Emerging Trends in Gameplay: The Blurring Lines Between Casual and Hardcore Jon Radoff, CEO, GamerDNA GDC Austin 2009

Agenda What is changing about players? What is an online game? Are there better ways to Segment audiences? Casual vs. Hardcore?

history quizzes stories

Gamer Stereotypes of the past…

Games are not a media category. Games are played by everyone!

OF TEENAGERS PLAY GAMES 9 7 %

Couples play games

Families play games

People of all ages play games

What Twitter can tell us about gamers Almost 1 million tweets/month tracked by TweetMyGaming about games

Heatmap of Game Twitter Conversations

Rock Band overwhelming game conversations 9/9/09 – at Wow’s expense

Casual games vs. (Hard)core games

Casual games vs. (Hard)core games (AKA, The Most Stupid Dichotomy Ever Created in the Game Industry)

A core game from 1978 A “casual” Flash game from 2009

What are better ways of categorizing the market?

What is an online game?

World of Warcraft

Madden NFL 09 World of Warcraft

Guitar Hero III Madden NFL 09

Web-based, easy-to-play, collectible Duels, Warstorm, Planet Storm Browser based Strategy Game In May 2009, the Travian website is more popular than the World of Warcraft website (430 vs. 540 on Alexa) Web-based and iPhone 30 million daily active players in Sept 2009

Social gamers vs. Experience Gamers

But it isn’t just guilds – games with any social components are more successful

Rock Band vs. Guitar Hero 3 Daily Players of Rock Band vs. GH3 Why did Rock Band command high daily attention levels? Q:

Grand Theft Auto IV Daily attention from launch day

Call of Duty IV Daily attention from launch day

Segmentation based on thematic (rather than gameplay-type) genres

Bioshock – What are they also playing?

Every game has its own distinct segmentation

“ Heroic” Map Pack - 42% Increase “ Legendary” Map Pack – 46% Increase “ Bungie Day” Free Map - 65% Increase Title Update – 95% Increase “ Mythic” Map Pack – 62% Increase Concurrent Halo 3 Players GTA IV Released - 59% Drop

Halo 3 Audience Segmentation Initial Market Genre Loyal Brand Loyal

Initial Market Genre Loyal Brand Loyal

Competitive Set Analysis

Top 10 other games played by World of Warcraft Players

Top 8 Games played by MMO Players

Since 5/31, 7.6% weekly compound growth in tweets about games

Conclusions Larger, more diverse audience than ever The definition of “online game” has evolved Don’t get caught in “casual vs. hardcore” More helpful segmentations: social vs. less social players, thematic tastes, brand-loyal vs. genre-loyal, competitive sets

Thanks! Jon Radoff, CEO, GamerDNA [email_address] GamerDNA: tarinth.gamerdna.com Twitter: jradoff