This is one of the lost interviews from Casual Connect that I really believe is still relevant. I had the opportunity to speak with Nickelodeon’s AddictingGames about their purpose in the casual and community spaces, thoughts on trends in the casual market, and being a woman and a leader in the gaming industry. Enjoy!

AG: Our goal at Addicting Games is to be the umbrella brand for the higher quality indie casual games, and I think what we’ve done as well is focused on the teenage demographic. There’s a lot of casual game brands that are about women over the age of 40. And what we’ve really done is emphasized that, “Hey there’s a ton of teenagers and aspirational teenagers both old and young who want to play games about being a teenager or just being goofy – being silly.” And it just so happens that a lot of the flash game developer community is very in tune with that kind of humor, that kind of game style – all that and so AddictingGames has really established itself as one of the leading brands in the casual games space by doing just that.

GA: So how does it work exactly? Are you a portal that they can come to with their games and say, “Can people play this here?”
AG: Absolutely. We take submissions from all over the world. We get hundreds of games submitted to us every week. And we did just open up submissions for iPhones as well. What we do though, that’s different from say like a Facebook platform or even YouTube where they’re totally open and everything that’s submitted gets published, we exert editorial control. And so what we do is we look at the games and say, “Does this fit the Addicting Games brand? Is this something that we really want to be part of the Addicting Games family?” And we’ll launch games on our site, and in some cases we will pay up front for the license to that game and that license includes including our brand more deeply in that game and incorporating our community features more deeply into the game. This way the game is a much deeper part of what we do. As well, the developer – when they participate in that program, they qualify for our developer bonus plan. Which means that the end of every quarter, all of the games that have incorporated this brand and the community features, the top 25 of those games split a portion of the revenue that was generated by all these games. So this is an example of how we are really trying to reward quality in the game development.

GA: So is this specifically Flash games?
AG: We have launched community games lately, we have some Shockwave games too. I would say right now, the majority of the kind of really funky, cool, silly game development community is in the Flash space. Although we’re very very interested in what’s happening with the community players, and watching it very closely as it gets pickup with the independent developer community. However right now, nothing can match Flash. I mean, if you think about the number of high schools and colleges that teach Flash, you just have an enormous number of creative people that are empowered to build games through that program.

GA: Then, when they submit their games to you, are you then granted exclusivity?
AG: It depends on what we want out of it. In some cases, we will pay for more exclusive rights, in some cases we’ll go for just nonexclusive rights. And then in some cases again, we’re not even paying for a license, we’re just doing a simple email agreement, yes you may take your game on our site, and then we have more limited rights of what we can do with it.

GA: So, you mentioned that you are now accepting iPhone submissions, do you see a trend going more toward the iPhones or…?
AG: I think that number 1 – playing games online is here to stay. And we’re just seeing a number of kids who will do a math problem, then play a level, and then do another math problem and play a level. I think that’s there to stay. And I just think that’s the way that kids work nowadays, and games are hard and they’re stimulating and so, that’s fine and so a lot of more progressive teachers are kind of okay with that. What we see with this thing is a whole new frontier opening up. Games can be more tightly woven into people’s daily lives. I think the best example is kids on the bus, or kids standing in line at the movie theater can now be engaging with their favorite games at the same time. The really interesting opportunity that’s really special for our organization is the proliferation of independent developers all submitting their stuff to Apple. They have this story that 1 billion apps have been downloaded. It is a screaming screaming success. And we really believe in that platform and we really really really believe in the creative energy that it’s unleashed in the developer community. What we recognize, however, is that a lot of apps get lost in the long tail. Independent game developers are really good at creating great concepts with games and making really fun experiences. But, understanding and supporting that sustained level of marketing that you have to do to remain competitive in that very very competitive environment for the iPhone is something that a lot of game developers aren’t equipped to do, don’t particularly want to do, and something that a uber brand like Addicting games can do for them. And that’s what our concept is behind the iPhone submissions portion, is to leverage the Addicting Games brand that we have built up through the great servicing of the flash game developer community and through the great brand building amongst the teenage and aspiring teenagers everywhere is really to use that halo to pull some of these great games out of the long tail and make them more competitive on the deck. As well, we develop partnerships with these game developers so that we can really help them have a continuing stream of solid performing games, like we have done with the flash games community.

GA: Last time I was here, there was a lot of talk about the saturation of the Flash games market. How do you deal with that? How many submissions would you say you get per day or per week?
AG: Well, we probably get hundreds and we don’t just look at our submissions. We have outreach into other sites and other places and we’re watching, doing outbound game scouting as well. I think what’s important is that we’re not launching garbage on the site. That’s the standard that we have to keep. I will say that as the Flash game developer community has grown up – has become more equipped to do games and there is more reasonable funding out there for them, the bar has raised as to what a good game is. We launch between 12 and 15 new games per week. All of those games have to cross that hurdle of – is this a good game? And that hurdle is getting higher and higher. This is the maturity of the market. And you just start to increase the depth of game play as the audience grows.

GA: Okay, and sort of switching gears here, do you think that it makes a difference being a woman in a leadership role this industry?
AG: I think the games industry is at this incredibly exciting point where it’s discovering that there is a very very broad demographic of people who want to play games. I think people have always known it, but the access to broad demographics who play games is even easier than it was before. Before, you had to get them to go into the store and purchase the product. Maybe 8 years ago you started getting people at their desk at work playing Bejeweled. The game industry overall is now going, “Holy cow. This is a really varied and big market,” and some of these audiences are much more easily addressed through the online world and I think that any different group coming in and saying, “Hey, I understand that we need to make better games for this group,” is a good thing. I would say that I can’t approach the marked as “Hi, I’m a woman and I’m going to make games for women.” You have to approach you job as “I’m going to make really fun games that do well.” I think that what you can see is that games that can appeal to teenage girls can be differentiated from a lot of the stuff that’s out there. A lot of the flash game developer community is male. Helping to provide some editorial guidance to that male developer community to help make games more accessible to young girls as well as boys is a good thing. But, rather than bust out as, “Here’s our girl game strategy,” what we’re trying to do is to make sure that our hit games – the games that we are really investing in have those hooks that make it meaningful for girls as well as boys. That’s just a responsibility that I have as someone who means to be successful in the games space. I think being a female probably makes it easier to say that, but I think you have to be careful because you don’t want to ever think that you are speaking for an entire gender, and what really we need to do is expand the process and expand the way we think about stuff and just get more women making games, frankly. I think that’s probably the biggest thing.

GA: Is there anything else you’d like to include here before we wrap up?
AG: We just want the indie developers to know that we are a resource for taking the flash game concepts to the iPhone, so bring us your ideas of what you think will work. We want to make sure there is a really strong very creative supply as well as very strong marketing for these games.

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