielsen/NetRatings. "Checkers is a big pickup scene," says Todd Frentzel of Electronic arts. (3)
So, yes, this is all just for fun. And it IS fun. But don't write this fun off as "Jeff is just fooling around. I've got better things to do with my time." I certainly know that almost everyone has better things to do with their time. But there's a lesson here, and there is always a method to my madness.
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