Just my thoughts and some research!

Sart your engines;

1. “Casual gaming” is loosely defined as anything easy to learn that doesn’t require a big time commitment, like Solitaire, Bejeweled or Diner Dash. Games like those have 200 million active players, and pull in $2.25 billion yearly
2. While Microsoft’s famed Solitaire franchise is the most played casual game ever, with more than 400 million people having spent time shuffling their own cards, Microsoft didn’t directly profit — the game is simply a long-running perk for owners of Windows computers. Free play is typically considered a cornerstone of the casual gaming market. Yet there are a handful of gaming portals that do profit, and account for most of those billions of dollars, including AOL Games, Club Penguin, MSN Games, China’s QQ, and Yahoo Games.
3. Although casual game players are evenly distributed through the population, women account for 74% of all paying players, just as young males dominate the hardcore gaming market. Both segments of the gaming industry would like to move into each other’s paying base.
4. Although some money comes in from advertising on gaming sites, there are other revenue models. PopCap, for instance, distributes Bejeweled for free on PCs, but sells the game on mobile phones. Other companies allow free play on the website but charge for downloads, limit the number of levels that can be played without paying, charge for multi-player versions or sell subscriptions.

Facts;

• The casual games industry rakes in $2.25 billion a year, according to the org’s latest research, with growth estimated at a whopping 20 percent.

• over 200 million people play casual games on the Internet each month. And it’s the only sector of gaming that reflects an appropriate gender balance: The ratio of men to women is nearly even, at 48.3 percent to 51.7 percent, respectively, yet 74 percent of people who pay to play casual games are women. In other words, casual gaming is an area of enormous potential for the gaming industry…

• Nine million accounts on World of Warcraft and six million accounts on Xbox Live are, after all, small potatoes compared to the 200 million suggested in sveral reports, but at least Blizzard and Microsoft (MSFT) can count on predictable revenue from every one of their subscribers. And don’t forget, too, that the most popular online hardcore game may still be Counter-Strike, which last year averaged 200,000 simultaneous players at any given moment on Valve’s game delivery service, Steam.

• It’s also good to keep in mind that the money generated from casual gaming doesn’t always go directly to a developer or publisher. Solitaire, which according to the report is the most popular casual game, is a free application that only indirectly profits Microsoft. Casual games are still making baby steps towards acquiring a captive audience and drawing a steady stream of income from it.

Men are just as likely as women to play casual video games...

... but are less likely to admit it, according to an industry report that shatters a widely held industry belief that such games appeal mainly to women.

But women are more likely to buy casual games -- a broad term referring to games that are easy to pick and play -- than men, who are more determined to find a free version or try to thwart anti-piracy protections on games.

Those were some of the findings in the first yearly market report by the Casual Games Association, an industry group aimed at promoting a fast-growing segment that accounts for about 10 percent of the $30 billion global video game market.

"Everyone always thought that casual games were something that only appeal to women," Jessica Tams, managing director of the association, said in an interview. "We have always been obsessed about making games for women."

Surveys of players showed that, while nearly three-fourths of people who bought casual games were women, the players of such games were split 50-50 between the sexes.

The reason men have not been reflected in the data so far is because most males are fans of realistic "hardcore" games and many do not admit they like to play simpler games involving shiny gems or lines of colored balls.

"It was really shocking for everybody. We knew these guys were playing these games," Tams said. "But the hardcore gamer who is playing 'Halo' with his buddies isn't going to brag that he just beat the next level of 'Zuma'."

Such information could be useful to game developers, who are pouring money into the casual games segment amid growing popularity of devices such as mobile telephones with sharp color screens and Nintendo Co Ltd's Wii console.

One emerging trend is the addition of casual games to social networking Web sites such as News Corp's MySpace and Facebook, Tams said.

"You have these two big draws, Facebook and MySpace, but the big problem they've been having is that they haven't been able to monetize their consumers yet and video games are a way for them to monetize their consumers," Tams said.

Survey: More online ads, free content;

A new study reveals that the majority of consumers would rather be bombarded with online ads than pay for content on the Web. Deloitte’s annual media consumption report also indicates that 66% of Internet users would click on more online ads if they were better targeted to them. The study used 2,081 U.S. Internet users ranging in age from 13-75.

“This is across the board, what mainstream America thinks about online advertising,” says Ed Moran, director of product innovation with Deloitte who conducted the survey.

In the online world where anything legal is rarely paid for, younger users are most receptive to ads. Nearly three quarters of Generation X (ages 25-41) and millennials (ages 13-24) polled said they would be willing to be exposed to online ads in exchange for free content. Among the millennials, who visit fewest sites per week of any generation, 72% said they’d click on more ads if they were more relevant, while 67% of Xers said they would.

Major Internet companies have been banking on this strong consumer attitude towards online ads. Everyone’s racing to grab a share of the projected $27.5 billion that will be spent on online ads in 2008, according to research firm eMarketer. Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), and Yahoo (YHOO), spent more than $11 billion in acquisitions to reshape Internet advertising this year in hopes of delivering more relevant ads.

Online ads range in effectiveness;

Ads delivered from search engines remain the most influential. The study reports 78% respondents found the most useful ads by performing keyword searches. (This may also explain why Google’s paid search business is expected to increase nearly 42% to $16.6 billion next year.)

Ads inserted into videos are among the most hyped by big media companies, but they appear to be the least effective among users. Less than a third want to watch commercials that appear before the start of a clip and only 17% said they will watch an ad that plays during a video. Hulu, a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp. (NWS), is currently testing the ad model in shows like “Heroes” and “30 Rock”, which it streams on the web.

“We’re at the cusp where we’re seeing people consume media a la carte and on any device. It’s not just TV anymore. Companies are experimenting by moving their content to the web and tacking on the commercials. It’s a logical way of extending the model that works on one medium, but willthis work going forward?” Moran says. “Right now there’s no deliberate advertising model. This is a hard model to predict.”

Prisa sues Nielsen Online over visitor number dispute

Media giant Prisa, which owns Spanish paper El Pais, is suing research firm, Nielsen Online, over a dispute about the number of visitors to El Pais' website. Prisa accuses Nielsen of causing damage to the reputation of its flagship paper by publishing inaccurate visitor numbers for ElPais.com in 2007. In Aug, the research firm revised down visitor numbers to El Pais, which the Spanish media giant says was unjust. In the complaint, it says: "Serious negligence on the part of Nielsen in its measurement of audience figures for El Pais.com caused El Pais and Prisa to suffer serious damages due to lost advertisement this year." The media group claims it will lose USD1.4m in ad revenue as a result of the alleged mistake. Nielsen reportedly over-estimated El Pais.com's visitor numbers in Feb, because it had mistakenly included traffic on the site's RSS page, which is not supposed to be included in the overall traffic figure. As a result of the revision, in Aug, it appeared as though the number of visitors to the newspaper's site had declined nearly 20% since Feb.

SPILL GROUP christmas message!

“who would ever think that a dutch company could grow from zero uniques traffic in april 2005 to more than 60 million unique visitors worldwide per month?”

SPILL GROUP owns domains like game.com.cn, xiaoyouxi.com, juegos.com, games.co.uk and many more…

The Netherlands,

Hilversum, december 22^nd 2007

From; Reinout te Brake

Group Strategist SPILL GROUP

Subject; The years 2007/08

To all,

It is that time of the year; Christmas and New Year!

As most of you do know I want to tell you more about what happened with SPILL GROUP and what will happen with SPILL GROUP. Not dry reading material only, there should be a funny note too.

So first of all;

Merry Christmas for all of you, I hope you had a healthy, wonderfull and successful 2007. Of course I wish you all the best for 2008!

Christmas joke;

So just remember this one when you are sitting down with your friends and relatives for the Christmas dinner;

Who is never hungry at Christmas ?
The turkey - he's always stuffed !

Christmas facts;

So every year I am saying that in Holland we have the first and the second Christmas day. People from the UK say; hell no no, that is not correct, because it is the 24^th and other people have other ideas about Christmas, but we all agree to this;

Christmas is an annual holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus. The date of the celebration is traditional, and is not considered to be his actual date of birth. In most places around the world, Christmas Day is celebrated on December 25. Christmas Eve is the preceding day, December 24. In the United Kingdom and many countries of the Commonwealth, Boxing Day is the following day, December 26. In Catholic countries, Saint Stephen's Day or the Feast of St. Stephen is December 26. The Armenian Apostolic Church observes Christmas on January 6. Eastern Orthodox Churches that still use the Julian Calendar celebrate Christmas on the Julian version of 25 December, which is January 7 on the more widely used Gregorian calendar, because the two calendars are now 13 days apart.

So let me take you through 2007 quickly;

This year 2007 was an amazing year. Not only did we hook up with a VC company (Van den Ende & Deitmers (http://endeit.nl/eng/eng_home.html), who helped us greatly by giving advice during acquisitions and roll out of the strategy. We also got some very nice domains like www.juegos.com (means games in Spanish) and www.games.co.uk. In this year we also did grow very fast with our (game-) traffic. In November we broke through the 55 million unique visitors and if we maintain our growth-path for December we will hit the 60 million unique visitors.

This growth has reasons why. We launched a new type of gameportal (www.agame.com) and we introduced a portal that is focusing on girls; www.girlsgogames.com. Both are very successful so we launched localized versions throughout the year. To get an actual list of our gameportals, please visit our site; http://spillgroup.com/gameportals.php.

What also did amaze me was the number of people that started to work within our company. Since april 2005 when we worked with 6 people, we have grown to more then 40 people in Holland, 15 people in Poland and 63 people in China. Our human resource department is working 24/7 and is on the look-out every day for talent. Still we are looking for portal managers, campaign/advertising managers, maintenance people, system engineers, programmers, content managers and people that would like to get us coffee!

Find all of our job openings here; http://spillgroup.com/jobs.php

In 2007 we had to “upgrade” the company. We got a CFO onboard (Willem van Wijmen, see http://spillgroup.com/management_willem.php), we worked on our commercial side with the help of Lisette Schipper (http://spillgroup.com/management_lisette.php).

Two other things were also important; legal and hosting. Starting with hosting, you cannot say online “sorry we are closed, come back tomorrow”. Robbert van Os (http://spillgroup.com/management_robbert.php) and his team made sure that our hosting went from “good” to “superior”. Globalhosting is a word that I heard many times. Having said that, what is a company without good contracts. I think that Ramon Frankfort (http://spillgroup.com/management_ramon.php) has never seen more contracts in 2007 then in any other year.

Last but not least; SPILL GROUP ASIA. Marc van der Chijs (http://marc.cn/blog) is still leading the way for us in China and the rest of asia. Not only did ZlonGames grow very fast (http://zlongames.com/), we also introduced GameDino (http://www.gamedino.com/) and Seeriously (http://www.seeriously.com/) as two new brands for casual games and serious games. Also Marc finalized an acquisition and bought www.xiaoyouxi.com.

Of course I should mention more people; Frank Polanen (running the maintenance department), Ivo Teel (running the system engineering department), Peter Hofstede/Michael Louw (who jointly set up our game concept/game development department. They are their team-members did an outstanding performance!

Let’s not forget two other persons; Peter Driessen (CEO) and Bennie Eeftink (COO). Two realy Dutchmen that you can describe like this; The Dutch tend to judge foreign cultures using the standards and values they hold clear. Traditionally, the socio-political climate in the Netherlands has been one of collaboration and working towards compromises. In comparison to many other cultures, the Dutch are rather reserved in public and do not often touch each other or display anger or extreme exuberance. This is why people and cultures who display these "vices", for example those living around the Mediterranean Sea, are regarded as being too emotional. In Dutch society, extravagantly flaunting ones emotions (whether positive or negative) is easily seen as an 'act'. It's neatly illustrated by the Dutch proverb "Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg" (Just act normal, you'll be crazy enough already). More you can find here, so suddenly you may understand us; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_people#Dutch_names

What can I say. The year 2007 was quite a ride, besides us buying www.zapjuegos.com, www.clickjogos.com, starting www.gamesgames.com and invested in several new own games like;

- http://www.gamesgames.com/game72907.html

- http://www.gamesgames.com/game67212.html

- http://www.gamesgames.com/game62160.html

- http://www.gamesgames.com/game45935.html

- http://www.gamesgames.com/game49778.html

A year where we closed new agreements with among all Stardoll (http://stardoll.girlsgogames.com), PowerChallenge (http://powerfootball.ojogos.com.br/) and RunEscape (http://runescape.jetztspielen.de/). Still as we speak we are negotiating with some parties about new long term deals.

Last but not least; we bought a major share in a german company. We welcomed Martin Schiele and his team in our company. If you talk about dedication and game-minded, you talk about this. The company is called Qforge (www.qforge.de) and the platform you will find here; http://www.qplaygames.com/games.htm?ref=qforge and some of the games in our portals like for example; http://www.games.co.uk/game72239.html.

The year 2007;

In 2007 we saw lots of people get more interested in the gaming space. More venture money came available.Lots of companies made quite some progress. Lets say ‘social’ did meet ‘games’ and ‘games’ did meet ‘advertising’.

A quick review if you would like to get a crash course;

Oberon and MySpace;

http://www.socaltech.com/myspace_oberon_team_on_casual_games/s-0011888.html

Real bought gametrust and Atrative;

http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/realnetworks-acquires-brazil-based-casual-game-studio-atrativa/#When:15:31:00Z

http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-realnetworks-to-buys-online-casual-games-site-gametrust-price-less-than/

EA and Hasbro;

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118670816533693824.html?mod=rss_media_and_marketing

PowerChallenge got VC money;

http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/archives/2007/05/swedish_soccer.html

Kongregate got extra funding;

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15105

WildTangent raises 20 million dollars;

http://www.redherring.com/Home/23255

MochiAds put ads in flashgames;

http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9797689-2.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Webware

Lots of stuff to read as you can see. Of course with SPILL GROUP we were in the middle. Still I do compare us with a company like Wallmart. We should have the best possible products and as lots of daily visitors. The target is 100 million unique visitors per month. That is do-able!

The year 2008;

For 2008 we will focus on the following points;

- Increase traffic to 100 million uniques per month (worldwide)

- Increase advertising revenues per site and per country (worldwide)

- Acquire/license high quality web-based flash games

We do realize that our content has to be better than that of our competitors. Our visitors should find the best games on our gameportals and that of course should convince them to come back, day after day, month after month. We are looking for game-developers worldwide to help us with creating localized content for the localized gameportals. In 2008 we will introduce a new way to work with game-developers. Our intention is to introduce this during Casuality2008 in Amsterdam. Of course you can already schedule meetings for Casuality2008, please mail me at reinout@spillgroup.com. I would be more then happy to inform you more about our strategy for the next 2-3 years.

The site and its local version girlsgogames.com will continue to grow in 2008. Content for girls (6-12) more then ever is important. The same for site agame.com and its local version. This site slowly will focus more on boys/male (6-12/13-19). I would appreciate also if you send this message to friends/collegues so that they maybe can help us with these targets. If you know exerienced and qualified people that would be interested to work within a growing gaming company, please let me know.

Like I said in the beginning of this email. Not only reading material. We are all about games, so I will let you go with some games in the spirit of Christmas;

So for your kids I have this;

http://www.gamesgames.com/game61237.html

http://www.gamesgames.com/game72084.html

For the women I got;

http://www.gamesgames.com/game39158.html

http://www.gamesgames.com/game13611.html

For the men of course;

http://www.gamesgames.com/game74977.html

http://www.gamesgames.com/game74856.html

Finaly special thanks to all the people that helped us find domains, games, people and took the time for visiting and talking to us. We hope to see and talk to all of you next year.

Have a great Christmas season.